How do you read a GCSE science specification? I don't mean how you cope with the words, but which parts do you pay most attention to? I ask because one of the appendices in the 2011 specifications is likely to have significant impact on questions, both in the external assessments and in the controlled assessments. This is the set of mathematical skills. Arguably it shouldn't be stuck in an appendix, where it runs the risk of being ignored.
In one sense these skills are nothing new. Specifications have had such lists for years and the one in the new specs isn’t much different to the previous versions. However, its status is different. In previous years the list of skills constituted something that examiners could make use of if they wanted to. If they wanted to set a question that called upon the student to perform mathematical operations, this list indicated what was legitimate. However, the current list is one that has to be assessed. Not all of them in every series (in the same way that not all of the content is assessed in every series) but all of them over a period of time, either in external assessments or in controlled assessments.
There's a bit at the end that is Higher Tier only, but apart from that the list is the same list for any GCSE science course (core, additional or separate science) and the same for all awarding organisations. This means that those mathematical skills will need to be assessed in each of the sciences.
Furthermore, numerical answers (whether from calculation or graph) are now expected to be 'developed', i.e. the candidate is then likely to be asked in a later part of the question to make use of the number. No more setting a calculation for the sake of setting a calculation. It’s now likely that a student will be expected, having arrived at a numerical answer, be asked to apply it in some way or to make a judgment on it.
It is also worthwhile to look at the correlation between mathematical skills and assessment objectives. For example, recalling a unit or selecting the appropriate formula is AO1 (recall, select and communicate knowledge and understanding of science) and therefore likely to be in an external assessment. However, basing a conclusion upon the evidence in a graph is AO3 (analyse and evaluate evidence, make reasoned judgments and draw conclusions based on evidence) and a much more likely candidate for the controlled assessment.
On the one hand this seems reasonable. There is a trend towards all sciences becoming more mathematical and students with weaker numeracy skills are likely to find themselves struggling in most science courses post 16. However it does mean that the development of mathematical skills for students doing any science at GCSE will need to be checked and addressed. Science teams supporting their students most effectively are those in which they know the range of skills, how to address them and have co-ordinated their approach with that of the Maths team.
Ed Walsh
Science Advisor for Cornwall Learning
Wednesday, 11 January 2012
Secondary ICT - How to deliver ICT projects
In the last blog I offered a case for using less control in the classroom. I wasn’t thinking of starry-eyed notions of freedom associated with the educational elites of yore, where students select the subject they need from a pick and mix open timetable. My point was restricted to the “ownership” of ICT projects. The student is often engaged by the ICT project for a number of sessions. Unlike in science, where tipping the solution down the drain rather than the precipitate is an inconvenient climax to a Chemistry lesson, in ICT the “solution” is a resolution of a problem or need and is often the culmination of weeks of work. Students should and do, feel it is their own project. If they have worked “sir’s recipe” to an acceptable end-point, it is likely that have a very good project; how this reflects their independent working, insight, development of transferable skills, the sheer human aspect of creativity, is questionable. Quite rightly, exam boards are increasing astute in figuring out that the “cook-book” has been used.
 |
| Fitting it together |
OK, I have made my case, how to deliver? A starting point is the project: “Old Banger Motors have a problem in managing accounts for servicing and repairs to customers’ vehicles... blah, blah”. There is a problem to this approach too, in that with limited skills and experience it is unlikely that the student will be able to design a sophisticated solution to the problem, so that while projects are probably the road to travel, the student will need to set off knowing how to use the sat nav and widen his awareness in the souks of the caravanserais of the journey. Initial teacher defined and led sessions followed by intense skill acquisition once the project starts could be the method of choice. These sessions need to be focussed on skills pertinent to the project but distanced by not being part of the scenario of the project. For example, in the above scenario it is likely that spreadsheet functions such as ROUND and COUNTIF are expected to be used. At a suitable point some distance into the project, but before the functions are relevant to the project, the training session could be delivered. The student is free to incorporate these into the original design or not. What won’t work is relying on the “stumble upon” option as means of differentiation; awareness of what is available and some examples of how the functions, logical operators or whatever can be used in a clearly defined exercise is what is needed.
There is more on offer here, not all of it positive: those less able or motivated may not be as well supported, however you may feel that the motivated, determined and able students deserve their day in the sun.
John Giles
John has taught in various secondary schools for over 30 years, including roles as ICT coordinator and Head of ICT. He is also an established author and has worked as an examiner and moderator for a number of exam boards.
Tuesday, 10 January 2012
Secondary Business - Revision for Unit 3
In order for students to do well on the AQA Unit 3 exam, they need to be able to apply their knowledge and theory from the course to the business that they are given in the exam case study. One of the challenges is actually getting them to USE the theory they know for the different cases.
I have asked my students to revise what they have learnt by using the following businesses:
• Apple
• Google
Here they are able to compare and contrast two similar, but in some ways very different, businesses.
Ask students to read the article that follows from ‘BusinessWeek.com’ and to watch the video clips attached.
When they have read this ask them to fill in the tables on the worksheets (available to download here) with as much information as they can, into the relevant boxes.
“On Jan. 5, Google (GOOG) did a very Apple-like thing. In a presentation at the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif., the 11-year-old search behemoth unveiled Nexus One, a stylish touchscreen smartphone that runs on the company's Android operating system, is sold through a Google-operated retail Web site, and greets the market with an advertising tagline ("Web meets phone") as simple and optimistic as the one Apple used in 2007 to introduce its iPhone ("The Internet in your pocket").
On the same day, Apple did a very Google-like thing. Steve Jobs, the king of splashy product launches and in-house development, announced a strategic acquisition. For $275 million, Apple purchased Quattro Wireless, an upstart advertising company that excels at targeting ads to mobile-phone users based on their behavior.
When companies start to imitate one another, it's usually either an extreme case of flattery—or war. In the case of Google and Apple, it's both.”
See also:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7290322.stm - Google office, culture & headquarters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAdih-bnjBQ – Steve Jobs on Apple & Leadership
Once they have filled in as much as they can for the different functional areas from the information given, ask them to think about what ‘theory’ from the course they can apply to the businesses.
For example:
• Do the businesses use Ansoff’s Matrix for new product development?
• Do the businesses have a strategy of innovation?
• Did Steve Jobs use a Hard approach to HR? What will the new CEO bring?
• How does this differ with Google, where 20% of the employees time is given back for their own projects?
If you have time you could also allow students to do additonal research online - this would be especially useful for the AQA BUSS4 exam, which some students I know will be sitting in January.
Once they have completed this ask them to consider the following questions (you can think of your own as well!):
• To what extent do the two businesses differ?
• To what extent has differentiation been used by the two businesses?
• To what extent is innovation vital for Apple & Google?
• To what extent is the business' choice of marketing strategy the key to success?
Remember to ask the students to include theory in their answers to support their arguments, this is vital for both the BUSS 3 & 4 exams.
In my experience asking students to talk about businesses they know, use and are familiar with will help them to link the theory much quicker!
Don't forget to download the activity worksheet here.
I have asked my students to revise what they have learnt by using the following businesses:
• Apple
Here they are able to compare and contrast two similar, but in some ways very different, businesses.
Ask students to read the article that follows from ‘BusinessWeek.com’ and to watch the video clips attached.
When they have read this ask them to fill in the tables on the worksheets (available to download here) with as much information as they can, into the relevant boxes.
“On Jan. 5, Google (GOOG) did a very Apple-like thing. In a presentation at the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif., the 11-year-old search behemoth unveiled Nexus One, a stylish touchscreen smartphone that runs on the company's Android operating system, is sold through a Google-operated retail Web site, and greets the market with an advertising tagline ("Web meets phone") as simple and optimistic as the one Apple used in 2007 to introduce its iPhone ("The Internet in your pocket").
On the same day, Apple did a very Google-like thing. Steve Jobs, the king of splashy product launches and in-house development, announced a strategic acquisition. For $275 million, Apple purchased Quattro Wireless, an upstart advertising company that excels at targeting ads to mobile-phone users based on their behavior.
When companies start to imitate one another, it's usually either an extreme case of flattery—or war. In the case of Google and Apple, it's both.”
Note: Tim Cook is now the CEO of Apple.
See also:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7290322.stm - Google office, culture & headquarters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAdih-bnjBQ – Steve Jobs on Apple & Leadership
Once they have filled in as much as they can for the different functional areas from the information given, ask them to think about what ‘theory’ from the course they can apply to the businesses.
For example:
• Do the businesses use Ansoff’s Matrix for new product development?
• Do the businesses have a strategy of innovation?
• Did Steve Jobs use a Hard approach to HR? What will the new CEO bring?
• How does this differ with Google, where 20% of the employees time is given back for their own projects?
If you have time you could also allow students to do additonal research online - this would be especially useful for the AQA BUSS4 exam, which some students I know will be sitting in January.
Once they have completed this ask them to consider the following questions (you can think of your own as well!):
• To what extent do the two businesses differ?
• To what extent has differentiation been used by the two businesses?
• To what extent is innovation vital for Apple & Google?
• To what extent is the business' choice of marketing strategy the key to success?
Remember to ask the students to include theory in their answers to support their arguments, this is vital for both the BUSS 3 & 4 exams.
In my experience asking students to talk about businesses they know, use and are familiar with will help them to link the theory much quicker!
Don't forget to download the activity worksheet here.
Donna Jestin
Teacher of Business Studies Notre Dame College & Senior Examiner for AQA
Monday, 9 January 2012
Secondary Sociology - Mnemonics
Mnemonics: Useful revision aids
Difficult to pronounce, and even more difficult for your students to spell, mnemonics are a very useful way of remembering a lot of content quickly. They are therefore ideal in the run up to the January exams. Mnemonics are nothing new and by definition include any learning technique that aids memory.
My Sociology students will be sitting an exam which contains a 52 mark question about research methods. I came up with the following mnemonic to help them remember the various issues which they need to cover in their answer. Although I devised this with the OCR G671 examination in mind; hopefully it is general enough to be suitable for other Sociology methods questions too:
Very Responsible Students Revise and Pass Every Time
Which stands for…
Validity
Reliability
Studies - A reminder to make links to other sociological research
Representativeness
Practical issues
Ethics
Theoretical issues – Positivism and Interpretivism
There are online mnemonic generators if you are struggling for inspiration. I think that Spacefem’s random generator is the quickest and easiest to use: http://spacefem.com/mnemonics
However, it is more effective (and funnier) if students devise the mnemonics themselves. A word of caution; keep it simple. If the mnemonic is very abstract it will be difficult to remember, which somewhat defeats the purpose!
Emily Painter
Sociology Teacher, Cadbury Sixth Form College
Friday, 6 January 2012
Secondary History - Hyperinflation
‘In August 1923, the dollar reached a million Mark.’
-Hyperinflation through Defying Hitler
By year 13, when the topic is re-visited as part of the study of Germany 1900-45, the situation is somewhat better, (especially if I am lucky enough to have some A2 Economists in the class!), yet my trusty price index and anecdotes about men carting their wages home in wheelbarrows doesn’t quite go far enough at showing the impact of hyperinflation on an economy already crippled by Treaty of Versailles reparations, and yoked by the terms of Hugo Preuss’ new constitution to a hopelessly over-ambitious welfare state. So this year I decided to take a new approach; using Defying Hitler, and offering students the use of a selection of plasticine, pipe-cleaners, and a flip-camera.
Following an hour long lesson on the origins and course of the hyperinflation crisis, the next lesson was spent enabling students to really grasp the impact of the year in which ‘an entire nation of Germans had a spiritual organ removed.’ What follows is the course of this second lesson.
Part One (up to 15 minutes)
- I chose 15 quotations from Chapter 10 of Defying Hitler (download the quotations here). The first five were selected to illustrate the wider impact of the crisis on the German psyche. Haffner is writing from voluntary exile in England during Nazism and so he has some strong opinions on how the hyperinflation primed German society ‘not specifically for Nazism, but for any fantastic adventure.’
- The remaining 10 quotations were chosen to illustrate the immediate impact on ordinary lives, both the disasters, but also the opportunities for the ‘young and quick witted.’
- Each student was given a quote upon their arrival to the lesson, asked to read it and make one inference about the impact of the hyperinflation.
- Students then grouped themselves into threes, and together made a further inference about the impact of hyperinflation this time based on a broader spread of 3 quotations.
- Each group of three then paired up with another group of three, and made a further inference based this time on 6 quotations. By this time students had access to a mixture of the wider impact and specific impact quotations.
- This was followed by a brief (7 or 8 minutes – I never deal in multiples of 5!) discussion, drawing on the facts and figures of the previous lesson combined with Haffner’s recollections in order to offer a coherent picture of the impact of hyperinflation.
Part Two (the remaining 45-ish minutes)
- Students were offered the choice of modelling the effect of hyperinflation using plasticine to create a stop-animation film, or just going straight in with the camera and starring in the show themselves. The extroverts seem always to pump for the pure film option, the more kinaesthetic make a bee-line for the modelling and the stop-animation.
- Students had the best part of 40 minutes to make the model/record the film. The only rules were that it must be historically factually accurate, and it must directly reference Haffner.
- Photographing models and downloading films is the last step. We watched the films back at the beginning of the next lesson, and the photographs of the modelling process are up on the wall.
- Hyperinflation – grasped!
History Teacher, Dame Alice Owen's School
Thursday, 5 January 2012
Secondary English - Giving the Answers
My school has recently been focussing on questioning in a bid to try and improve the quality of student answers. This has been a really interesting project, which led to the whole school finding new ways to question our students. When it came to our turn, however, my colleagues and I decided to flip the task around. We gave our students the answers in order to improve their questioning.
What’s the point? Well, in the run up to exams, it is, of course, important to help students to understand the exam questions. Giving the answers and asking them to think of the relevant question makes them do several things: firstly it forces them to read and engage with the answers in a deeper way; secondly it provides a model for good (or bad) answers; thirdly it compels them to consider the types of question, which are set in the exam; and finally, in constructing questions it makes students think about the nature of exam questions and the meaning of command words.
I have been delighted so far with the results. There is a lot of mileage in this activity that extends beyond one lesson but as a first step my year 11 students have been using the Unit 1 English Language Reading answers to reacquaint themselves with the four types of question set in the exam (What do you learn about...?; Presentational Devices; What are the writer’s thoughts and Feelings?; Language Devices). The next step is to then get them to focus on the skills used in the answers and match these with command words in the questions (Explain; Analyse; Compare etc.). These tasks should encourage my students to not only understand the exam questions but to really comprehend what the examiner expects in the answers. As a follow-up to this activity (and to test how much my students have really learnt) I will then ask them to write their own exam paper, test each other and then mark the answers.
So, hopefully, by giving my students the answers I will be enabling them to improve their understanding of the questions, write better answers AND peer assess effectively. Next step, getting them to plan, teach and mark for me too!
What’s the point? Well, in the run up to exams, it is, of course, important to help students to understand the exam questions. Giving the answers and asking them to think of the relevant question makes them do several things: firstly it forces them to read and engage with the answers in a deeper way; secondly it provides a model for good (or bad) answers; thirdly it compels them to consider the types of question, which are set in the exam; and finally, in constructing questions it makes students think about the nature of exam questions and the meaning of command words.
I have been delighted so far with the results. There is a lot of mileage in this activity that extends beyond one lesson but as a first step my year 11 students have been using the Unit 1 English Language Reading answers to reacquaint themselves with the four types of question set in the exam (What do you learn about...?; Presentational Devices; What are the writer’s thoughts and Feelings?; Language Devices). The next step is to then get them to focus on the skills used in the answers and match these with command words in the questions (Explain; Analyse; Compare etc.). These tasks should encourage my students to not only understand the exam questions but to really comprehend what the examiner expects in the answers. As a follow-up to this activity (and to test how much my students have really learnt) I will then ask them to write their own exam paper, test each other and then mark the answers.
So, hopefully, by giving my students the answers I will be enabling them to improve their understanding of the questions, write better answers AND peer assess effectively. Next step, getting them to plan, teach and mark for me too!
Naomi Hursthouse
Advance Skills Teacher
Steyning Grammar School
Secondary Business - News Quiz 05/01/2012
As students are now revising for their January exams, they should also be aware of the current business environment - especially for A2 students. The Eurozone crisis is continuing with fears again for Greece, and sales have been extremely varied amongst industries over the Christmas period. What will 2012 bring?
Here is today's ‘Business News Quiz’. Download the Word version (with answers) to print off and use with your classes here!
Here is today's ‘Business News Quiz’. Download the Word version (with answers) to print off and use with your classes here!
- UK album sales fell by 13% to 86.2 million discs in 2011 but digital downloads rose but not by enough to prevent an overall decline in album sales, what is said to be the reason for this decline?
Credit Crunch ( )
Piracy and the government for taking too long to tackle the problem ( )
VAT increase ( )
Unemployment increasing and lack of jobs ( )
- Which business has seen an "outstanding" rise in sales at its department stores during the Christmas period?
House of Fraser ( )
Debenhams ( )
John Lewis ( )
Selfridges ( )
- US web portal Yahoo has named Scott Thompson as its new head - from which firm has he come from?
Google ( )
Ebay( )
Paypal ( )
Amazon ( )
- Shares in Eastman Kodak have fallen how much; on speculation the photography firm was preparing to file for bankruptcy protection in the US?
28% ( )
32%( )
42%( )
38%( )
- Microsoft has celebrated the imminent demise of what product by baking a cake?
Its shares ( )
Bing ( )
It’s Windows phone ( )
Version 6 of internet explorer ( )
- The government has made no savings by raising the public sector pension age to what age; a pension’s consultant has said?
66 ( )
67 ( )
68 ( )
69 ( )
- A Canadian man who forgot his passport has said that he managed to cross the border into the US using what?
His birth certificate ( )
His VISA card ( )
An image of his passport scanned onto his iPad ( )
A Skype conversation where his family showed his passport ( )
- Nissan Sunderland breaks a UK manufacturing record, by producing how many cars in 2011?
480,485 ( )
2, 481,485 ( )
1, 480,485 ( )
490,485 ( )
- Which country is it thought, will default on its debts in March, unless unions agree to further cuts in salaries?
Ireland ( )
Portugal ( )
Greece ( )
Italy ( )
- What was the most pirated game of 2011, being downloaded 3.2 million times illegally since its release last March?
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 ( )
Battlefield 3 ( )
FIFA 12 ( )
Crysis 2 ( )
Donna Jestin
Teacher of Business Studies Notre Dame College & Senior Examiner for AQA
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