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A
level student presentations |
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School: Shrewsbury Sixth
Form College |
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Fellow: Steve Lewis |
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Email: steve@chemit.co.uk |
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Project update |
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July - December 2001 |
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Draft guidelines for students were produced
for A level Chemistry students. These suggested
possible sources of information for a report,
how to develop the information electronically
and covered issues to consider when making
a presentation to a group of their peers.
The range of skills that need to be demonstrated
to achieve Key Skill Level 3 criteria in IT
and Communication were stressed. |
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The equipment to enable students
to make presentations using IT was set up
in the laboratory in December. Some presentations
were made by students. |
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January – July
2001 |
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The Royal Society of Chemistry
was approached and the Education Division
expressed an interest in distributing materials,
but with a different content and format. They
were more interested in producing an exemplar
of how a student might present a report linking
the Key Skills of IT and Application of Number,
rather than Communication. |
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As a consequence I changed
the focus of my work to producing this exemplar.
A draft was prepared which had the following
format: |
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Introduction for teachers
explaining the relevance of the exemplar
to Key Skills and Chemistry coursework
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Student plan for the IT component
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Teacher feedback indicating how the
report could be amended so that it would
also fulfil the Application of Number
criteria |
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Student plan for the additional Application
of Number content |
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Amended report of the experiment that
fulfils Application of Number and IT
criteria at level 3 |
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The draft was circulated to
the members of the Schools and Colleges Committee
of the Royal Society of Chemistry and minor
modifications were made following their suggestions.
The second version of the draft was then passed
to the three exam boards, each of which offer
the Key Skill qualification. They all welcomed
the exemplar, saying there was a need for
such material and that the content was in
the main appropriate. Each board suggested
different points that they thought would improve
the resource and all suggested that it should
include clear cross-references (“mapping”)
to the published criteria. |
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The suggestions from the exam boards have
been incorporated into the final version,
which has become a far more substantial document
than the one envisioned in January! |
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A second Chemistry laboratory
has been equiped to allow IT presentations. |
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An aspect of the project that I hadn’t
anticipated was the extent to which the provision
of the IT facilities within the Chemistry
lab might influence my teaching delivery.
Since its installation we have made increasing
use of PowerPoint as a teaching resource for
A level Chemistry, particularly as a means
of providing simple animations to promote
understanding and displaying images to provide
context to what students often find an abstract
subject. This has become a major focus for
professional development of members of the
Chemistry department. |
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Dissemination |
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The final version of the exemplar
has been passed on to the RSC who are currently
(October 2001) adapting it to go on to their
website. |
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“Work in progress”
with both student presentations and
the exemplar material was presented
to a meeting of schools and colleges
from the Shropshire Partnership in March
2001 |
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The Royal Society of Chemistry intend
to place a version on their Education
website (LearnNet), which will links
between the exemplar and the assessment
criteria to be included as hyper-text
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I am giving a presentation based on
the exemplar materials to a forum for
Chemistry teachers on 22nd November
at the Scientific Societies’ Lecture
Theatre, London |
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I am also presenting the exemplar
materials and discuss how they might
be used at the Association for Science
Education Annual Conference at Liverpool
University on Thursday 3rd January 2002
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