Organising Resources

I noticed on a few blogs I've read teachers leaving pages for websites they've found. I use delicious to store links to websites, but I don't often retrieve them, I collect and hoard.

In my department staff use folders with paper and plastic wallets to store schemes of work. Mine are stored electronically these days, but how organised are they really? How useful on a day-to-day basis is the the information stored between the school shared drive, my mobile phone, my iPad, iCloud, Dropbox and my computer?

I am increasingly aware that moving away from paper is not going to be a practical solution. I give out worksheets to the students and if there is spare I don't want to throw them out.

I have decided that I'll use pinterest to organise links, (mainly videos and distinct resources) by the topic I'm teaching. I'll continue to use delicious for all links, but I do want to review the tags I'm using.

I have 100GB on dropbox. I am going to reorganise these files and reconsider the folders I am currently sharing. Leaving the majority. I will move my folders away from being only on my hard drive. I need to sort these folders too. They are organised by year, not only by topic. But should I be using iCloud?

There is so many wonderful resources out there, I do wonder if I'll ever have the perfect way to organise and store them! I suppose the way to do it has evolved over the past 10 years and will continue to.

All this is before considering the various applications available to organise calendars, notes, reminders etc.

Location:Rudgleigh Ave,Easton-in-Gordano,United Kingdom

Planning for Progression

"Planning for progression is an important aspect of any curriculum development. Effective planning involves carefully and deliberately sequencing the curriculum content and experiences that teachers ... intend learners to have. These plans should build on previous learning and achievements to promote future learning." From http://waes-elearn.waes.ac.uk/moodle-resources/Basic%20Skills/Pre-entry%20%28D%29/planning/index.htm

During the last few weeks I have had to think about these points a lot. Firstly I have had to write a year 6 scheme up to Christmas with nothing but the word "underground" as a stimulus. And now I am back I am teaching the dreadful OCR Gateway chemistry specification that doesn't allow any progression through it in terms of difficulty - in fact I would suggest it gets easier.

If you have any books from the "teaching secondary..." range from the ASE the concepts and ideas are arranged in such a way that they allow learners to progress in difficulty and understanding. This is what I interpret "planning for progression" to mean.

The long term plan introduces the core concepts and ideas that students need to base their knowledge of the next set of concepts and ideas on. The methods and abstract models that are introduced early in the scheme allow students to access the ideas later and the complexity and difficulty of the topics being covered increases through the curriculum.

It might be that this plan is across key stages; what concepts have to be grasped at key stage 3 in order to support progression to key stage 4. It may be within a key stage, for example teaching particles in year 7 means that students can grasp ideas in the atoms and elements and sound modules in year 8. 

However, there is also planning for progression in the short-term. For example in a single lesson. The 5E method of lesson planning allows this, by eliciting the ideas students will need, allowing them to use these to explore something else and then using what they have found out to make connects to something further shows short-term progression.

In the medium term a module might allow progression of ideas. For example in acids and alkalis, the progression is from "there are such things as acids" to "there are such things as acids and their opposites alkalis" and move on to "acids and alkalis have different strengths you can measure using pH", to "acids and alkalis can cancel each other out".

SOLO taxonomy is a useful guide to working out if the tasks being asked of pupils are more difficult than the ones before. Or using national curriculum levels, as looking at the way topics have been arranged by their QCA unit there is clear progression in difficulty from year 7 to 9, and it is increasingly possible to access higher levels in the majority of lessons in year 9.

I hate the new GCSE courses and in a lot of ways I believe that this is because they reduce the opportunity for me to do any "planning for progression" in the medium term. I hope that the new curriculum will brig this back. Although I do not expect my wishes to be heard.

Controlled Assessment Graphs

I really want my triple science students to get maximum marks from their graphs.

It isn't going to be easy.

What constitutes a "complex mathematical technique"? And once you've used one how do you demonstrate "quantitative uncertainty"?

I know year 13 students who would struggle to do this independently.

The success will be when they do it successfully in their controlled assessment.





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Location:United Kingdom

I realise I am not bothered (much)

I was initially upset that there would be no national curriculum at secondary level and one exam board for science gcse.

But I can put a positive spin on it: no national curriculum is better than what they are getting in primary, and will effectively mean no change. The most popular key stage 3 science scheme is exploring science so this is what England will effectively continue to use. How Science Works was never fully embedded so losing it won't make a difference to the teachers who didn't understand it anyway.

I hate the new science controlled assessments, and won't be sad to see them go. I will still do practical work when it helps students to learn.

The exam boards are probably much better placed to write a specification than the government and ofqual. Competition may make the whole qualification well thought through.

I suppose what I am saying is "it can't get any worse". Can it?

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Teaching Secondary Physics

I am reading "teaching secondary physics" at the moment. (Mainly because I have ordered "teaching secondary chemistry" and I want to get an idea if it will be useful to me).

In a lot of ways how I teach, or at least the curriculum I use, is strongly influenced by the various commercially available schemes of work and the QCA schemes. Which is not necessarily bad. However, it is refreshing to read a book with ideas about how to structure the teaching order. I am interested to see that that newer GCSE specifications don't follow these suggested teaching structures. I struggle teaching the newer specifications and I wonder if this is because of the order of the introduction of the concepts. Is one way of introducing ideas better than the others?

"Teaching Secondary Physics" is a useful book for anyone thinking of writing a scheme of work.

Getting to know your class

I have to admit that I am finding it a bit harder to teach at this time of year. I don't really know my classes that well and it is affecting the communication and advice that I can give during a lesson.

I can see why ofsted would like to see a good relationship between the class and the teacher. I don't believe that good teaching is about stamping on a class at the start of the year and keeping them "down", more about building relationships and supporting the learning so that students are able to be independent learners and move upwards.

However, I have forgotten what it is like to start in September in a new school and not know the students well. It is hard for someone with my personalised teaching style, but it can only get better.

Newsletters via email and post

I stated in a previous blog post that I had felt the need to take charge of my own professional development as it was falling between the cracks at my previous school.

I joined a lot of mailing lists.

Some of them are:

Snapshot Science
National STEM centre
SAPS
National Science and Engineering Week
OCR
Edexcel
ASE
SCORE
Planet Science
Teachfind
Science Learning Centre
Nuffield Foundation
@Bristol
Sec-Ed
National College for School Leadership
RI channel



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Location:The Circus,Bristol,United Kingdom