KS3 ~ Year 8 ~ Continuous and Discontinuous Variation

This lesson is designed for the KS3 Year 8 Science course, specifically the B2 1.3 unit on Adaptation & Inheritance.

For more lessons designed for KS3 and KS4 please visit my shop at: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resources/shop/SWiftScience.

The lesson begins with a whole-class task for students to carry out, firstly they are asked to organise themselves according eye colour, then gender and then lastly height. After they have completed this task, students will be asked to ‘Think > Pair > Share’ their ideas about the way in which they organised themselves for these different categories. How did they differ from on another?

This leads into an introduction to continuous and discontinuous variation. Firstly, students are introduced to the idea of discontinuous variation as being a type of variation which can be categorised into distinct groups - e.g. eye colour/gender. Secondly, students are introduced to the idea of continuous variation as being a characteristic which can take any value within a range, e.g. height.

Students will now be organised into groups and each group will be assigned a characteristic - e.g. handedness, arm length etc. In their groups students will need to complete a survey of the class to collect data from at least 20 people. Once this is complete, students are asked to consider which of the characteristics they have surveyed are examples of continuous variation and which are discontinuous variation. The answers to this task will then be revealed using the answers provided on the PowerPoint presentation.

The next part of the lesson focuses on how students should plot graph displaying either continuous or discontinuous variation - histogram and bar chart, respectively. Now students will need to go back to their groups, using the data collected on their characteristic they surveyed they will now need to produce their own graph.

Lastly, students will need to complete a worksheet which will assess their knowledge of what they have learned this lesson. This work can the be self-assessed using the mark scheme provided once the task is complete.

All resources are included at the end of the presentation. Thanks for looking, if you have any questions please let me know in the comments section and any feedback would be appreciated :)