ASE Evaluated for Collins AQA GCSE Science Now Teacher Resource Pack
Overview of structure
The Collins AQA GCSE Science Now Teacher Resource Pack sets out to improve students’ literacy skills within science so that they are better able to understand the science being studied and achieve more in assessments, and to support their learning in other subjects. Having a set of resources that is designed to explicitly support and develop literacy, across the full range of topics that students encounter in GCSE Science, is a new approach.
The breadth of this resource is impressive: it covers the same 24 topic headings as the AQA Trilogy specification, and this is specified within the resource itself. The resource covers the content required for Separate Sciences; however, those areas that are not applicable for students taking Combined Science are clearly identified so that the resource is appropriate and useful for all students. It would still be of some use if following the AQA Synergy route, or other exam board specifications including curricula from other nations, as the majority of content is relevant; however, teachers will need to be careful.
The introduction sets out the purpose of the resource and how to use the different aspects of it: dipping in and finding an activity related to a particular topic is not really what this resource is all about and understanding why the different activities have been devised in certain ways will help teachers to use them most effectively with their students. For this reason, the introduction is a key section to make sure that teachers get the value and impact intended from this resource.
Within each section (each of the 24 topics), there is detailed teacher guidance, as well as student activities.
Student activities, including assessment
Each topic follows the same structure so that they all provide the same level of support. There is an initial diagnostic assessment. Activities then follow a structure of progression, from word level (focusing on the meaning of key vocabulary), to sentence level, paragraph level and whole-text level activities. To encompass the full range of what is meant by literacy, they are also supported and developed through reading and comprehension activities. Each individual activity is identified as developing literacy at one of these levels and is further differentiated into standard demand and higher demand tasks. It is refreshing to see that this goes beyond simply labelling tasks aimed at developing the initial literacy levels (e.g. word level and sentence level) as standard demand, and the more expansive literacy elements as higher demand; instead, for example, there are higher demand word level activities that target more complicated vocabulary. Whilst the resource could benefit from some explanation in the introduction as to what the difference between the different demand levels is, or the provision of guidance to teachers on how to choose the most appropriate activity for their students, we accept that many teachers will be familiar with the level of demand from the exams/and other resources.
The way in which the different types of student activities are presented is in line with up-todate evidence on effective teaching: for example, the recommendations made by the EEF in their “Improving Literacy in Secondary Schools” guidance report. This resource is an excellent example of how to prioritise disciplinary literacy within a curriculum. The different level tasks provide vocabulary instruction and develop students’ ability to read complex texts. These tasks could certainly be used as a form of literacy intervention, either within science lessons, or outside of science lessons as part of a wider literacy package of support. All of these are recommendations from the EEF report that this resource does an excellent job of helping teachers to meet. The student activities are well designed, and support students studying GCSE Science well by covering aspects that account for AO1, AO2 and AO3 in their assessments. Again, this is done across both demand levels equally and it is refreshing to see so many application activities labelled as ‘standard demand’ as ‘higher demand’, as this is often neglected.
Answers to student activities are provided and these are scientifically accurate as far as we were able to monitor. It should be noted that, within the scope of this review, not every resource from every unit was analysed at the same level of detail, so there may be errors in sections that were not reviewed at this level.
The scientific accuracy of the resources is, overall, very high. Details such as using subscript and superscript accurately in chemical formulae and equations, and having well-labelled and effective diagrams, make a significant difference and these aspects are impeccable throughout.
Efforts have clearly been made to ensure that the resource is as up-to-date as possible. For example, the language used when describing how energy is stored and transferred has been updated in recent years and the resources here follow very closely the advice set out by the Institute of Physics. This should be reassuring for teachers, as they can be confident that the materials within this resource will be in line with the current expectations set out in GCSE specifications.
It is a big ‘plus’ that the materials provided in the pack are editable and available in pdf format, as well as Word versions. This makes a big difference to how the resource can be used by teachers and allows them to make the most of the resource and tailor it for their own students and classes. One other thing that the resource allows them to do is to combine activities from different topics into a single document or unit, which is useful when using these activities to recap prior learning, or when combining more than one activity into a single task as a homework, for example.
Teacher notes
Each topic has a comprehensive and very useful set of teacher notes alongside the student activities. The teacher notes are user-friendly, with clear and consistent labelling of different sections making them easy to navigate and to find appropriate guidance or activities.
There is a wealth of detail, guidance and advice throughout these notes and using them would really help teachers to ensure that the student activities have the intended impact. Each activity has a specified purpose, which is unique to that activity. These purpose statements for each activity are clear and concise, and show the substantive knowledge, disciplinary knowledge and literacy understanding that students can develop through each individual activity. These same purpose statements are also in the student activities themselves, allowing teachers to highlight why students are doing that activity, which is something that those teachers who want to teach metacognitively will particularly appreciate. The resource could further benefit by explicitly linking the purposes of each activity to specification points. This would allow teachers to cross-reference this resource with the specification to clarify exactly what students should know and understand. We believe that this was considered at the time of writing, but it was felt that this would make the already extensive pack too complex.
The emphasis on literacy is further illustrated by extensive lists of key words for each topic. Whilst they are arranged in a useful format, alphabetically and in separate lists for combined and separate science studies, with a further list for topic-specific disciplinary key words, it is not obvious how these lists on their own are useful or would benefit students. Key words and their definitions are not provided within the materials, but we understand that these will be available online as part of the supplementary downloadable materials. Users should be aware that each chapter contains a full list of key words, although not all of these feature within the activities. This is because the series editors felt strongly that all key vocabulary from the specification should be included. However, it would be helpful to have key vocabulary used in the resource highlighted on the lists and we recommend that this is considered for future editions.
The diagnostic activity that starts each topic is constructive. The accompanying teacher notes specify which AO each question is assessing. It might be helpful to signpost other activities within the pack that students would benefit from as follow-ups to each section of the diagnostic activity. For example, while the ‘next steps’ section in the teacher notes says: “Analyse responses to assess understanding and to determine when to follow up on students' command of key words, ability to construct effective sentences, and ability to structure longer responses. Materials in this pack will support all three of these and there is also more generic guidance in the introduction”, it would be helpful if this included the detail to guide teachers to use, say, Activity 1 if students struggle with question 2, or Activity 4 if students are not able to complete question 3 fully. This would increase the value of carrying out the diagnostic activity and show teachers how to use the information formatively alongside the rest of the pack.
Conclusions
This is a one-stop-shop for developing students’ knowledge and understanding across GCSE Science, with a particular focus on developing literacy at the same time. It does a really good job of meeting both of these aims without compromising and, by doing so, is a step beyond a simple set of resources aimed at improving recall of key knowledge or concepts, or one that is purely aimed at literacy. Each activity explicitly does both, and does them well, and so this comprehensive set of resources is able to meet a huge range of needs in different classes and with different students.