Nuffield Science for Key Stage Three

Nuffield Science for Key Stage Three materials were created by reworking the resources from the Nuffield Science 11 to 13 programme to match the new National Curriculum. For each year there was a Teachers' Guide, a text for students, and a file of worksheets for the activities.

Aims

The team retained the aims that had been consistently pursued in Nuffield science materials over twenty years. These were to teach students the reality of science through enquiry, experimentation and investigation. As a consequence they put activities at the centre of the course, with the student books setting the topics in context.

The resources were planned to support an activity-based course, with experiment dominant, and other activities such as games, enquiries, data analysis, and so on. Emphasis was placed on *’bridging the gap’ between Primary and Secondary level science *teaching science through enquiry experimentation and investigation.

Significance for students 

The course designers wanted the programme to meet the 'significance test' of the Nuffield Secondary Science project, namely that: *the work should have immediate significance for the students in terms of its intrinsic interest, and that *it should be concerned important issues in the adult world.

Organisation

Years Seven and Eight were planned as an integrated science course. The topics in Year Nine were selected to make it possible to divide the resources between separate science disciplines and provide either another year’s integrated course, or a coordinated course divided into biology, chemistry and physics.

Coverage of the experimental and investigative science strand of the National Curriculum was integrated throughout. The course was designed to provide for differentiation to make it suitable for a wide ability range. The developers suggested alternative routes with different activities for pupils of differing ability. Most activities were designed to start easy and get harder to present more challenging tasks to faster students.