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Self-contained
Science lessons for cover teachers |
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School: Herries School,
Berkshire |
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Fellow: Anne Sweeney |
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Email: a.sweeney@genie.co.uk |
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When a teacher is absent
from his/her class a cover teacher can find
taking a science lesson particularly daunting
and the absent teacher often finds setting
suitable work problematic. |
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Aim: |
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My project entailed producing
self-contained boxes of lessons, including
all the necessary equipment for implementing
them, for cover teachers. |
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Description: |
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Initially I intended to
make boxes for Infant and Junior schools only,
but on the advice of the LEA science co-ordinator
I extended this to include First and Middle
Schools. Each box contains self-explanatory
lessons and, most importantly, all the equipment
needed to undertake them. |
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After discussions with colleagues
my key considerations when devising lessons
were: |
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Supply and cover teachers
may have limited or no scientific knowledge
of the topics studied by pupils in unfamiliar
age groups, thus, at best, might be
unable to teach the topic to sufficient
depth, and, at worst, may mislead the
pupils with misinformation. Therefore
the lessons had to assume no prior knowledge
and be suitable for the intended audience.
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Each lesson would be skills based,
rather than cover specific topics from
the National Curriculum. |
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By restricting the number of skills
included I could revisit them to show
progression over the years. |
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Progress so far: |
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I devised 3 lessons per
year group from Reception to Y8. Each lesson
was presented as a script which the cover
teacher could read out to the class and detailed
the experiments, games, discussions etc. to
be used, along with suggested timings for
each section. The lessons were colour coded
by year group, included all the games and
equipment needed, and contained within a handy
stacker box. |
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A selection of schools tried
out the boxes until Xmas 2002 and provided
valuable feedback, enabling me to modify the
lessons and give further boxes to more schools
in the Spring term 2003. The feedback from
these schools informed the final versions
of the lessons. |
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In total, boxes went out
to 2 Infant, 2 First, 2 Junior and 2 Middle
Schools; 1 combined Infant and Middle School;
1 Preparatory School; and selected lessons
were tried by 2 other full-time and 2 supply
teachers. |
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The schools were invited
to keep the boxes as each lesson could be
re-used with successive classes and may provide
more feedback at a later date. |
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The Skills: |
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All the lessons are based
around practical activities designed to promote
thinking skills and encourage discussion. |
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The three principal skills
covered in each class were as follows: |
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Reception – visual
observation, listening and colour usage |
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| Year
1 |
visual observation,
listening and the language of differentiation |
| Year 2 |
listening, colour usage
and the passage of time |
| Year 3 |
colour usage, the passage
of time and personal reaction times |
| Year 4 |
listening, the language
of differentiation and visual observation
problems |
| Year 5 |
colour usage, the passage
of time and personal reaction times |
| Year 6 |
listening, the language of differentiation
and visual observation problems |
| Year 7 |
personal reaction times, the passage
of time and visual observation problems |
| Year 8 |
colour usage, listening
skills and visual observation problems
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The Feedback: |
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The initial feedback slips
informed me of any ambiguous instructions,
the teachers’ opinions of the suitability
of the lessons, the level of enjoyment for
the pupils and suggested improvements. As
the lessons were mainly taken by the usual
class teacher, and not supply teachers since
there were very few opportunities for this
in the allocated schools, after Christmas
I included questions about what the teacher
learnt about the class and what the teacher
felt the class had learnt. |
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The lessons were most welcomed
by Reception – Year 4. Years 5-8 found
that the pressure of the National Curriculum
left very little space for anything not specifically
on the syllabus and teachers, especially in
Year 6 pre-SATS, were hesitant about being
able to take part. |
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Staff at schools where individual
teachers had a degree of autonomy overwhelmingly
welcomed the idea of the ‘Cover Boxes’.
Schools which operated parallel classes with
highly detailed team planning saw little use
for them as supply teachers would be given
the same work as the class teacher had intended
using so as to avoid one class getting ‘out
of step’ with the others. |
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The Outcome: |
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I have produced 4 types
of boxes, each containing ‘off the peg’
lessons which any teacher would find simple
to use at a moment’s notice. |
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The benefits of having a
box in school are: |
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It relieves
absent staff of the worry of having
to think up, and pass on, a science
lesson, especially in circumstances
where they may be suddenly taken ill
or when they know they are at a critical
stage in a topic and feel unhappy about
possibly a non-specialist trying to
explain a complex idea. |
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Non-specialists feel confident about
taking a practical science lesson with
an unfamiliar age group. |
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There is no loss or damage by temporary
staff to the science equipment in regular
use by the school. |
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