Report from Alder Community High School, Tameside
Alison Knowles writes ...
This year we've being doing GCSE Science with the Year 10s. Next year's Year 10s will also do GCSE Science while Year 11 do Additional Science or Applied Science
Students really enjoy feeling that they can make valuable contributions to lessons, and have an opinion about topical issues.
Our of a cohort of about 200 students, about 60 students have selected Additional Science for Year 11 because they hope to study science subjects at A-level.
Managing the courses
The greatest challenge has been running the new Year 10 course alongside the AQA Double Award course for Year 11.
We are fortunate to have been given support and time to plan, though we could always do with more! As a school we have been extremely fortunate to have been given support by our Senior Management Team. We initially presented our aims for the C21 courses to Governors in February 2006. From this we secured significant additional funding, and an understanding that to deliver these courses effectively we needed time as a department.
In total, to date, we have had 4 days off timetable as a whole department to plan for the GCSE Science course. In addition we have had 2 days with the Head of English to plan a strategy for delivery of the case study (writing for a purpose and using connectives). All members of the department have attended 2-day residential training sessions. Even with all this support and time we've found this first year really challenging.
We are tired but positive!
