Increasing Pupils' Rates of Progress in Science Training Materials

These Key Stage Three National Strategy training materials from the Department for Education are designed to run a session with science subject leaders to raise standards by ensuring clear expectations for progress over Key Stage Three and identifying actions around climate for learning, prior knowledge, scientific enquiry and learning demand.

Components

*Session 1 - Establishing a climate for learning that supports good progress in science: Identifies the central role of science subject leaders and introduces the concept of a climate for learning, by engaging participants in identifying the important factors that constitute the climate for learning, and the head of science’s role in this.

*Session 2 - Building explicitly on students’ experience of learning in science on entering Year 7:
Focuses on the importance of recognising students’ prior experience of learning in science in Key Stage Two, and the need to build on this explicitly to take early advantage of students’ positive experiences of science and their existing knowledge.

*Session 3 - Improving pupils’ progress in scientific enquiry:
Revisits progression in scientific enquiry and the concept of levelness. Participants consider what they need to do to help their teachers to develop students’ thinking in scientific enquiry and so improve their progress in science.

*Session 4 - Managing the learning demand:
Identifies the concept of learning demand in science. Subject leaders consider the important role that teachers have in recognising the learning demand of different topics in science, teaching students in order to meet that demand, and the role that language plays in improving students’ progress in science in Key Stage Three.

These materials consist of:
*Tutors notes – includes Overview of the unit, Unit objectives, Outline programme, Synopsis, Preparing for the unit, Resources needed for each session, Main messages, Pre-unit task and Evaluation forms.
*Training slides for the session
*Participants resource pack – copies of the slides and handouts used in the training
*Scientific enquiry cards – handout that can be made into cards to sort (for use in Session 3)
*Videoclip - Year 6 Science (for use in Session 2)
*Videoclip - Year 7 Science (for use in Session 2)