Joanna Spikes
Chemistry teacher
"Building expertise: ideas for stretch and challenge in Chemistry"
Background
· The new A level syllabus for chemistry from OCR has a specific requirement for Stretch and Challenge
· The changes that are made by the QCA only address the assessment part of 'stretch and challenge' I am investigating the teaching and learning side of it.
· For work to be stretching and challenging to the brighter students it should attempt to foster evaluating and creating skills.
Key Actions
· Investigate the new material in the syllabus for 2009, and explore ways of stretching and challenging students
· Exploring the building up of ideas in chemistry, and how ideas needed for the exams can be extended in to more in depth study
· I need to learn more of the chemistry around the syllabus to enable better development of ideas
Preliminary Findings
· I explored each topic in the ‘Rings Polymers and Analysis’ module and wrote a worksheet to allow students to extend themselves with support.
· Students found the work interesting, and some of them found it quite motivating.
· Weaker students found some of the work to be good revision, as it made it necessary to understand the previously learned work properly.