Author: CaldiesChem

CaldiesChemhttps://caldieschem.wordpress.com

AQA PSA Activities

Often exam boards get grief due to their lack of support for coursework but AQA can’t be faulted for their PSA guidance. Teacher / technician and student worksheets given and excellent practical procedures (using sensible reagents and equipment). A great one is the synthesis of aspirin. Lovely pure crystals produced

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KS4 Practical Assessment

Practical Work

Calderstones hosted the LEA Science meeting on Tuesday 25th March. The LEA subject officer gave some input on Progress8 and how it would impact on science curriculum planning. I was asked to lead on KS4 practical work in light of the speculated changes to practical assessment with changes to GCSE.

There was some philosophical debate on what practical work is actually for. The SCORE survey highlighted a marked discrepancy between the relative importance of ‘inquiry’ at KS2 vs KS3/4. It’s interesting that all great scientific discovery comes from ‘the unexpected outcome’ yet in most KS3/4 curricula we are looking for the ‘correct’ outcome or the ‘correct’ observation when driving students to the expected phenomena. There was much debate on this point and the differentiation of ‘technical’ and ‘analytical’ assessment, and the need to encourage enquiry based learning at KS3 and 4.

The highlighted reports from The Gatsby Foundation and The Wellcome Trust were interesting in that they, and also reports from QCA and subject briefings from AQA, seem to be converging on the viewpoint that ISA assessment is fundamentally flawed and that in the short term, questions on practical skills ‘should’ be set in GCSE papers along with a practical assessment component.

The powerpoint below may be of interest

Aspirational targets / resilience assembly (via Apollo)

I was asked to give a short (5-7 minute) assembly recently on a space or science theme. I decided to use the story of the Apollo mission to get over the idea of setting an aspirational target (as Kennedy did in 1962) and being resilient in the face of failure (using the story of the ‘Apollo 1’ fire). The subsequent Apollo missions were mentioned in the context of setting further targets once you’ve achieved success. The Galileo experiment using a feather and hammer is worthy of mention here too (video included). Other ‘failures’ (Apollo 13 and Challenger / Columbia) were mentioned in the context of learning from them and making improvements. The final image shows a landing on Mars and poses the question of whether this is an aspirational target.

I very keen on the idea of seeing failure as “First Attempt In Learning” and so used that in the assembly too.

The file used is a Keynote but can be converted to .ppt.

 

EDIT: I have just found out that in Internet Explorer the video clips won’t play in iCloudBeta. I will convert the whole file to .pptx and repost…

https://www.icloud.com/iw/#keynote/BALKzufRT2xPNt0h8XCBWI5MpSXJlVd0DxWF/Assembly

 

Independent Learning Survey – Please Complete!

As part of my collaboration with our LEA I’ve set up a regional working party to look at issues regarding student independence in A-level science courses.

I would like to share the outcomes of this process with the wider world outside of my region and it would be extremely useful to gather as much data as possible.

If you are a teacher of A-level sciences (or know someone who is) could you please complete the enclosed tick list (word document at the bottom of this post) and email it to darryl.ellson@calderstones.co.uk.

Many Thanks!

Independent working blank survey

SOLO Taxonomy

I’ve become very interested in SOLO taxonomy. One of my areas of interest is promoting synoptic linking at KS4 and KS5 and encouraging students to eschew seeing the subject as a series of disembodied facts and instead consider a few simple concepts (such as atomic radius) as a framework on which to hang a further concepts (such as electronegativity, bond polarity etc). We have used Blooms in the department but feel that SOLO gives us a much better ‘fit’ with it’s emphasis of linking and understanding.

Our department is at the beginning of the ‘SOLO journey’ and the PPT below is one used to introduce the idea of SOLO.

SOLO