Is your scheme of work fit for purpose?

By Lynn English

Schemes of work are used to provide guidance for teachers to both meet curriculum requirements and help plan and deliver effective learning episodes for students.

Participants at the National Science Learning Centre

A scheme of work is often the standard departmental document, which teachers may feel compelled to slavishly follow, come what may… Off-the-shelf schemes don’t take into account the differences in an individual school, never mind a particular group of students. If the scheme of work is not flexible or tailored to learners needs, is it actually worth the paper (or disc space) it’s written on?

Scheme of Work or Scheme of Learning?

How about considering it as a scheme of learning? Students are not passive recipients of “work”, they need to be engaged to explore and learn the science around them. An effective scheme of learning gives enough support for both specialist and non-specialist teachers to actively engage students with well-prepared lessons, without stifling individuality. An outstanding scheme of learning is not a one-size fits all approach to lessons, but contains enough guidance to help teachers plan their own learning episodes to promote learning. If it draws on learning opportunities within the locality and community of the school it can enhance the relevance of the subject knowledge being covered.

There is often a difference to how an experienced teacher, leading lessons within their own subject, approaches lesson planning , compared to one teaching outside their specialism or with less experience. The shift from subject knowledge that needs to be learnt to understanding the best way to teach that knowledge is often hard to quantify.

A good scheme should give sufficient background and support to allow any science teacher to feel confident that they can present the subject knowledge in the most appropriate way to promote progress in learning within their lessons in any area.

Ofsted’s view on schemes of learning

Ofsted look for evidence of progress in learning when they visit a school. A scheme of learning should be there to help teachers achieve this. On the Outstanding Schemes of Work course at the National Science Learning Centre, we have worked with teachers from across the UK to improve the quality and format of their departmental schemes. It is not something that can be approached lightly so, much of the course is about the good practice that can help bring teachers on in how they implement change.

Developing your own outstanding schemes of work/learning

The  National Science Learning Centre’s two-part course itself includes exemplary practitioners working with course participants to develop effective ways of delivering subject knowledge. Effective planning for progression is addressed. Previous participants have made substantial changes to their practice which has proven benefit to their learners. Sharing of good practice and time to develop SoL’s away from their school has been reported as enormously beneficial by those who have attended previously.

How do schemes of work assist or hinder at your school or college? Do they help or hinder? Are the prescriptive or flexible?  Do you have a good example?

Improving Science Literacy

by Julian Clarke

The need to support the development of good literacy skills within science lessons has been recognised for many years.

Literacy Skills in Science

The recent and planned changes in assessment have raised the priority of this area in many schools alongside the important role literacy plays in the development of scientific knowledge and understanding. Science involves the exploration, investigation, recording, reporting and analysis of the world around us, often in a collaborative way. This needs creative and analytical thinking and communication skills to advance our knowledge and understanding of the world in which we live, not to forget our impact upon it. Literacy is a key feature of communication, enabling one scientist to collaborate with another, sharing ideas and hypotheses, assessing the validity of conclusions and identifying areas for further exploration. Without effective literacy skills, scientific development would be greatly hindered, if not stifled completely.

So what do we mean by literacy and what can we do to improve students’ ability to use it within the science they experience at school?

At the simplest level, literacy involves three components:

• talking
• reading
• writing

All three are important within science – although the emphasis is often placed on outcomes delivered through a written product.

It is important to empower students to talk about their work as this enables them to construct and secure their thinking about the topic being considered before committing it to paper.

Reading is vital as it enables students to gather information and to consider views held by others so that they can explore new developments and applications and to consider their impact on the world around us.

Writing enables students to commit their ideas to paper for scrutiny by others (peer review remains a key aspect of the scientific method); it has also become the aspect most used as a tool to assess and externally verify the performance of individual students.

Other curriculum subject areas make use of and develop these same literacy skills, but science teaching is not always effective at making use of the transferable skills developed by students elsewhere. Whilst we might need students to be able to write in particular forms and for particular purposes in science, we can build upon students’ existing skills by using the approaches and techniques they have already practiced and secured in English or the Humanities.

My session on Literacy in Science at the Science Teaching and Learning Conference on 1^{st – 2nd} July 2013 will explore these areas further.

The national network of Science Learning Centres also run Enhancing Literacy Skills in Science courses in your region and the National STEM Centre has a range of resources called Literacy in Science Training Materials.

What makes effective science practical work?

by Pauline Hoyle

We  recently held a one day professional development day focussing on what makes an effective science practical. This post pulls together my presentation, including video interviews with Robin Millar from the University of York, Fred Young, Chief Executive of our partner organisation in Scotland, SSERC, and Ian Richardson a former HMI for Ofsted.

The slideshare presentation has links embedded to our YouTube site for the video presentations. You can watch the full playlist of science practical work videos there.

As part of the day we asked teachers to give their views, here are the post it notes, I’m afraid you may need a magnifying glass, but if you click on them they should become large enough to read.

Why do Practical Work?

Reinforces what you are doing?

Purposeful, real-life

Team work – responsibility

To make risk aware

What makes practical work effective?

Being clear about objectives

Well planned practical work

We have a range of  science practical work courses running across the network of Science Learning Centres and a specialist practical work course for PGCE graduates.

Improving pupil engagement in science using ICT

ICT for science teaching

by John Walker

There are three ways that ICT can improve science education and pupil engagement.

Find out about science

First and perhaps most obvious is the way it enhances how learners find out about science.  Nowadays teachers don’t have to struggle to draw diagrams on the board – you can just Google it and display the result.

• need to show a process?  Try the pHet website for animations of loads of physics and chemistry concepts.  If pHet doesn’t have it, somewhere else probably does – there is loads of stuff on Youtube (we are on YouTube at Myscience Learning).
• text books not cutting it any more with the kids?  (Have they ever?)  Well, don’t throw them away – they are still useful!  But instead why not give learners specific websites to look at via QR codes that they can access with their smartphones?
• smartphones banned in school?  Just give them hyperlinks from a document – it’s much better than leaving them to Google haplessly!

Do better science

The second way, which is less well developed in most schools, is how ICT allows learners to do better science.  Digital sensors and logging devices allow us to sense, measure and display things which are simply not possible using conventional equipment in school science departments.

• want to show that there is mercury vapour in a fluorescent strip light?  Use a digital spectrometer and display the spectrum against a reference on your screen.  Can you imagine how else you would do this?  (It would take a lot of time and let’s face it, we probably wouldn’t bother, would we?)
• how about showing learners the relationship between carbon dioxide and oxygen during photosynthesis?  Simply seal some spinach leaves in a container in bright sunlight and log the gases for about ten minutes.  You will see a beautiful graph which shows oxygen levels increasing as carbon dioxide levels go down – mirroring each other perfectly!  This opens up the potential for learners to ask some really good scientific questions, and then go ahead and investigate them:  how refreshing for them to find things out for themselves – and for the teacher to not necessarily know the answer beforehand!

Communicate about science

The third way, which is gaining ground, is the use of ICT to communicate about science.  Learners preparing a powerpoint presentation is a fairly obvious way for them to demonstrate their learning, but what about making a film or a podcast?  Today they can go further and make stop-motion video with a free app on a mobile phone (to simulate biological or chemical processes), and then put it on a website to show what they’ve learnt, with links to other websites.  You could use a wiki to stimulate online discussion about a particular topic, giving learners the chance to contribute not just when they are in school.  This provides very rich and varied scope for teachers in assessing their learners’ understanding.

Science teacher training courses and resources

The National Science Learning Centre runs a range of ICT related professional development courses for all levels of teachers, lecturers and technicians. Here are the links:

Cross Phase: Learning Science Using iPads

Primary: Leading Change in ICT in Primary Science

Secondary: Science Teaching and Learning Conference
(session on Differentiation Using ICT)

Secondary: ICT Innovations in Science Teaching and Learning

Technicians: Experienced Technicians Programme: Practical ICT

Other resources:

National Science Learning Centres on  iTunesU

Danny Nicholson’s Whiteboard blog

Psychology Training Courses – An interview with Jeremy Airey

In this pyschology video interview, Jeremy Airey outlines the national network of Science Learning Centre’s psychology training courses for teachers and lecturers. He articulates the importance of psychology teachers continuing their professional development throughout their psychology teaching career, particularly the importance of keeping in touch with contemporary psychology research.

This psychology video will be particularly useful for teachers who are considering options to improve their psychology teaching.  It outlines the various pyschology  training courses offered by the National Science Learning Centre and indicates which courses are best suited to various career stages or subject understanding.

The courses Jeremy refers to in the video are:

Starting out with Psychology Teaching and Learning

Going Further with Post-16 Psychology

Design and Technology Provides Safe Lift Off

by Michelle Evans at Science Learning Centre West Midlands

Flying is relevant to most of our lives, as ‘foreign’ holidays have become the norm. Yet it is often only when we are sat on a plane and ‘past the point of no return’ that we begin to wonder if it’s safe and even about the actual mechanics of how the tonnes of metal in which we are sat (not to mention our luggage) will actually get off the ground and safely deliver us to our sun-filled destination. Even within this consideration, we tend to think of the plane being essentially a

Hercules engine

chunk of metal and don’t really consider the enormous number of processes which have been undertaken to get to that one point. We don’t think about the time and effort and quality control procedures which go into the creation of a single hole in a tiny part of a blade which is crucial for the process of flying and to improve the efficacy of the engine as well as to reduce emissions.

However, at Rolls-Royce they spend a significant amount of time, effort (and money) ensuring that each tiny (and huge) element is completely fail-safe, efficient, light and effective. (I, for one, am rather pleased that they do!) What we may not realise is that this technology is as relevant to our teaching; certainly in Science and Design Technology; as it is to Rolls-Royce because we are working with and developing materials.

Materials science is a growing field with increasingly interesting discoveries and developments, Carbon Nanotubes, a relatively new discovery from the 1990s, are now present in both Design Technology and Science specifications where the structure and potential and current uses are required. ‘Smart’ materials are increasingly prevalent in society and therefore our teaching should be including and considering the uses of these developments within the field; the science behind these is really interesting and ground breaking, but the uses are now quite common; even including electro-conductive lycra (presumably for warm cycling shorts)!

Rolls-Royce Materials Masterclass course 2010

All manufacturing requires materials and it is important for the future to understand the level of research and development required in these processes. World leading manufacturer of jet engines; Rolls-Royce has significant experience with materials and continue to ‘push the boundaries’ in order to develop high quality, durable, light and safe components for their products. They are, after all, the reason that aeroplanes fly!

In order to capture this relevant and essential expertise, Rolls-Royce, the department of Metallurgy and Materials at the University of Birmingham, the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3) and the Science Learning Centre West Midlands have collaborated to develop a two day course which brings to life this fascinating ‘topic’.

The Materials Masterclass is designed to support curriculum delivery. It draws on the areas of materials science in which Rolls-Royce has significant experience and can demonstrate examples of applications and the University of Birmingham are able to provide ideas for use in the classroom as well as discussing the science and technology behind materials and their uses.

Materials Masterclass course

This course offers an extension to your personal knowledge in the field as well as resources and ideas to take back to the classroom. This two-day course is sponsored by Rolls-Royce and The Worshipful Company of Armourers and Brasiers and supported by the Department of Metallurgy and Materials at the University of Birmingham and the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3), the latter also offer free institutional membership to the Schools Affiliate Scheme for participants.

Go to the Science Learning Centre’s website for more information or to book your place on the Materials Masterclass

Yorkshire and the Humber Regional Science Leaders’ Conference: Achieving Excellence in Science in the New Educational Landscape

by Emily Perry

The 2012 Yorkshire and the Humber Regional Science Leaders’ Conference has Achieving Excellence in Science in the New Educational Landscape as its theme.

We will be exploring what we mean by excellence through two themes: leading a science team and managing the curriculum, while placing these themes in the context of a changing educational landscape with new school structures and the review of the National Curriculum.

To start us thinking about what we mean by excellence, here are two videos to watch which describe contrasting systems of education.

The first explores the education system in Finland, consistently reported as one of the leading education systems in the world.

The second video describes a system of education at the other end of the economic spectrum, in which children teach themselves using the internet.

We think that both videos show aspects of excellence.  But what do you think? What are the similarities and differences between the systems?  What can we learn from them for our science teaching in England?  Is there anything in these videos which you think we do better?

We are interested to hear your views both about these videos and about how we reach and maintain excellence in science teaching, so post a comment below in response to the videos and let us know what you think.  The best comment will receive a free place at the conference.

The Yorkshire and the Humber Regional Science Leaders’ Conference takes place on 2 March 2012 at the National Science Learning Centre in York.  For more information about the conference, and to book your place, visit www.slcs.ac.uk/go/yh/rslc.

Bring Science to Life: CSI Forensics

Our latest video is a spoof based around our course Bring Science to Life: CSI Forensics.  The footage is taken from the actual course and features Brian Hook and Clive Donner, both former members of New Scotland Yard’s anti terrorist branch.

The course provides an exciting and interactive way to bring science to life in and around the classroom and provides a number of key hooks to interest students.

1. They may well have seen police investigations on TV.  This course provides you with the skills to carry out a real crime scene investigation and embed scientific practice and understanding through it. The techniques used on the course are, as far as possible, accurate methodolgies for collecting and processing evidence as done in police laboratories.
2. By carrying out a CSI – type activity in your school you will also be able to provide students with ideas for career paths using science.

In addition the crime scenes participants work on, are recreations of actual crimes Brian and Clive have worked on.

This course has been a very popular course,  We’d love to hear back from you if you have been on it and how it worked for you back in the classroom.