Ahead of his workshop on this topic, NACE Associate Ed Walsh shares seven key components of a challenging KS3 science curriculum…

“Is our KS3 course doing its job?” This is one of the most powerful questions a science leader in a secondary school can ask.

The new GCSE courses are no longer really new; many teachers are finding their way around the specifications, developing aspects such as the running order of topics, time allocated to activities and applying emphasis to areas that results analyses indicate are deficient.

There, is, of course, a limit as to what can be achieved within KS4. If students are starting on their GCSE courses with limitations in their grasp of science then the more effective solution may lie in KS3. I’d like to share some ideas as to how learners, especially the most able, can be effectively catered for at this stage. It is, of course, relatively easy to pose questions and harder work to identify answers. With this in mind I’ve also included some links to useful references and resources.

1. Talk the (science) talk

What language is being used in lessons? Are students being supported, challenged and expected to ‘talk science’? This needs to go beyond knowing the right names for objects, to also having a command of connectives. Would an observer in your classroom catch use of words and phrases such as ‘because’, ‘therefore’ and ‘as a result of’ – not just by the teacher but by students as they are developing explanations?

Read more: Useful materials on speaking and listening can be found in Session 4 of the National Strategies Literacy in Science Training Materials.

2.  Ensure practical work adds value

What is the role of practical work in your science teaching and learning? Is it exploratory as well as illustrative? Does it prompt questions and ideas? Is it effective at developing the apparatus and techniques skills needed at GCSE so that able learners have, for example, mastered the use of microscopes by the time they start GCSE courses and can then concentrate on other aspects of investigations?

Read more: The newly published ASE/Gatsby report Good Practical Science provides benchmarks to support departments seeking to improve the effectiveness of practical science teaching.

3.  Review your use of questioning and command words

What kind of questions are being asked? A good starting point is to look at the command words used in GCSE specifications and consider whether students are being exposed to these all the way through their secondary science experience. As well as ‘describe’ and ‘explain’, are able learners being asked to evaluate, compare, contrast and suggest? As well as closed and specific questions, are you posing open and exploratory questions?

Read more: Guidance on questioning is provided in unit 7 of Pedagogy and Practice: Teaching and Learning in Secondary Schools (DfES).

4. Develop writing (quality, not quantity)

What is the role of writing? This is not a plea for lengthy, exhaustive (and exhausting) experimental writeups or even necessarily for anything of any length. It’s more that there is a case for getting students producing short pieces of high-quality writing that do a particular job well. This might be, for example, comparing and contrasting different materials for a car body, suggesting and justifying an energy provision plan for a particular location or analysing a graph that shows how different carrier bags respond to loads.

Read more: Useful materials on writing can be found in Session 3 of the National Strategies Literacy in Science Training Materials.

5. Ensure key concepts are covered and revisited

Have the ‘cornerstone concepts’ been effectively introduced and revisited? Is the concept of energy well developed and do students understand what is meant by an ecosystem? Such key concepts can be seen as tools that scientists can reach for when developing explanations; able learners should become more proficient in doing this.

Read more: An overview of how key ideas can be planned for in KS3 is provided in AQA’s KS3 Science Syllabus.

6.  Respond to learners’ needs

How responsive is the teaching to nurturing able learners and focusing on their learning needs? If these students are going to realise their potential at the end of GCSE then their KS3 experience needs to be tailored to areas in which they need a good grounding. For example, if they’re confident with the concept of a chemical reaction but less familiar with different types of reaction, can the latter be made a particular focus? Students who feel they are ‘treading water’ may not perform to the best of their ability.

Read more: A really good reference source on this is Dylan Wiliam’s Embedded Formative Assessment (2011, Solution Tree, 978-1-934009-30-7)

7. Develop science capital

Students are more likely to succeed if they see a purpose to their learning. Are there opportunities for them to see the doors that are open to young people who are competent and keen in STEM subjects? A good example of resources recently published to support this are the Royal Society’s series of videos with Professor Brian Cox – as well as demonstrating how experiments can be done in schools, they also show why these ideas are important and useful in society and highlight the cutting-edge research in each area.

Read more: This blog post from The Science Museum’s Beth Hawkins provides a useful introduction to the concept of science capital and how it can be developed. Plus, watch our webinar on this topic (member login required).

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For additional support to develop your provision for more able learners in science, sign in as a NACE member to access Ed Walsh's NACE Essentials guide to realising the potential of more able learners in GCSE science, and recorded webinar on effective questioning in science.

Not yet a NACE member? Find out more, and join our mailing list for free updates and free sample resources.

You may already be using the free maths resources provided by the University of Cambridge’s NRICH project – but are you getting maximum impact from them, for all your learners? In this blog post, Anthony Bandy, Assistant Head Teacher at King Edwin Primary School and a participant in the NACE/NRICH ambassador scheme, shares five ways to rethink and improve your approach…

Before joining the NACE/NRICH ambassador programme, I honestly thought I was using NRICH correctly… However, since accessing the programme, I have come to realise that I was not even close to using the resources to their full potential!

Like many others, I had previously used NRICH simply as an extension activity for the more able. However, NRICH is in fact based on a “Low threshold, high ceiling” approach – basically meaning that all learners can access the resources, and push themselves to what they want to achieve.

Following my participation in the NRICH ambassador training, and subsequent opportunities to share this training within my own school and more widely, here are five steps to get maximum value from NRICH for all learners in your maths lessons…

1. Look beyond “maths mastery”

When the new maths curriculum arrived, our school had some very negative data, with problem solving and reasoning causing the biggest issues. Our response was to focus on maths mastery.

However, during my first training session as an NRICH ambassador, it became apparent that mastery is only a method of delivering maths; it is not a government expectation, and it is also not necessarily sufficient to fully meet the needs of all young mathematicians.

You can read more about the NRICH perspective on mastery here.

2. Use NRICH throughout each unit of work, for all learners

As a school, we changed how we delivered mathematics. We’ve adopted a “Six Stages of Learning” approach, which involves teaching, fluency, problem solving, reasoning, hybrid and mentoring for every objective, and is also developmental for individual learners.*

Importantly, NRICH is not just used towards the end of units. In some classes, NRICH activities have been used to introduce topics. For example, the “Swimming Pool” activity was used in Year 5 to introduce the concept of negative numbers. This worked really well, with children having to think of various potential concepts.

In addition, we decided to further implement our stages of learning by including NRICH as our Stage 5 (hybrid stage). We agreed that when the curriculum mapping resource permits and there is an activity available (see below), teachers will implement the activity for all learners to access, giving all individuals the exposure to problem solving and reasoning activities.

3. Incorporate NRICH in planning

As the NACE/NRICH ambassador, I delivered a training session for all staff. We looked closely at the curriculum mapping resources on the NRICH website, outlining links between mathematics objectives and NRICH activities. This resource definitely helped teachers to plan for NRICH activities in their lessons, rather than simply “throwing in” an activity as an extension or filler.

During the training, we also focused on how to use the NRICH resources to their full potential, looking at how NRICH provides guidance on questioning, starting points and solutions.

4. Encourage learners (and teachers) to explore multiple solutions

Prior to the training, some staff had mentioned feeling unsure about the solutions. We’d also found that our more able learners sometimes struggled when asked to think of a different approach to a problem. In their minds, they already knew the right answer, so therefore didn’t need to find another way. We asked ourselves “Are these types of learners true ‘problem solvers’, if they only know one way to solve a problem?”

The NRICH solutions pages have proven useful for both teachers and learners, giving examples of what a good solution might look like – and reminding both groups that there may be more than one “right” answer. More likely than not, there will be a variety of different solutions. In order for learners to develop as confident problem solvers, it’s important that they can find and understand a variety of approaches.

5. Embrace the “low threshold, high ceiling” approach

Sharing the published solutions has exposed all learners to examples of excellent quality reasoning, which is then reflected in their own practice. A fantastic example of this, along with the “low threshold, high ceiling” approach, came during a Year 5 lesson exploring the topic: “What came first – the chicken or the egg?”

With this topic in mind, we looked at the “Eggs in baskets” activity, which is predominantly a KS1 problem. In the lesson, all learners were able to have a go at the activity, with most adopting a visual representation (e.g. circles as baskets), using trial and improvement to solve the problem. Once learners had been successful, I gave them printouts of the published solutions and asked them to try and work out how others had solved the activity.

I gave my most able learners copies of a solution completed by a secondary pupil, who had solved the problem using algebra. Without my guidance, I asked them to look at the algebraic solution and try to work out how it had been achieved. A short while later, they came to me and could explain the algebraic solution.

I then found a similar problem involving the Cookie Monster and cookies eaten per day. I asked my more able learners to try and solve it using algebra – simply from their experience with the previous activity. This emphasises the “low threshold, high ceiling” scope of NRICH – what began as a KS1 problem ended up as a KS3 problem, using algebraic equations!

The lesson was so successful that when delivering an NRICH session to 40+ schools at a Nottinghamshire Maths Network Meeting, I took a learner along to demonstrate their achievements and explain the processes behind them.

Impact and next steps…

Teachers in our school are now using NRICH more effectively and more of our learners are being exposed not only to crucial problem-solving skills, but also to important collaborative life skills.

Our 2017-18 results were our most successful since the new curriculum, and are on track to be beaten again. But even more importantly, when NRICH is mentioned in any class, learners respond with great enthusiasm, which demonstrates the productive disposition element of the five essential aspects to developing young mathematicians (read more on the NRICH website).

Our next steps as a school will be to deliver training on “working mathematically” and collaborative learning – a vital skill for all our learners to develop for their future studies and careers.

* For more information on the “Six Stages of Learning” or other approaches mentioned in this blog post, please contact the school via NACE.

Jennifer Richards is headteacher and headteacher consultant at St Mark’s CE Primary, Aquinas Trust. She outlines the school’s approach to “life without levels” and preparing learners to achieve greater depth.
 

With the future of education uncertain and the landscape forever changing, it is vital that we continue to aim high and hold high aspirations for all our children. The emphasis on more able, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, is quite rightly a priority for us all. 

It is our purpose to create the very best education system, using research and pedagogical principles, which will improve the life chances of our children. This will enable them to cope with the demands of the higher level of knowledge, skills and understanding required of them. 

Seeking opportunities for deeper learning

The emphasis on preparing our children to achieve greater depth has been a major focus. After one year of “life without levels”, we now have an idea of how we can provide more opportunities and targets for those who can achieve this greater depth. We have focused on our more able in many ways, looking for opportunities within the curriculum to help them remain engaged and enthusiastic, whilst being able to demonstrate the depth of knowledge and skills they have acquired.

There has been a focus on greater-depth writing for all, maths mastery, and developing the reasoning skills of our more able, particularly girls who lack confidence in their own ability. We have not forgotten within this the more able across the curriculum, including PE and philosophy. 

Developing expertise across our teaching team

We appointed a more able leader to plan, deliver and monitor the thoughts and achievements of our more able children, working alongside our middle leaders and teachers to identify barriers and gaps and how we can overcome them together. 

This has fed into our CPD, which also involves our support staff, so that everyone is clear on the expectations we hold and how to support the children’s learning. We are also part of Aquinas Multi-Academy Trust; a network of more able leads in each academy works together to positively influence teaching and learning across the trust.

We have focused on the use of questioning and the techniques we use in philosophy for children to enable an enquiry-based and analytical approach to learning. Teachers plan their questions and the opportunities they provide in lessons for the children to ask questions.

Working towards the NACE Challenge Award, a framework to map out the best way to support our more able, has provided clarity and structure. Alongside research and best practice in other schools, we are able to plan and implement proven strategies, which will enhance the learning of all our children.

This blog post is based on an article first published in the summer 2017 edition of the NACE Insight newsletter. To view past editions of Insight, log in as a NACE member.