Analogy strategy

ANALOGY IN TEACHING SCIENCE

The analogy method in the classroom is the teaching of a new topic by connecting it with familiar information. For example, we might rely on portraying the white blood cells of our body as soldiers in our defense system. Here we use the analogy of soldiers (known information) to help teach the concept of white blood cells (new information).

How does the use of analogies help?

Using analogies in the classroom is an effective strategy as students tend to find it easier to understand a lesson when teachers form connections between the new topic and what has already been taught.

For class VII, I was teaching soil lesson. One of the subtopic in this lesson was soil profile. Soil profile is the vertical cross section of the soil. Soil profile is also known as soil horizons. Soil horizons consists of the different layers of soil which differ in colour, composition and texture.

A-Horizon is the top soil layer which contains humus and organic materials suitable for plant growths. It is soft and porous layer of the soil. B-Horizon is the second layer of the soil which less humus and is little hard as compared to the above layer. C-Horizon is also known as the middle layer of the soil which contains the crevices of rocks and is more compact. The fourth layer is the Bedrock. It is the hardest layer which contains most compact rocks.

                          

 Colour Tower Experiment

Before starting with it, as a use of analogy I showed the students an experiment of colour tower. In this experiment, I used five different liquids i.e. honey, dish wash prill, food colour, vegetable oil and kerosene which has different density based on which they occupy layers when poured into a glass. These liquids are immiscible with each other due to which they do not mix. The down layer was honey followed by prill, food colour, vegetable oil and kerosene. The denser the liquid, it will occupy the bottom layer whereas kerosene is denser than the remaining used liquids and occupies the upper layer. Density depends on mass and volume of the liquid used.

In the same manner in the soil profile the top most soil layer i.e. A-Horizon is most soft and permeable layer of layer. Down the soil layers the hardness goes on increasing. Thus Bedrock is the most compact layer among all the other layers of soil. In soil layer bedrock is the most denser and hardest layer of the soil. So I related the concept of density as introduction to explain the soil profile in the soil. For this I showed them the colour tower experiment.