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See below the booklet lists for descriptions of where I am up to in terms of production, philosophy behind them and how I use them to teach.
The Atmosphere mastery answers (from a colleague)
Paul Cochrane has generously rewritten some of the booklets for the Scottish N5 and can be found here.
I have been building some more basic versions of the booklets and called them “F”, linked above.
Slowly adding more answer booklets – see below.
I now have SLOP for the Earth’s Resources unit below. I did them quite hastily so let me know if/when you find mistakes/errors. The only thing I don’t have SLOP for now is extraction of metals and some separation technique stuff. I also don’t have SLOP for the “required” practicals. If anyone has a good booklet on those I would be incredibly grateful!
I also have a couple of videos here and flashcards here which you might find helpful. I am hoping to do more in time. They aren’t great but there was no way I was going to finish the course so did them for a couple of units.
I’m still working on answers and hopefully will be able to post more soon.
After the past few weeks I’ve been tweaking and updating the SLOP booklets and adding a couple of new ones. All links below.
- Have now written answers for most of the booklets
- Am now only missing a couple of topics (chemical analysis [which I won’t be making for] and The Earth’s Resources [which I will do when I can summon the energy])
- Will hopefully be doing triple quantitative chem tomorrow (don’t really do Christmas) [Now done and below]
- We’ve been having photocopy budget issues so I have tried to save as much space as possible
- Have wedged some topics together into one big booklet instead of a few small ones
- I have added “interleaved questions” to the back of a number of booklets for students to do if they have finished the work you are currently on. In terms of order we follow the AQA scheme other than electrolysis and quantitative which we do at the end
- Have added guided examples for students to practise on
- I’ve still not used all of them yet so any mistakes please let me know
Have added a booklet for chemistry of the atmosphere. In terms of SLOP that means the only ones I still have to do are “using resources” (snore) and moles. I haven’t really decided how I’m going to approach moles but I think I’m basically going to make a SLOP booklet which in theory will break things down enough and give good enough explanations to support a decent learning sequence. I’ve also been noticing mistakes here and there and things that need changing. At the end of the year (once I’ve had a chance to use them all myself) I will do a mass re-upload with new versions so stay posted.
A lot of people have told me they are using these booklets which is great to hear, so if you are:
- keep me posted as to how you are doing/using them
- let me know if (probably when) you find a mistake
- let me know if you have any good ideas for improvements
- let me know if you happen to write answers…
The Earth_s Atmosphere (accompanying ppt – not quite finished but should do the job)
Fixed a couple of errors in history of atom, the diagram for Rutherford scattering was misleading. History of Atom Mastery Booklet
UPDATE 27/06/2017 – Have now added covalent bonding, metals, groups (I teach them in that order) and a booklet for electrolysis. Probably the last ones I’ll do for a while but there should now be booklets for all the major topics in AQA new GCSE.
UPDATE 22/06/2017 – Have now added booklets for history of the atom, elements and compounds and ionic bonding. Still have to do groups then covalent bonding. Once I’ve done those I’ll take a little break and see where I get up to with my triples before doing more.
UPDATE 03/06/2017 – as I noted below, Mastery means different things to different people. Following an exquisitely inconclusive Twitter debate, it has been decided that this kind of work should be renamed as SLOP: Shed Loads Of Practice. Hope you enjoy the rebrand – I’ll stick to calling them Mastery on the actual sheets for now!
UPDATE 02/06/2017 – I have added a booklet for organic chemistry (alkanes and alkenes) as well as a couple of powerpoints (gasp) which have prompts and key notes on them (they’re quite austere so if you’re a fan of comic sans and loads of flashing pictures don’t bother with them). I’m still experimenting with how I use these so it’s very much a work in progress. As I’ve said before if anyone else ends up using them (for example my main chemistry colleague at school just uses them for revision) I would love to know how exactly you are using them. I’m still working on answers which I’ll post when I can.
Science teachers are having to deal with a new GCSE curriculum which is broader and deeper than before. I am personally finding that my students in Year 10 are totally unequipped to deal with it. We’ve started rewriting KS3 but in the meantime I’ve been focussing on ways to try and help students through more complex material.
Inspired by Rosalind Walker I’ve been trying to write “mastery” work. I know that there is a whole literature out there about “mastery” but for my purposes it just boils down to “shedloads of questions on a given topic introduced slowly and coherently with worked examples” I use the word “mastery” to sell it to my students in that if they work through the booklet they can achieve mastery over the topic.
Anyway I have prepared a couple so far and am in the process of writing more. I’m also working on getting answers typed up so I’ll post those here as soon as I can.
Please let me know if you find these useful and how you have used them in class. Some of them have very bare-bones type notes on them as well to support instruction. I haven’t been through all of these with my classes yet so if you spot typos and errors please please let me know. I’m also planning on doing things like this for our new KS3.
AQA Chemistry GCSE booklets: