Move your practice forward and share your experiences of ambitious science teaching with other innovators. Saturday 23 March, 9.45-3.45, Open University, Milton Keynes. 10 free Year 7 Practice Books for each delegate. The 2nd Science Done Right conference gets down to the business of how to make mastery work in practice. Many schools are starting to […]
3-steps to GCSE proof your curriculum
So you’d like to teach students to apply and analyse knowledge from year 7? And you’re ready to transition from a ‘coverage’ curriculum to a 5-year plan like Blueprint ? We listened to your feedback about the challenges of switching and we’ve worked out a process to make the switch easier. There are only 3 steps but […]
Teach the way you want AND finish GCSE: part 1
It’s bad enough feeling rushed all the time as you slog through the bulging GCSE spec. But it’s even worse when you realise many students won’t have enough time to understand at the depth GCSE requires. However you divide KS3 and GCSE there’s too much stuff. When we did a curriculum time analysis for AQA, […]
Proven! Give students the right practice and they’ll get high grades
You might have heard that it takes ‘10,000 hours’ to excel at something. But there’s a lesser known finding from research into expertise that could radically improve your students’ results by questioning our assumptions about learning. It is this: while ability matters at the beginning, in the long run it’s the quantity and quality of practice that […]
5-year plan workshop & pilot materials
It’s a sobering thought – with new GCSE, teaching the content in the specification only prepares students for 40% of the marks. For the rest, they have to apply and analyse, and experience show many students never learn this. Enter Blueprint: a 5-year plan based on the KS3 Science Syllabus we built for AQA. Blueprint is designed backwards from the 3 GCSE Assessment Objectives. It’s organised around a progression of essential concepts and scientific thinking […]
The second law of Mastery states …
… The more problem-solving students do while learning, the better they will perform in exams. Conventionally students listen then do. They’re fine at recalling knowledge, but come unstuck when the context of an exam question is different to what they were taught (aka ‘inert knowledge’). How do you avoid inert knowledge? Students need to connect […]
The first law of Mastery states …
… 80% of student achievement comes from understanding 20% of the syllabus. That’s right, much of what we teach has little impact on exam results. But 20% of it really sets students up for success. What is the 20%? It’s the key concepts in science: fundamental ideas like force and interdependence, and scientific models […]
Bushtucker trial: I’m a celebrity science
It’s 12 years since we turned the TV series ‘I’m a Celebrity’ into a science upd8*. Bushtucker Trial is still going and the activity has been copied and imitated many times. Here is the original. Could you live on a creepy crawly diet? Many insects are high in protein and low in cholesterol. They […]
Announcing the Mastery Practice Book
The Mastery Practice Book can help your low and middle achievers do better. In the recent AQA Year 10 mock, the average was only 30%. One of the biggest areas for improvement, according to the examiners, was ‘applying knowledge to unfamiliar contexts’. Apply is worth 40% of the marks, so how can your students capture […]
Give students 8x more ‘Apply’ practice
What’s the simplest way to boost understanding? Give students more targeted practice at using ideas and skills. I don’t mean simple recall and filling in boxes, I mean practice in ‘Apply’ – being able to transfer what you know to unfamiliar situations. Most students struggle with recognising which idea to use where. So it’s obvious they need […]