Advice from training sessions
Teachers at the residential session in Reading, June 2007 Teachers from schools running Twenty First Century Science met during June for training sessions in the new courses. See the new training materials available on this website here Training pack
Particular concerns of those present at the York and Reading training sessions included the following.
Teaching the courses in series or in parallel
It is generally thought that teaching in parallel gives students a better experience, and means that teachers can specialise in different courses. But it also means that students have to make all decisions about courses immediately after SATS, rather than leaving some of it till the following year. The alternating system may be better, because students need not choose until about October of Y10. See section B ‘Course management’ here Training pack
Joining a cluster of schools
This system is set up by OCR, but then it is over to schools to operate the cluster. Find out more about this from OCR. Here is our guide to the OCR website OCR website guide
Experiments, equipment and getting them to work
See what's on the C21 website, and contact CLEAPSS who are compiling information. Here is our Technicians' page, with link to CLEAPSS on the right Technicians overview
GCSE Science Case studies
Peter Nicolson, C21 team member and OCR coursework moderator, suggested that teachers should show students what a model good answer looks like. Students need practice in doing small parts of the work before starting the whole thing. They need to start by understanding the marking criteria and what they should be achieving. You could give students some of last year’s case studies and ask them to mark them. It will help them understand that they should include Ideas about Science when describing and evaluating different viewpoints. Students who follow the instructions can get good marks even though they struggle with the data analysis. See section F ‘Assessment’ here Training pack
Teachers at the residential session in York, June 2007
Running the courses
Pilot teacher Sheila Curtis from Haggerston School in east London shared her experience of running the courses. Sheila said that careful planning is important. At Haggerston School they quickly abandoned the ‘series’ model of running the courses in favour of the ‘parallel’ model, but it does need rigorous timetabling. They help students to decide which courses to follow by means of a ‘What kind of person are you?’ questionnaire; this is more successful than classifying by SATS results.
School governors and managers need to know that Twenty First Century Science addresses issues including ‘Every Child Matters’, ICT across the curriculum, and active citizenship, and there are often budgets for these if you can find out how to access them. Highlight to managers the general need for funding for resources and training. See section B ‘Course management’ in the training pack. Training pack
See also Reports from schools
