What do you suggest we do to prepare our GCSE Science students for their Unit 4 (Ideas in context) exam?
As you probably know, Unit 4 has three questions, one each of Biology, Chemistry, and Physics. Each question relates to one of the GCSE Science modules. Different question types are shown in the Sample Assessment Material for Unit 4 on the OCR website.
OCR will post out the pre-release (stimulus) material for these questions mid-March. Centres should receive it before Easter.
After Easter, you could do one week of preparation as a department, rotating students around Biology, Chemistry and Physics specialists if you use them, or if not, one lesson on each subject area.
Here are some suggestions. You may have other ideas.
• Do a brief revision session on the module, using media headlines (contemporary if relevant) and images from the OUP iPack, to set the mood. Read through OCR's stimulus material and build up a spider diagram of key concepts related to this - either as class, or students working in groups using the textbook to help them.
• Question-spotting - each group comes up with two questions they could ask about the article - one a Science Explanation and one an Idea About Science. (The OUP Revision Guide might also be useful here, to generate ideas.)
• Go through the students' questions, then ask each group to come up with another two ... and so on, until you've exhausted it.
The teacher might have pre-prepared a list of, say, twelve questions. You could make this into a game - can the class get all questions on the teachers' list? (Be reasonably flexible about actual wording of questions - accept any question based on the same idea.) Mini mars bars all round if they get them !!
Remind your students that Unit 4 questions can be from ANY Idea about Science (IaS), not necessarily just the ones studied in each particular module, although these are by far the most obvious ones. For example, it is possible to assess IaS1 'Data' in a question about B1 'You and your genes', even though IaS1 is not explicitly taught in B1).
For weaker students, you might not push this last point. Focus them on just the Ideas about Science in the three modules that the stimulus material indicates.
