Difference between attainment and achievement

"attainment is related to standards, achievement to progress"

Thanks Linda! 

As physics - developing thinking skills

We have completed our first test and I have decided on an aim for the future iterations of my physics schemes of work. I must include more opportunities for the students to work on problems of the type they might encounter in an exam.

I use the teaching advancing physics resources, which do have problem solving activities. However we follow the edexcel specification, not the OCR advancing physics, so not everything is covered by the tap resources.

My students are good at wrote learning, so have picked up the formulae and facts well. However, as with many As students, they are struggling to workout how to answer questions.

I believe I need to help them visualise the problems and workout what relationships are needed to extract the answers. I am confident once the students have an idea of what they need to do they will be able to.

My students don't speak English to a technical level so I need to ensure my activities allow them to think internally without relying heavily on English. At least at first.

Another aim to add to my action plan.

Location:Quintrell Downs,United Kingdom

Head's Roundtable?

I will be very interested to see how long this interest lasts.

About 7 head teachers and 3 others are trying to set up their own body to represent their views. Their aim: "We are a non-party politcal group that wants to influence national education policymakers so that education policy is centered upon what is best for the learning of all children."

Perhaps the heads think they will be listened to? But I imagine that if they feel the need to set something like this up then they are not be listened to at the moment.

I hear that the government are not listening to any organisations or looking at the positives of English education. What can a few heads and 1000 followers on twitter achieve? Getting something trending on twitter does not fix the problem.

Do these heads genuinely have a shot at getting the ear of Gove and making a difference? Only time will tell. I do predict it will be difficult though.

Teachmeet Clevedon - what I found out

I rarely feel "inspired" or have the inclination to describe something as "inspirational". The verb and adjective are both overused in education in my opinion. I often feel like replying to someone who says "such and such is/was inspirational" and asking how? and why?

However, parts of teachmeet Clevedon 5 did inspire me. (I won't say everything did for the reason given above).

The first teachmeet I went to was also at Clevedon and it was less formal than 20th October. The presenters were varied quality and the transitions were less slick. I enjoyed it though, the atmosphere was overwhelmingly positive and that makes a change from some schools and re-energises you.

"Learning Rocks" however, was a very slick evening, the transistions between presentations were improved by having a running order and someone off screen queuing the presentations so your PowerPoint was ready for you as you arrived at the podium to begin your talk. Time limits for presentations were kept to close as possible to 5 minutes so that the evening ran to time and stayed good natured.

The slightly different format of the evening included a seminar slot between the key note and the presentations. 

I missed the keynote presentation by Vic Goddard from Passmore's school, the one featured in Educating Essex. The opinion in the room was that he spoke very well and many were enthused by what he had to say.

I did arrive in time for my seminar slot. I went to hear John Wells the Head Teacher of Clevedon School speak about the journey the school had been through. It is clear from the talk that John has a clear vision for the improvement of the school and he doesn't lose sight of the things that have gone before. Being someone who likes diagrams I liked the way that the improvement of the school could be represented as concentric circles showing the layers of pedagogy that have been introduced in the school. I do always wonder with these things if everything is as well embedded as the senior management say it is, but I liked that idea that pedagogy (and not curriculum change) was at the heart of the school improvement.

Then we moved onto the presentations. I had volunteered to do one on the 5Es of lesson planning. You can find the presentation elsewhere on this blog as well as other posts about them. On entering the hall I discovered I was 16th out of 17. A lot of time to get nervous!

Gavin Smart spoke first @gavinsmart about the use of an expert (his Grandad) talking to the class. The project went well and the students and his Grandad enjoyed it. This has given me confidence, because while I cannot skype my Grandad from my year 7 science class, I would like to get real scientists more involved in what we do at school. It is something on the back-burners at the moment, but a real aim.

Dave Gale spoke about the ultimate maths faculty - a meeting of like minded maths teachers who use a hashtag to communicate via twitter. Again, I was pleased to hear that and feel that we have that supportive community already built up and using the #asechat hastag. I hope other science teachers joining twitter can feel confident about joining in too.

I was inspired by Dave Stacey's presentation. He talked about re-booting his teaching. I can really empathise with that. I have been a better teacher in the past and I know how to be a better teacher, I just need to find the focus to do it and maintain it. It was great to hear from Dave that it is possible to improve your practice and you aren't stuck as the teacher you are at the moment for the rest of your career.

I always enjoy Kat Crocker's presentations about what you can do during tutor time and I have already used the Guardian Eyewitness site with my tutor group.

Alessio's presentation about priezi was not only entertaining but also thought-provoking. How can we use presentations during lessons to support thinking and not just a quick way of giving information. This is something I will consider during the holidays.

A lot of the presentations were about on-line ICT, which we just can't use. But that is what I like about teachmeets, there is something for everyone.

Great evening, and well done to Mark Anderson and the Clevedon Team.

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Location:Church Rd,Bristol,United Kingdom

When colleagues leave...

A fantastic colleague of mine is leaving today and I feel really sad. Usually I am not emotional about these things, perhaps it is my age but I think it might be due to the circumstances. She is leaving because her husband's job takes her to a new country and the whole family are to relocate.

When I move from a school it is because I am ready to leave and it means I am looking forward to the next steps in my teaching career. And the same has applied to people who leave my school; I am pleased for them as they are going to bigger and better things.

This is different. Not only is my friend and colleague moving to a distant continent, but I don't feel she reached her potential in our department or impacted on it the way that she might have done. It feels unfulfilled.

However, I wish her and her family well and hope that they have a smooth transition to their new lives.

What would gcse be like if I wrote it?

Mmm.

The answer to this question could be very involved, with the topics I like, but I don't think the content is entirely relevant. I don't believe we can (or should even try to) teach young people all the science they'll need for the rest of their lives. But I do believe we need to prepare young people for the science they'll experience in the rest if their lives.

This applies to the students who will go onto be future scientists too.

However, the difficulty is always how to assess that and write a specification for it that is clear to all who read it how they must teach to achieve scientifically literate students.

Would it be better to invest (I don't necessarily mean money only) in educating teachers in the importance of scientific literacy?

I would like to see controlled assessment scrapped however, and a long independent project by students brought in. Of the sort you would get a bronze crest award for. Although it would be terribly stressful for teachers of unmotivated students...

Perhaps this is a topic I will have to revisit! I am glad of being a classroom teacher and not someone who has to write a curriculum or specification.

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Using food in science lessons - some ideas.

I enjoying teaching the Edexcel Physics units called Good Enough to Eat and Spare Part Surgery. As I teach in an all-girls school I want to ensure that my practicals appeal to the girls and using food to illustrate physics principles manages that.

During this term I have used golden syrup to calculate viscosity and strawberry laces in a Hooke’s Law investigation. Using Crunchie bars to represent bones is also part of the scheme of work. The strawberry laces doesn’t need to be restricted to an A-level scheme of work, and could be used to extend Year 7 or primary students too. If you find the strawberry laces are not strong enough on their own then it is possible (if a bit sticky) to plait them to make them stronger. Of course, this also leads to a second possible experiment finding the relationship between ultimate tensile stress and number of strawberry laces used.

Some of the students I teach are from Hong Kong. Using sweets as props to go over the key language relating to material science has been very useful. One student explained to me that tough, strong and stiff all have the same meaning when using her translating device.

However, my experience using sweets doesn’t stop there. My step-daughter’s history teacher asked the class to create a model of a castle, she created one out of cake and biscuits, as cooking is turning into a big hobby of hers. This particularly caught my imagine when I saw the same thing being done by  science teachers when asking students to make a model cell cell cake via a link on pinterest and again when a student of a friend brought to school a “sweet” pathogen model. I am reliably informed that asking students (and indeed student teachers) to build models helps to bring out misconceptions. 

I have also seen “sweetie” blood produced by teachers in the past, a recipe I found on the internet suggests the following:

To represent plasma use water

To represent ions use sugar, salt, oil and protein shake mix 

To represent red blood cells use red jelly beans

To represent white blood cells use mini marshmallows and

To represent platelets use white rice.

A colleague has also used sweets to create models of the atom, including strawberry laces for electron shells. A different version is shown in the image to the left.

I have been using golden syrup in other ways to demonstrate the movement of plate tectonics using biscuits on golden syrup. This is an idea from the website: http://www.earthlearningidea.com. 

I feel that it shows brilliantly how the tectonic plates move slowly as it is difficult to see the pieces of biscuit move, yet taking a photo on a digital camera before and after can show the the pieces of biscuit do move. I have used this demonstration already this year with a group of Year 6 students who are following the theme of “underground”.

Physics Experiments

Asking colleagues and searching the Internet has revealed a huge number of science experiments that either involved food directly or have an alternative that uses foodstuffs and sweets.

Several colleagues use skittles or (chocolate) M&Ms to model radioactive decay. This is especially useful if the school doesn’t have enough dice to share between the students and overcomes the issue of students putting the dice that have “decayed” back in with the “unstable” dice, as the students will eat those that land writing-side up. An alternative is to use ditalini pasta, which students would not be as keen to eat and disrupt the lesson.

Measuring the speed of light is possible using a microwave with the turntable turned upside-down to disable the turning effect. For those who haven’t seen this experiment, the standing waves inside the microwave cause two melted spots on a slab of chocolate (cheese slices can also be used). The melted spots are half a wavelength apart. The frequency of the microwaves can either be found in the manual or on a sticker on the back. Speed of light = frequency x wavelength.

Putting marshmallows into a vacuum flask and pumping out the air is a great way to demonstrate the effects of air pressure.

The National STEM centre has a great video explanation by Alom Shaha of the jelly baby wave machine here: http://www.nationalstemcentre.org.uk/elibrary/resource/2096/wave-machine A brilliant way to demonstrate transverse waves and their properties.

Not quite sweets, but I also love demonstrating the luminescence of tonic water under UV light, tap water doesn’t glow.

Lastly in my list of possible physics experiments a colleague has suggested using Oreos (as an alternative to jaffa cakes) to model the phases of the moon.

Creativity in Biology

During my career I haven’t taught many biology units, so I turned to my colleagues and friends for ideas of where sweets can be used during biology practical activities:

It is possible to create DNA from sweets as the image above shows. There are various different methods for this activity.

And http://cmaste.ualberta.ca/en/Outreach/AlbertaIngenuityResources/~/media/cmaste/Documents/Outreach/AlbertaIngenuityResources/Carbohydrate/AICCSLabActivityCandyBloodCells08.pdf is a link to a worksheet for an activity using sweets to model antibodies and antigens. 

It is possible to use gummy bears in osmosis experiments by measuring the gummy bear before and after immersing in water and salt water.

An example I have used is using sweets as san object for Year 7 students to use and write keys about in their classification modules. Quality street are good for this, or Dolly Mixtures if you are on a budget. It gives something a little more interesting than lab equipment or pictures of aliens. 

A popular experiment with interesting results is investigating the effect of pH on chicken bones. 

A lot of my biology teacher friends talk about “Reebots”. The Reebops activity helps to demonstrate how genetics is responsible both for similarities and variation among members of the same species. There is a worksheet here: http://www.bioedonline.org/resources/files/bcm-reebops.pdf and the practical biology website has a good example too. 

Chemistry Practical Activities

If you use the Wikid scheme of work in Year 7 then you will be aware that there is an entire scheme of work dedicated to food called “Cook”. Some of the topics covered relate to heat transfer and change of state, but students also get to make ice cream, investigate British vs American pancakes and look at cooking in the context of physical and chemical changes. I am a big fan of the majority of the wikid scheme.

Using food as a context for science is not just restricted to key stage 3. I teach the OCR Gateway specification at GCSE and there are sections of the first chemistry module dedicated to the chemistry of cooking. 

One of the examples involves baking powder. Instead of heating and showing the decomposition of sodium hydrogen carbonate, it is also possible to make sponge cakes in the microwave during a lesson with and without baking powder to demonstrate the purpose of adding baking powder when baking cakes.

I love carrying out the experiment where the students boil potato and see who it’s consistency changes with time and I demonstrate cooking pieces of potato in a microwave. I enjoy it because the potato usually gets so dry it sets on fire in the microwave, which excites the students. 

The scheme of work also involves students using egg white as an emulsifier.

This term Year 7 have been studying Acids and Alkalis and there are a lot of links to food in the this topic. Whether it be eating foods to establish that acids are sour, to investigating the perfect sherbet recipe, my students have found the link between chemistry and real life interesting at this early stage in tehir secondary education. I also really enjoy the lessons where students test different vegetables to see which one makes the best indicator. (I really like Ribena, but it isn’t as fun as making indicator using red cabbage).

Of course there are lots of “kitchen chemsitry” experiments that involve food, from volcanoes to making invisible ink and creating crystals with sugar. See http://chemistry.about.com/od/foodcookingchemistry/tp/kitchenscienceexperiments.htm for more ideas.

A big favourite of a chemistry teacher colleague of mine is making elephant dung using concentrated sulphuric acid and sugar.

Practical Investigations

A colleague told me of an experiment she carried out with a class to establish if a Jaffa Cake is a cake or a biscuit. Cakes get drier as they get older and biscuits go soggy. 

Using food is a great way to engage students in science.