I have an idea.

In fact, I have two ideas, neither of which is mine. If we take the ‘backward design’ principle (originated by Wiggins and McTighe, introduced to me by Robin Millar’s work) and combine it with a ‘curated crowdsourced’ model, maybe there’s a way to do a better job. 

Backward Design

My apologies to Robin and other experts if I miss the subtleties - I’m just a classroom teacher with delusions of writing grandeur. Instead of beginning a syllabus with the content that we want to teach, backward design asks what we want students to be able to do at the end – how will they be tested? How will we know if the course was successful or not (or more precisely, how successfully the student has completed it)? If we create assessment tasks that will allow us to differentiate between students – ideally including, but not limited to written exams – then we can develop a list of what students should learn, which gives us a list of possible learning/teaching activities. As Robin and others point out, ‘teaching to the test’ is only a problem if the test is not fit for purpose. If we produce a realistic, useful test then being prepared for it is a positive thing. 

Crowdsourcing

So who better to contribute possible questions than teachers? Imagine a Google form set up by a new exam board; let’s call it CCEB. Exemplar material, based on accepted good practice, shows how to lay out mathematical working. Questions are entered, with a markscheme. Dropdown boxes allow those entering the question to define marks available, and from key words describing the area(s) of science being tested. Active teachers, retired staff, academics – even students – all can contribute. The contributions are freely given on the basis that the results will be freely available as far as practical, probably via Creative Commons licensing.

Curated

When a certain threshold is reached – which if every science teacher in the UK supplies a single question, won’t take long – the submissions are sorted by category and checked by CCEB staff. Because they are being proofread rather than written, it will be quicker and easier. If you have some of the original contributors – determined by random allocation – paid for a day’s work, they can be pre-moderated as well. Mathematical questions can be kept in the same form but with different numbers substituted. A large pool of questions is now complete, ready for the exam, which can be balanced between topics. There will be enough questions, all produced at the same time, for several specimen papers to be made available. With a large enough pool, you could even make all the questions open source, like those for the theory element of the UK driving test.

One Day 

It’s feasible that in the future, with enough questions available, every student could get a different but equivalent exam, as described in John Barnes’ book Orbital Resonance.

In the meantime, maybe we as science educators can get involved with setting better exams than the ones we complain about. The exam boards could ask for submissions in this way now. The cynic in me thinks that this would make it much harder for them to justify their existence. Maybe they would like to prove me wrong.

Okay, I’m exaggerating. A bit. But for most of us, it’s probably taking a bit of time to think about the kinds of practicals we do, and why. Are we focused enough on what the students will learn from it? Or are we doing a particular practical or demonstration because it’s in the scheme of work, or because we’ve always done it?

I’ve used among other sources David Sang and Alom Shaha’s workshop at the ASE Conference and materials from Getting Practical and SCORE Education to produce a checklist (downloadable below, simply click on the image). The focus is about the benefits of a demonstration or a class practical. It’s an easy way to think about what can be added to an activity, or ways to tweak it to improve outcomes. Simply sharing with the students what they might be trying to gain from a practical is worthwhile – although in some cases as a plenary to avoid spoiling a surprise or insight. Simply take a moment to read through the lists, and see if you can justify the activity in terms of learning. If you’re not sure, what could you change?

There’s loads of good ideas online – the National Stem Centre eLibrary is of course one place to look – and it’s often possible to convert a practical into a demo or vice versa. For example, I demonstrate heat transfer in fluids using the two chimneys apparatus and a convection square, plus hot and cold water with food colouring in gas jars, which I first saw in ‘Nina and the Neurons’. By the third demo the kids can predict and ex0plain what’s going to happen quite well. I then give them coloured ice cubes to float in water, and to predict, explain, describe and explain again (PEOE) what they see. Bonus points for a commentary that uses key ideas such as ‘density change’.

I hope this kind of reminder is useful, for experienced teachers as well as those more recently joining the profession. Feedback would be very much appreciated, as this is my 100th post and I’ve had less than 1 comment for each on average…

Presented by David Sang (among many other roles, editor of the Practical Physics site) and Alom Shaha (teacher, film producer etc)

In an electricity and magnetism public lecture, Oersted noticed compass movement during public demo – real public science.

I’m now thinking about reenacting this for the students, perhaps as a plenary after more ‘interactive’ work.

• Use webcam to make it visible.
• Mark north/south without magnet, make sure kids see change, note alteration.
• Show range of effect, compare strength of wire and earth magnetic fields.
• Equal strength when at 45degrees.

A demo has many possible purposes, but should always – like everything we do in a lab or classroom – lead to a better understanding of some of the ideas. It can be used as a stimulus for them to do investigative work. While explaining the demo, we can give differentiated possibilities. A useful mantra should be ‘hands-on, minds-on’.

For any demonstration, there are some things to consider:

1. Visibility/clarity
2. Preparation and practice, e.g. clamps and where you stand
3. Prepare for failure, be ready with explanations
4. Ensure kids focus on important aspects – what are we changing, what is happening
5. Involve students in practical (holding equipment, readings, recording data)
6. Contextualise (history, application, consequences, possibilities for the future)
7. Predict, (explain), observe, explain. (I already used this myself but now I’ve added a prompt poster to my wall)
8. Q&A are a standard way to check ‘takeaway’ understanding (why not ask students to ask their classmates a question?)
9. Extend (possibly via Q&A)
10. Give correct explanation, try not to give misconceptions (although this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use appropriate levels of model)
11. Good opportunity to repeat the demo, perhaps with more involvement or explanation from students (giving commentary?)
12. Summarise (giving a summary as part of a L2L split plenary would work well)
13. Safety – nobody died.

For this one in particular (link between magnetism and electricity) can show same principle with generators, generator handles, cheap wind up torches. A wind up torch vs cell/switch/bulb would nicely demonstrate different energy changes (classic misconception is that closing switch is KE) in energy circus.

Why not do demos?

• Safety (rarely for most – see guidance e.g. CLEAPPS)
• Unreliable
• Technician time/materials cost
• Prefer to ‘learn by doing’? (NB see evidence for/against this)

All worth considering, but use them as prompts to improve quality rather than going straight for a video.

Why do as class practical?

• Small groups can be fun/hands on
• Practical skills
• Know/appreciate problems eg ‘messy data’
• Make (and justify) plans
• Experience non daytoday phenomena

Best reason to do demo (from Alom)

We can promote ‘awe and wonder’ by showing them something they could not have observed (or perhaps appreciated in isolation) – this is worthwhile. (eg induction with lenz law in copper tube – sleight of hand helps!). This will often involve an unexpected result, perhaps because we set up the situation with an unnoticed or unappreciated ‘tweak’ or ‘cheat’.

Alom: Nobody goes into science because the science was like ‘magic’ – but because they wanted to figure out magic. Emotional engagement is a good thing, and kids link enjoyment to both teacher and subject. This improves performance, recruitment and retention.

My plan is to turn the choices – reasons to use a demonstration vs a class practical – into a checklist or flowchart for a later blog post. If you’ve any particular ideas, I’d love to incorporate them so why not comment below?

Further reading

• Alom in Guardian
• Score Education framework
• Robin Millar’s paper

The main conclusions of the paper were that higher teacher expertise in their subject resulted in a higher level of achievement for their students at primary level. There was an effort to account for confounding factors, partly because the same teacher taught both maths and reading to the student tested. This provides an immediate limitation as far as secondary teaching is concerned, as it might be reasonably suggested that there is a bigger overlap in knowledge between any two science specialists than between, for example, science and language specialists.

Perhaps predictably, the discussion had two main themes; the need for an ‘appropriate’ level of subject knowledge, and how pedagogy also has a huge impact on a  teacher’s effectiveness. To place this in context, @declanf and others suggested that 0.1 standard deviation is a small improvement compared to other factors.

@uncletungsten: I say that 0.1 sd advtg. is next to nothing. Even when 1 sd of subject knowledge could mean 3-5 years of subject specialization.

It was suggested that there is a balance between specialist knowledge – giving a teacher confidence to teach effectively – and having recently struggled, thereby having empathy for a students’ likely problems. @morphosaurus was one of several participants who felt that as a non-specialist, she taught some areas of the specification better than those who had studied it in more detail. How much of this is due to enthusiasm, and how much to better pedagogy, is of course hard to measure. I wonder if colleagues are more likely to use innovative methods with content they are experienced with, or with more recently studied material? @Bio_Joe pointed out that being able to tell a student that yes, we struggled too is very powerful.

@Arakwai: I agree! Gives the teacher a better appreciation & understanding of misconceptions & difficulties students may have.

We agreed that expertise and enthusiasm would often be strongly correlated, and that as long as correct information is taught, that personal interest is often what enthuses students. @Lethandrel and others agreed that a basic level of subject knowledge is necessary before someone can be considered a ‘specialist’. The issue here, as uual, is KS3. Should we be teaching within specialism there to improve confidence and avoid misconceptions?

@mariamush It’s my experience and knowledge beyond spec that enables me to teach Chem successfully, couldn’t offer the same in phys and bio

Most of us pointed out that with a limited amount of time and money, continuing subject knowledge development is possibly challenging. It is, hoever, necessary, when both scientific understanding (Higgs boson anyone?) and the greater emphasis on scientific method have changed since our original qualifications. We talked about how swapping ideas with colleagues, in and out of specialism, can be a big help. Book and documentary recommendations can keep the costs down.

@cardiffscience: Quite RT @teachitsobeing “one page ahead of the class”? Curriculum changes rapidly- anyone’s degree really embed HSW?

@teachingofsci: possibly – you don’t get much better than Jones, ridley, dawkins, @edyong209 and attenborough for evolution!

@RobertDavies2 so revision on top of planning, evaluation, reports, book marking… to name a few? #toomuch

This comes back to an important question; in most cases is there enough variation in teacher subject expertise for it to be worth worrying about? Yes, there will be variation – but cost (both financial and time) is high if effect is small. (@teachitso pointed out that Hattie puts subject matter knowledge 125th in his rank of effect sizes)  Who should pay these costs? Will Heads of Department consider it worthwhile (for general CPD rather than troubleshooting identified individuals) when there are courses on exam specifications?

@AnthHard: If the Sci Learning Centres put on some subject knowledge CPD, would there be much response?

@SciCommStudios:  one of my hats is Uni of Surrey Outreach – we are looking at putting on some Chem CPD…and have been wondering about interest

@Bio_Joe: If SK needs a top up I recommend the 7day free courses run by Goldsmiths (I did genetics one it’s amazing)

Worthwhile as these aims are – and I would comment now that we are considering the opinions of a self-selected group of teachers, not the profession as a whole – are we making the same mistake as Gove, Jamie Oliver and many others by focussing on subject knowledge when we should recognise that we are teachers first, and scientists second?

@danidelle23: i think we agree with each other to a point. knowing how to use your knowledge is probably the hardest part

@DrDav: Think knowing how to teach a topic can be more important that knowing the topic. How to identify and deal with misconcepts.

@morphosaurus defined pedagogy as “Ability to break down concepts for students to understand, and have resources that explained things well helped.” Having these resources to hand, and having needed to break a topic down, might explain why some of us felt that being a non-specialist was not necessarily a big disadvantage when working with younger or weaker students. Avoiding misconceptions is of course a major concern – you might reasonably equate this to the medical precept, “First, do no harm”

Our priority should perhaps be how to teach specialist knowledge, rather than having the knowledge ourselves. In the same way that teachers need to be able to model and teach thinking skills, we need to express ideas so that students can understand them. #asechat, subject specific teachmeets and similar ideas are perhaps a good way to share good ideas about what matters most.

In conclusion: we should neither over, nor underestimate the importance of a good level of subject knowledge. We’d like to see more research on the relative importance of truly specialist subject knowledge (degree level or higher, with continuing ‘refreshers’) in secondary education, compared to other factors.

Further reading

@alomshaha shared a link to a post TwentyFirstFloor blog on ‘what makes an expert teacher.

@Bio_Joe linked to an abstract of a 1998 paper that concluded subject knowledge is one of several factors.

@AnthHard recommended @teachitso’s summary on ‘who should teach’ considering Hattie & the Finland enigma.

My vague hope is that these ideas will turn into a separate website at some point in the future – a version of this blog, aimed at students to use independantly of teachers. Thoughts, comments, suggestions?

I’ll update this post at some point in the future, but I should really get on with (a)work and (b)ASE conference write-ups. Let me know if any of this is useful.

learningtoolkit as pdf.

1. Classroom intervention (over time)
2. Set or group (sessions, etc)
3. Back to individuals, but led by department

Getting Easy Marks June2011 as ppt; click on the image above for the A4 pdf version.

How you approach this depends on individual style, but I like to have students add asterisks to their completed revision checklists (as seen in an earlier post) to highlight ‘fixable’ issues. I then have them taking turns teaching each other, as most have one or two questions they did very well on and which they can explain to their peers. For trickier questions, I often discuss examples of weak, reasonable and excellent answers, sometimes having them consider a flowchart of successful approaches. Rehearsing model answers can be particularly effective, for example in the regular ‘padding material in an impact situation’:

1. Any kind of padding/crumple-zone/helmet/etc increases impact time…
2. …so the rate of momentum change is less (using delta mv/t)…
3. …which means the average force is reduced.

On the June 2011 paper this was on Question 7, but any similar question can be answered using this kind of generic answer. It would have to be better than the student in my class who suggested that an insulating material stops injury because of electric shock after electrons have been rubbed off by friction as the motorcyclist slides over the road surface. Really, I despair sometimes.

Students could look for revision material online to match their specific weaknesses (some links are described here) or write questions to test each other on particular areas. As well as doing more practice papers in exam conditions, I’ve blogged before about varied methods for using papers. It is perhaps a little late to start producing new mind maps and so on, but a short maths exercise in class will show students how quickly 20 minutes per day adds up to give a fair chance of gaining a half-dozen or so marks – and potentially several grades.

Last year’s version of this post (with the June 2010 paper similarly dissected) is here, along with my resources for students on the difference between foundation and higher tier. Hope some of it is useful; I’d love to hear how you’ve used the materials, if at all.

Tim Minchin’s White Wine In The Sun is a good place to start. I’ve put the link to open in a new window/tab so you can play it while you read the rest of the post. Or instead of reading my wittering, you could check out @alomshaha‘s Cif article last year in the Guardian about enjoying Christmas as an atheist. Better written than I’d manage, but pretty close to my own views.

As a parent I’ve struggled with the ideas of Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy (and yes, I’m also familiar with the idea that all teachers are de-facto ‘liars-to-children’). One of my proudest moments this year was when a car journey with my son turned into an impromptu philosophical discussion. In the summer he wasn’t quite seven and was newly gappy, for the third time. He asked, hesitantly, if he’d still get money under his pillow if he didn’t believe in a fairy that took his tooth away. Fifteen minutes and paraphrased explanations of Pascal’s Wager and Occam’s Razor later, I knew we were doing something right. I’m now wondering if he’ll ask about Santa before or after the 25th. Whatever happens, I’m glad I read this piece by Myra Zepf in New Humanist about why atheists should let kids believe in Santa.

Okay, if you need something to do in school, I will make a token link to last year’s Adaptations of Santa and Rudolf activity.

Finally, it’s probably too late to buy it for this year unless you read as fast as I do, but I strongly recommend Roger Highfield’s The Science of Christmas. This is usually on loan to one or other of my students. Personally, I tend to reread Hogfather each December, as it’s the closest I get to feeling seasonal. And let’s face it, who can go wrong with Terry Pratchett?

Whatever you do, and whatever your religious faith or lack of it, I hope you enjoy some time with your family (or possibly away from them) this winter.

I quite like the new specification for AQA Science A. There’s lots of good physics in it, for example. So far there are two major downsides:

1. Because the government keep meddling, we’re left not knowing how long it will be even vaguely modular so the timing is horrendous, rushing to get stuff done before the January exams
2. Partly because of 1 above, nobody’s producing good resources for it online because they don’t know how long it will last.

I have some sympathy with problem 2, as we’ve written a scheme of work that we might have to rewrite after only a year. It’s depressing enough when they last four years. But online stuff shouldn’t be a big deal to adjust, you’d think, because the resources will still be useful, it’s just the index which you’d have to mess with. But what do I know?

Enough complaints – how about something useful, I hear you ask. So here it is.

downloadable: links for revising p1 as a pdf

Despite being a pdf, this is not a printable, for reasons that will shortly become obvious. The page is a quick guide to revising P1 online for students. There are a few tips about best use of resources (like, don’t waste your time by just reading them) and then catalogued links from a few sites I recommend to my students. This way students can find what they need by thinking through the new specification, even though the websites are mostly organised according to the older qualification. I decided this saved the hassle of producing shortlinks (for example via bit.ly) for them to type in. An alternative would be QR codes, I suppose, but I wanted to cut out the middleperson.

For what it’s worth, this grew out of a classroom activity. I provided an electronic copy of the P1 revision checklist to the class, who then chose a few areas, looked online and added URLs. They emailed a copy to their webmail and home addresses, and now have a personalised bookmark list they can access over the Christmas holiday and on their smartphones.

If you’ve got any other suggestions for websites, pages or uses, I’d love you to share them in the comments. Sorry I’ve not been posting much recently, but I’ll try to catch up with a few over Christmas – in between 100+ mock exam papers, 32 ISA scripts, two KS3 tests and a set of folders. Yes, really. Chocolate and encouragement to the usual address…

However, there are ways to let students improve their own scores, which are within the rules. You could argue – as I did to my class – that in ‘real’ science research you would never be expected to remember all the facts between measurement and analysis. I answered a question from a student, my answer developed into a homework, and I’ve adapted their ideas to produce the document available below. It’s intended for AS/A2 Physics, but they’ve already told me they intend to use the ideas in their other science subjects, and I’m thinking about how I can adapt it to use ith my younger students. Ideas on this welcome, as always, in the comments.

The ISA has a standard structure:

1. Preparation of appropriate theory (in class).
2. Students use a task sheet to produce a results table, do a practical and draw an appropriate graph, all under exam conditions. All work is collected in.
3. At next opportunity, they sit a written exam, using their results and graph to answer questions in two sections. The first focuses on their experimental data and methods, the second on a similar situation or real world context.

The main issue is that it’s easy to forget details of what they have done and how they did it in between practical and exam. They may have been able to answer the questions (for example about acuracy and precision) while doing the practical, but they’ve been asleep since then. In a lesson with me they designed their own practical and wrote their own ISA paper. We discussed how the questions are often similar, and therefore predictable. I suggested we add a stage 2.5. What if, as soon as their work was handed in, they wrote down everything they could think of about the practical? What if they used their (entirely legal) knowledge of likely questions to make sure they had the facts they needed in a form they could revise and check? Even better, what if they wrote a set of prompts for themselves to use so nothing got forgotten?

And so that’s what they did.

All this does is formalise the recall that otherwise would have been patchy. I’m providing no feedback, or advance knowledge of the exam paper. They can discuss their ideas with each other, but that’s within the rules. It’s a way for students to manage and reflect on their own learning, as well as provide an insight into effective exam technique. What this does is allow students who are prepared to put in extra time and effort to have a better chance of achieving well in the exam, based on their own understanding. I like it. I hope you do too.

Printable: isa postprac as pdf.