Topics include:

• BTEC Level 1 Chemistry (periodic table and chemical change factors)
• BTEC Level 1 IT users
• Entry level biology topics
• Misc updated worksheets.

Please download and use these resources as you see fit.  Usual copyright terms apply.

Earlier this week we were forced to cancel a course we’d organised for the weekend (we being the East Midlands region of the ASE).   Unfortunately we failed to attract sufficient numbers to justify running the course, with an average of four members per workshop (assuming everyone who had expressed an interest attended).

The course in question was a half day event organised on a Saturday morning.  The location was chosen to be central and easy to get to (and had the bonus of plenty of free parking for those that chose to drive).  Previous courses we had run at the venue in a similar time slot attracted in excess of thirty people. 

There are a number of reasons why we might not have attracted enough people:

• Our publicity machine might need a little oiling, as people can only book onto a workshop they know about
• The day of the week was a poor choice – people may not have wanted to give up a Saturday morning
• Competition with other regional events – many people have been organising science teacher events so we are competing with each other
• Venue – not everyone can get to Nottingham Trent University
• Price – the workshop was advertised at £7 to members (£14 to non-members) with a free book.  Perhaps we were too expensive.

Unfortunately it isn’t possible to directly ask the people who didn’t book because we don’t know who they are.  I would appreciate some feedback from those of you who read my blog or receive my email feed when is the best time to organise CPD events and what encourages you to book onto a course when you see one advertised.  Better still if you are in the East Midlands and you knew about our event but didn’t book I’d love to know why so that we can do better next time!

Image © ComputerClipArt.com

I’ve advocated #ASEChat on Twitter before as a source of excellent CPD.  If you want to know more about #ASEchat then check out  my guide here and look at the official #ASEchat page here.

Last night I moderated (if that is the appropriate term) a discussion about teaching electricity which made for very interesting reading.  I’ve posted a summary of the chat below, and as with all #ASEchat sessions, the official archive and summary can be found on the official #ASEchat page.  I maintain an unofficial archive of #ASEchat transcripts on Google Docs in spread sheet format which allows you to sort by contributor, highlight links etc.  The electricity chat can be found here.

Summary of Topic 24 – Teaching Electricity

I chose this topic as a biologist because I’m not sure I always do it justice. I wanted to hear from experienced and creative physicists how they introduce the concepts and any models they might use. I’ve listed some of these below:

• The Rope Model: recommended by the IoP and several ASEchat participants, the rope model can be used to model flow of charge around the circuit (several participants didn’t like the phrase ‘flow of current’). For those who haven’t seen this model before, this video captured at a regional ASE workshop (featuring Helen Pollard from the IoP) demonstrates how it works.
• The penguin rollercoaster was mentioned more than once (similar to this one) in which @gwiff explained the penguin is the charge, the height is the voltage, the current is the penguins going past, the resistance is the friction and finally the battery is the escalator.
• Several teachers said they introduce the term coulombs early on in KS3 and to specifically avoid referring to electrons. @Lethandrel said “Coulombs given joules each (EMF) Mission give them all away (pd is each charitable donation) Must do it in conga line” and shared an image of her own furry coulomb.
• Several teachers pointed out that many of the models have flaws in them (credit to @alomshaha and @informed_edu for pointing out the flaws in the rope model). All is not lost however as other contributors suggested that discussing models and their limitations fits in very well with ‘how science works’. In fact @alomshaha points out “It was while struggling with electricity as a student myself that I first really understood what a model was in science”.
• Primary teachers have a part to play in teaching electricity. Advice included avoid referring to electrons, don’t teach students that current decreases round a circuit, make circuits and test for breaks in these circuits, testing different sized batteries.
• Finally the question was asked if electricity is taught poorly in many instances, are we not better off leaving teaching electricity until KS4 so it can be taught by subject specialists. The response was mixed, however physicists are in short supply and many schools don’t have this luxury, so good models and explanations are essential for all teachers.

Top tweets

ViciaScience: Is teaching electricity just about understanding how bread is transported from bakery to supermarket?

Lethandrel: Avoid talking about electrons – kids end up obsessed and can’t think of electricity without them

Lethandrel: I talk about coulombs per sec and joules per coulomb, cute furry creature with bag of jewels/joules nice visual to hang it on

Agittner: have we all seen John Travoltage on the Phet simulations?

informed_edu: pet hate: "current flows round the circuit"

informed_edu: @Bio_Joe Charge flows around the circuit. Current is the number of coulombs flowing past each second.

alomshaha: @asober The IOP’s rope model is inadequate. Does not explain potential difference or drop in P.D across resistor

Useful links mentioned in the discussion

PhET Interactive Simulations – http://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulations/category/physics

Squishy circuits – http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/apthomas/SquishyCircuits/index.htm

Teaching Science for Understanding (Electricity) – http://www.education.leeds.ac.uk/research/cssme/ElecCircuitsScheme.pdf

Klunky Schematic Editor – http://www.qsl.net/wd9eyb/klunky/

Switched On Kids – http://www.switchedonkids.org.uk/

Hilary Osoko has advice for Primary teachers – http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=96600

Making sense of children’s ideas http://staff.science.uva.nl/~joling/vakdidactiek/documenten/electricity.pdf

9.00am Registration and Refreshments

9.20am Welcome

9.30am Choice of Seminar

• A.Creative ideas for Special Needs in Science
• B.Using ‘Enquiring Minds’ to deliver a creative Science Curriculum
• C.Science, Art and Writing
• D.Active engagement and challenge

10.30am Coffee

10.45am ASE Science TeachMeet

A TeachMeet is an organised but informal meeting for teachers to share good practice, practical innovations and personal insights in teaching.  Our teachmeet will purely have a science focus and participants are welcome to come as spectators or presenters. Please see further details below.

11.45am Plenary and Evaluation

12.00pm Event closes

The cost for this event to members is £7.00 and to non members is £12.00. All participants will receive a free resource pack including either the See SAW book for primary teachers or the Big Questions DVD for secondary teachers.

To book your place please email Sue Banner on banner.sue@gmail.com. Please state your name, school, primary/secondary and your preferred choice of workshop. Please also give your ASE membership number if appropriate. If you don’t hear back from Sue, assume you have a place.

A.Creative ideas for Special Needs in Science – Rob Butler C.Sci Teach

A look at some creative ideas and strategies to use with students with special needs, or who perform below national expectations, with the aim of engaging students and raising achievement.  Rob Butler has over 13 years of experience teaching in a special school, and will be sharing tried and tested ideas from his own practice. You will have the opportunity to see samples of web material appropriate to this group of pupils.

Target Audience –teachers, technicians, students, TAs, tutors and advisors. The content is mainly secondary but some material is appropriate for upper primary

B. Using an ‘Enquiring minds’ approach to deliver a creative Science curriculum – Margaret Fleming Education Consultant

Enquiring Minds explores how students’ ideas, interests and experiences can inform the content, processes and outcomes of teaching and learning in schools. At a time of curriculum reform in primary and secondary schools, Enquiring Minds provides guidance and research to help support schools through the process of change.  Margaret Fleming has worked with a team of colleagues from the LSN Triple Science Support Programme to develop resources based on this approach to teaching and learning. She will share the ideas developed in the context of Triple Science Biology.

Target Audience – secondary teachers, technicians, students, TAs, tutors and advisors.

C. Science, Art and Writing (SAW) Jane Winter

SAW is an innovative and cross curricular approach to science, which inspires poetry and art work while increasing scientific understanding for all ages.  In this session we will tell you about our experience of using this approach with children in the EYFS, KS1 & KS2 in our school.  This session will provide ideas for your Art and Literacy subject leaders to help promote science teaching and learning in your school, along with some great ideas for manageable, creative and fun science days. . 

Target Audience – primary teachers, co-ordinators, Students, TAs, tutors and advisors. 

D. Active engagement and challenge, Melanie Edwards Science AST, Redhill Academy

A hands on workshop in which you will take part in several Teaching and Learning strategies that have a proven record of engaging and challenging students of all ages. The strategies can be adapted to teach various areas of the Science curriculum; they also require minimal resources and little preparation time. Therefore, you will be able to incorporate the strategies into your lessons the very next week! Descriptions of the strategies will also be provided to allow coaching of colleagues back in your schools.

Target Audience – teachers, technicians, students, TAs, tutors and advisors. Mel will be speaking from a secondary viewpoint but much of the material is appropriate for upper primary

ASE Science TeachMeet

A TeachMeet is an organised but informal meeting for teachers to share good practice, practical innovations and personal insights in teaching.  Our TeachMeet will have a science focus and participants are welcome to come as spectators or presenters. Presenters will sign up for a 2-3 minute presentation or a longer 5-7 minute presentation which can be about any topic related to (science) education, and in any format.  Having seen some of the exciting and innovative practice in the East Midlands, we would hope that many of you will sign up to share with us some of your ideas and innovations in the classroom.  Every idea shared is worthwhile.

Target Audience – teachers, technicians, students, TAs, tutors and advisors

Shortly before the summer holiday I went on a briefing session on the new Ofsted framework for school leaders.  I’ve tried to tease out some of the most important issues for heads of department – as you read below remember that I’m not an Ofsted inspection and that I’m commenting on notes that I made during the briefing session.

The Ofsted Framework is changing early next year (subject to Royal Assent) so what does that mean for teachers and school leaders.

What is changing?

Ofsted is trying to make the framework more manageable, simplifying and streamlining the inspection process.  The number of key judgements will be reduced to four, plus an overall judgement.  The new judgements will be:

• Achievement
• Quality of teaching
• Leadership and management
• Behaviour and safety

The overall judgement will take account of the four judgements above and also how well the school promotes pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

What does this mean for the classroom teacher?

I’m told that the classroom teacher won’t notice a huge difference over previous inspections.  There may be more lesson observations as inspectors try to get a handle on achievement, teaching and behaviour, and there could still be part-lesson observations.  There may even be bespoke observations, for example if there is belief that there is insufficient challenge in maths, starts of lessons/activities could be sampled instead.  Teachers will still receive feedback at the end of an observation.  Joint observations will still be conducted (to help moderate judgements about teaching and learning made by the school as part of the self-evaluation process).

There will also be a greater focus on the teaching of literacy across the school, and inspectors will be looking to gather information about the impact that teaching has on learning over time.  Progress (as well as raw attainment) will be important as well.

What does this mean to subject leaders?

With the culling of key judgements and abolition of the compulsory SEF, it may be time to look again at your own self-evaluation procedures, perhaps focussing more attention to the four key judgements (as listed above).

There will be a greater focus on reading and literacy so if you haven’t already embraced literacy across the curriculum, now might be a good time to start putting this into effect.  Whilst there is no separate judgement for literacy, it will be looked at as part of the key judgements.  Pilot schools recommend that there is a literacy component to lesson planning pro forma.

There will no longer be judgements for special educational needs (SEN) and school specialisms but they will be looked at as part of the new key judgements.

Behaviour is more important than ever, with the message coming both from government and from Ofsted.  The inspection team will try to collect evidence to show what behaviour is typically like rather than just the behaviour they see during the inspection.  This could include pupil or parental feedback and exclusion records.

There will no longer be reference to contextual value added (CVA) figures, and inspectors will revert to using value added measures as in the past.  Tracking information and baseline data will be very important to help demonstrate progress and justify the school’s approach.  Make sure as a department you have a good handle on progress and can demonstrate this if asked.

Inspectors will also be looking to see more of focus on formative assessment and it may be worth revisiting this in departmental meetings.  Inspectors will want to see the impact teaching has on learning over time, and may look at student work and corresponding data.

School leaders will be focussed on improving outcomes and narrowing the gap.  Self-evaluation, monitoring and teaching, capacity for improvement and compliance with statutory requirements will form part of the leadership and management judgement.  Departmental leaders will be expected to have in place strategies, structures and approaches which are bringing about improvement, and to show how barriers to learning are overcome.

It is also worth mentioning that inspection teams will only have Raiseonline data and the last inspection report, any other information will be provided by the school (and in a format of the school’s own choice).

That’s the crux of it! I’m no expert but I’m happy to try and answer any comments or respond to feedback below. 

Image © Blue Square Thing on Flickr

I’ve always shared resources in the hope that I save someone else reinventing the wheel.  I’ve been impressed with the traffic that this has brought into my website with several hundred visitors each day, hopefully each file downloaded has saved somebody some work.  To improve availability of my resources I’ve arranged with the TES to host a copy of my resources on my profile there.  The only difference is that resources downloaded from the TES carry a small © message at the bottom of the page.

Regular visitors will have noticed that I have moved my resources onto this site from their previous home, which gave me the chance to sort through my resources and discard any that are out of date.  I also have more detailed download information which revealed some interesting trends:

Most people find out about my site through Google search (although many search by fiendishlyclever suggesting they’ve been before!)

• Most people arrive searching for BTEC Science resources
• BTEC Chemistry resources are the most downloaded resources on my site (by a wide margin)
• Literacy across the curriculum is a popular search term which is very encouraging
• Year 7 topics are more popular than year 8

Having sat down and looked at many specifications we had selected a course to run with our students next year, and I pity other schools like mine (with a high percentage of SEN students) who are having to make a similar decision.

Readers of my blog may have picked up on my dislike of the BTEC qualification, although my gripe has mainly been with the way the qualification is run and the prices charged by Edexcel.  I had decided to drop BTEC because it doesn’t really suit students who are poor attenders or those with poor literacy skills.

We were to move away from BTEC and instead offer OCR entry level with OCR Gateway GCSE science alongside to challenge our more able students.  I was pleased with the match between the two courses and I was even starting to look forward to September.  However a game changing decision was announced by Mr Gove in June (on Sunday morning breakfast television, hardly the arena for important political decisions but then Mr Gove isn’t known for his consideration of teachers).  Modular GCSEs were being phased out with all examinations being placed at the end of the course.

This is a game changer for a special school with 100% statemented students.  Many of my students can’t tell you what we did last lesson and expecting them to remember work from two years ago is just too difficult, even with frequent revision sessions.  As a consequence we have made the decision to revert back to BTEC qualifications as the portfolio based, low pressure assessment technique suits our students more than a terminal examination.

It’s a shame that Mr Gove gave absolutely no consideration to lower attaining students or those with special needs, instead he just seems determined to take us all back to the good old fashioned teaching styles he experienced himself.   In the meantime we’ll go back to BTEC assignments and portfolios to give our students a chance to achieve a qualification they can be proud of.

Image © Mag373 on Flickr

Free of charge (one copy) to registered users and available on affordable subscriptions for schools.  Articles about science in real life situations, science research and experiments to try yourself.   Intended to be read by secondary students, catalyst is written in a way that is interesting and easy to read.  I’d recommend signing up with SEP and ordering the next copy when available.  The current issue has articles on DNA testing remains in mass graves from WWII, Cloud seeding, spectroscopy, ant intelligence and many more.

SEP Publications (Mixing colours)

SEP publications are free of charge to registered users of the website and give valuable information and ideas to science teachers.  The current issue appeared in my pigeon hole this week and focuses on mixing colours.  The information is clearly presented and useful (especially useful if you are reading about something outside your subject area), and there are valuable teaching ideas including practical ideas.  You can order issues of previous publications for a reasonable price and also put your name down to receive the next one free of charge.

Update: I received word today that the materials are moving to a new home at the National Stem Centre.  Register now for more info.  Resources and past issues continue to be available from Mindsets.

I’ve removed the names and grades, but the colours tell you all need to know.  Red means the assignment hasn’t been started, orange means it has, and green means it has been completed.  No prizes for guessing which of these students have left my BTEC group, but what I’ve got to work on now is plugging the gaps for those students who have work missing.

I’m fortunate in that I’ve seen BTEC lessons in a number of schools (at least four or five that spring to mind) and I have yet to find a better way of organising catch up work (or come to think of it a better way of tracking who has completed what).

If you teach BTEC you have my sympathies, I have a much smaller number of students than many mainstream teachers, and I understand what the pressure is like at this time of the year.  I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has a better system of keeping pupils up to date, or a better way of recording who has done what.

I’m not a literacy specialist.  I trained as a science teacher but have worked in special education for the bulk of that time, and have become adept at teaching science by dodging literacy issues to some extent.  That has to change and I’ve decided to bite the literacy bullet and put some simple structured literacy activities in all topics across KS3, starting with year 7.  Once trialled, my approach will be rolled out across all curriculum areas with the aim of developing literacy skills.

The structured activities will look like this:

I’d be interested to know of any other science departments that have approached the issue of improving literacy and what this looks like in reality.

I’ve attached some resources below that correspond to the A&E topic in Wikid Science.  I’d be interested to hear comments from scientists and literacy specialists alike.

A and E key words

Scaffold for lesson 5 – writing about medical technology

Lesson 5 Cloze

Genetics extended writing

Body systems – text to scan

A and E bingo