Good morning and welcome to our webinar
on how to improve your Cambridge IGCSE
chemistry students' practical skills from
home, so whatever time of day it is for
you in the world hello and good morning
from the UK. So welcome to our webinar on
how to improve your Cambridge IGCSE
chemistry students' practical skills from
home I'm Tamsin Hart from Cambridge
University Press and I'll be hosting
this webinar for our speaker Michael
Strachan we're running these webinars to
support you and your students whilst you
continue to adapt to teaching and
learning remotely.
Let me tell you about the webinar itself,
we're recording the webinar to share
with you afterwards, so don't worry if
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So that's all from me now, thank you very
much for joining the webinar, I'll join
you again for the Q&A at the end and now
over to Michael. Now Michael can you
share your screen please?
Thank you very much
Tamsin, a very warm welcome, so everyone
I'd like to start by thanking Cambridge
University Press for inviting me to
this webina, but also to everyone who's
taking part as well I appreciate you
giving up your time to focus on and help
your students improve and I've got a
number of areas we're going to explore
today, but before I get into the main
part of the presentation what I'll do is
I'll very briefly introduce myself, so
I'm currently working in Dubai as Deputy
head of Repton school and I've been
there for four years prior to being
Deputy Head I was the Head of Science
I've also been Head of Science in
another international school, before that
I worked in London as part of the science
leadership team all in all I've been
teaching science around 15 years now, on
top of teaching I'm an author and
I've written three textbooks, I also
write lots and lots of resources and
packages for a number of different
publishers both online but also in print.
As well as being an examiner I'm an
international trainer and I've trained
now I think the count is eight different
countries I really enjoy training
teachers both in pedagogy but also in
chemistry, I'm a Lecturer in education for
the Universities of Birmingham and also Middlesex here in Dubai
on both the Masters education course and
also the PGCE
which is a British teacher training
modification and finally last year I
was elected a Fellow at the Chartered
College of Teachers.
Now a key question I think all of
us are asking is how can I develop
students' practical skills in chemistry
by distance learning to be really honest
with you it's going to be difficult
because chemistry is a practical subject
and I don't know about you but most of
my lessons for chemistry involve a
significant amount of practical work now
as we're teaching by remote learning
that becomes very very difficult, now I
could talk all day and I'm sure we could
debate and discuss how we could develop
student skills in chemistry in a number of
different areas, however I'm going to
focus today in our session on just four
areas because we only have about 45
minutes together. The areas I've chosen
to focus on are planning how to improve
students skills when it comes to
planning their practical work, collecting
data. A core part of the students'
practical work is gathering data
together this is very very complicated
when working remotely. Handling data how can we improve our ability for students to
handle data in graphing and other
mathematical forms and finally
interpreting data it's the key skills
you will need as scientists but also to
be successful on the IGCSE cambridge
courses.
I'll begin with looking at planning and
for this up taking things right back to
our assessment objectives so for Assessment Objectives AO3 on the right hand side of the
screen you should see a grid and this is
a grid that I use to track my students
over the course of the year. These are
all of the assessment objectives for
practical work and this is from the CIE
specification. If we look for planning,
while planning is assessment objective
AO3
to students must be able to plan
experiments and investigations
however regardless of remote learning,
planning experiments and designing
experiments is probably the least
practiced skill that we use. Now this is a
big difference between chemistry and
biology or physics. I teach physics and
biology as well as chemistry and in
these subjects it's much easier to have
open-ended experiments where students
can choose variables, design the
experiment themselves, because of the
inherent safety aspects of
chemistry and also the need for students
to learn specific techniques and
processes, we very rarely give students
the opportunity in chemistry to plan
experiments as much as possible, so I
think Assessment Objective 2 planning
experiments is the least practised skill
when it comes to our AO3 objectives so
what can we do during remote learning
to help students hone their skills
around this? Well one of the things I've
been using quite successfully is past
paper questions, if we look at the past
paper paper six, the alternative to
practical paper, generally one of the
questions on this paper, usually one of
the last questions involves students
having to plan an investigation so what
I've been doing is going through past
papers available on the CAIE website,
looking through Paper 6 and
extracting the planning questions and
then distributing these to my students. Now I like to mix things up a bit so how
I've been doing this is varied, sometimes
I'll just grab a question and you can
see this one on the right
hand side here, pop it up on the screen and
my students will view that in real time
and I might ask them in their copy books
at home to write down how they might
plan that experiment and we can discuss
it in real time on the screen. Other
techniques I've used include getting
students to write their answer to the
question and then share it with the
whole class now this will depend on the
software package that you're using the
one I use has the ability for students to
share their screens this means that the
whole class can see the work the
student's done and we can critique and
discuss the answers given. Another
technique I used is actually getting the
students to work in small groups four
or fives and give them five different
questions,
each student completes the five
questions and then one student from the
group will mark the answers. What this
does is it really improves and cements
the understanding of a particular
technique or practical in the students
mind by going through, repeatedly marking
answers, there's two kinds, a real insight
and expertise into how to plan that
practical the other bonus is I don't
have to mark the answer to that question
myself
which reduces my work weight finally and
this is probably the most fun part we can
personalize these questions. If you look
at these alternative to practical
questions they follow a fairly standard
format and so it's very easy to adapt
the question to include local context.
For example, last week I was working on
fuels in one of my classes and so I
adapted a question to include different
types of animal dung, being in the Middle East
historically the Bedouins would have
used camel dung as a fuel and by
introducing that concept
it brought relevance to lots of our
students.
Now a question I get quite often is
about home practical work and can
students actually do work at home
practically and I want to spend a few
minutes now just discussing some pros
and cons of practical work that takes
place at home. First of all as I've
already mentioned this science is a
practical subject and I passionately
believe that students should be doing
work in science and to pretend that
science is just around data handling or
a paper-based subject really isn't what
science is about I'm sure none of us
became science teachers because we
really enjoyed interpreting graphs, we
want to be doing something, practical
subjects through and through in my
opinion, also I think it's - to learn
more by doing things themselves actually
being involved in practical work and
learning by discovery, this to me is very
very important and so it's an aspect we
should try and promote as much as
possible. Finally I think this is a
really big one,
science is fantastic! It's interesting
because of the wonderful things that we
can do and to engage students in
practical work where they can see
different sorts of phenomena is a really
important way of engaging them and get
them interested.
My wife is an English teacher, lots of my
friends teach history and I feel sorry
for them because actually our subject
matter is the universe and everything
inside it, whereas they're limited
sometimes to just books and so I think
to engage students getting to do practical
work that awe and wonder is massively
important, however in terms of home
practical work there are some important
cons we have to consider, the first one I
would say, the most important one is
safety and this is really, really, really,
key. We must make sure that we are not
suggesting practical work for students
to take part in a home that potentially
could cause them harm or harms other
people, but also stay with this remember
that often students will be unsupervised
at home or supervised by a parent or
non-specialists, there's a second aspect
of the safety which is not about
physical safety but about your safety as
a teacher you must be mindful if we
suggest some work for students to do and
it goes awry and the students become hurt,
or there's some kind of negative impact
we might be liable for that having
suggested for them to do that work so
you've got to be very, very cautious around suggesting practical work
for students to do for that reason. The
second aspect in terms of home practical
work is equity of access, not all
students have access to the same things
at home
this means we might suggest a practical
for this use to do, but we would exclude
some of our students because they simply
haven't got the equipment apparatus or
ingredients at home. Now I know some of you might say
I'll set this practical
work as an optional activity and that's
fine, but we still might be ruling some
of our students out of access to that
because they just simply can't take part,
so for equity there must be very very
careful around what we suggest. Finally
parental support that's very very
important I work at a fee paying school
I'm sure many of you work at fee paying
schools, but regardless if it's a fee
paying school, or a state funded school
having a positive relationship with
parents is really important. If we start
asking the children to take part in
experiments that require lots and lots
of ingredients that parents don't have,
well that might put pressure on parents
and might sour the relationship. Equally
if parents come home and find a big red
stain on the ceiling and ask their
children where did that come from
and they say well because Mr. Strachan
told me to do this wonderful experiment that
also might cause problems so although
I'm not saying don't do your own
practical work I'm saying we need to
think really carefully about what we
suggest for these reasons. That being
said there are some really great
practicals that can be done at home. When students can collect data which are very
very simple, contain ingredients that all
students will already have at home and also are really safe, so
for simple investigations I'll run
through fairly quickly and I really
enjoyed doing these in school but they
can be done outside of school as well
the first one what affects how many
drops of water can be added to a coin.
Every student will have a coin at home
somewhere, they'll have access to water.
Well this is great because students can
really investigate variables, repeats,
anomalies, they can use different size of
coin, different faces of the coin,
different material to make the coin,
different temperature of water all of
these things bring a variable to the
experiment. What affects the mass
before it cracks and this one's slightly
messy but actually it's only an egg so
again lots and lots of variables to be
included here, for the students to get
involved in and again it brings an
element of interest for them. Classic
experiment in saturation, what affects
how much salt will dissolve in water?
Again salt and water, nearly everyone
will have this home and again students
can plan their the variables temperature,
water, mass of salt, volume of water lots
of variables and lots of really good
data that they can collect. What affects
evaporation rate. They can go into the
kitchen get a coffee cup, a tea cup, a
saucepan, a frying pan, a saucer and
explore how diameter affects evaporation
rate, how volume affects evaporation rate,
how temperature affect evaporation
rate. All of those really good science
they can experiment variables, control
variables, but actually really simple,
really safe not too messy and then
finally my own personal favorite. What
affects the melting temperature of ice,
again it's very simple.
Ice cubes, water, a thermometer, some salt
and it's a very very simple practical
and again lots of variables for students
to get involved in, change, keep the same,
lots of things that can be collected and
it's real science, there's real
science underlining it. One of the things
I haven't mentioned so far, we need
mindful because there are lots of
experiments and home experiments on the internet that students do and they're
really good fun, but let's remember
they're not about science investigations.
So it might be making bath bombs, or
making soap, or making hand cream and these
are valuable, they are interesting and as
you will enjoy doing them but it's not a
real science investigation of the type
that we're trying to train up students to do.
So if I move on down to the next area
that I'd like to speak about and that's
around collecting data, now this is
probably the difficultest, the most
difficult aspect of practical work
remotely because students really can't
do the practicals themselves. Now I've
mentioned already home experiments and
it's possible to collect data from home
experiments however, the type of data
we're going to collect is going to be
limited due to the fact that
measuring the dependent variable is
going to be very tricky and quite
accurate. The balances that students have
at home, the thermometers they have at
home are unlikely to be accurate enough
to give really meaningful data, so
though we can use home experiments, it's
not the best source. We could use prepared
data and there are databases and prepared
data on the Internet. I'll speak a bit
more about that in a second, when it
comes to handling data but really for
collecting data, giving pre-prepared
attitudes isn't the most interesting
work, this leads nicely onto virtual
simulations and so virtual simulations
is something I'll explore a little bit
now as a way for students to collect
data before they then go on to process
it themselves. Now there are many
software packages both free and also
proprietary that we can use, I'll just
share one that I use quite a lot so I
think it's really easy and it's quite
good, it's called PHET. I'm sure many of you
have seen this before it's from the
University of Colorado it's completely
free software package, it's all web-based
and for me that's really important
because it means that students can have
access to this themselves so if they have a
web browser they can access it all. The
simulations are free, you can embed them
if you want to do so, if you have a
school VLE or a small website you can
embed the code, but actually it's really
good because you can access it without
any usernames, without any password or
login, now if I click on this hopefully
it will work and take us straight through
through to the site, so hopefully you can
now see my browser this is an example of
a simulation and there are a number of
different simulations, hopefully you can
see my screen good, Tamsin can you
confirm you can see my my browser screen
right now on the experiment. I'm seeing your
PHET screen now. And you can see me moving around the pH meter?
I think we've got a little lag at the
moment. Okay I'm just, give me two seconds, I'll
just make sure I'm sharing the right screen.
Here we go, can you see a pH meter? Yes I
can! Glorious, thank you so much, okay the joys
of Zoom, so here's a very, very basic
simulation, this is one looking at pH and
what I really like about PHET is they've
built in lots of aspects that make the
experiment quite realistic. I'll show you
here is an example here is tap for
water, so I can measure water coming in.
I'm not just typing in an exact amount I've
to use some skill and I've put too much
there, I want five hundred centimeters
cubed, but I've put in too much so I have
to actually go for the second tap here and
then move it out and you can see it's
actually a bit of skill that's required to
measure the correct volume there for my
experiment. Now what I would do in this
scenario is I would give the students a
method and get them to produce a results
table and after that I would say right
now go to PHET, here's the link, go to
the PHET and collect your data and so the
students would come to PHET and complete
the experiment, collect their data, we'll
reconvene in the science lesson and then
we'll do the handling data and graphing
etc and what's brilliant is there's a
lots of aspects here which can be used
for evaluation, so I have my dropper and
I might say let's see one how does the volume of what shall we have, orange juice, how does
the volume of orange juice affect the pH
change of water and they would have to
plan their experiment, they might say we're
going to start with 500 ml of water and
I would say ok, how does adding
drops of orange juice affect the pH of a
solution and they might have one drop
to two drops, three drops, four drops, now
please pay really careful attention when
I press the dropper it's not exactly the
same volume each time. I can press it
really quickly, or I can hold it for a
second and actually the volume of orange
juice added varies depending on how long
I hold the dropper for,
that's brilliant as it brings in an
aspect of evaluation students can talk
about, though
they can if they want to do a less
specific volume, because down here I have
the volume added, so it brings in error,
it's not just a straightforward
simulation. When students type in their
variables and a number is given to them
there are a number of these. I'll show
another one very, very quickly one of my
favorite ones, hopefully you can see this
one,  two seconds here bear with me
while I share the other screen. Tamsin can we see the?  Yes we can!
Wonderful thank you very much for double
checking that. So the negatives of not
being able to do practical work obviously very sad we can't do some aspects, but also
there's some positives to be gained, as
well ordinarily if I was teaching around
the greenhouse effect there's a classic
experiment of a round bottom flask
using antacid tablet full of carbon
dioxide thermometer inside and then we
compare that to a round bottom flask
with just air, we shine a lamp into that
and we compare the temperature change too - that's a nice simulation of global
warming or greenhouse effect in the lab.
Here I can actually look at the
different variables affecting the
atmosphere and global warming  on a global scale its actually
a real simulation and go up to 1750
and see how the concentration of carbon
dioxide in the air was different.
That's the last last ice age and so
let's be really positive here although
there are some negatives around not being able
to do pratical work there are a lot of
lots of positives to when it comes to
using simulations, so those are some
simulations I just thought up suggest
there are many, many options out there
but now there are a couple that I
would use and PHETis good also for
physics and for biology - we're going to
straight back to my presentation.
Tamsin this is the last time I promise but can you see my.  I can see PHET at the
moment. Ah ok. Handing data? Handling data yes indeed. Sorry that's the last time Tamsin
thank you for your help I do appreciate it.
Ok so we've looked at planning and how students
can still plan experiments and practice
planning experiments, we've looked at how they
can still
do experiments to an extent when it
comes to home practicals, we've looked at
methods that they can use to collect
data be that home experiments or be that
actually using simulations. Let's move on
now to looking at handling data and again
I'm going to keep this kind of honest
and keep us close to the specification
so I've included at that screen grab
there from the specification and looking
at mathematical skills and really
focusing in on what is it that students
must be able to do in terms of
mathematical skills and particularly for
handling data, the key thing here is
interpreting graphs, draw graphs, select
suitable scales, and actually use the graphs
so what can we do to really improve
students skills around those key aspects.
Well first of all there are resources
out there to support and the Cambridge
University Press
IGCSE chemistry practical workbook
includes sections on handling data for
every single investigation so the
practical workbook will have the method
that will have areas for the result of
the recording, but every single practical
has a handling data section to really
perfect and hone those skills so please
look for a source that you can use to
help students and now here's an example
of one of the practical experiments that
we will have in the book is
chromatography classic experiment
looking at a distance moved by spots of
ink on a chomatogram and this is taken
straight from the book now the issue is
that students are very unlikely to be
able to do the experiment at home and
that gives us a problem, because we have
the handling data would be quite
different to do but without the data
there they can't handle it so we have
pre-prepared data, on the teachers guide
that accompanies the practical workbook. All of this data was done by myself in
the lab where I spent many many hours do
all the practicals collecting all of the
data so any practical work from the CUP
chemistry practical workbook series has
sample data for you to use now. It's possible to go online and find examples of sample
data, or if you need to you could also
create sample data yourself, but don't be
afraid of giving students sample data to
work with if they're unable to collect
their own data. In fact if I'm honest
sometimes even during normal times when
there isn't remote learning going on
there'll be situations where I'm happy
to use sample data. Potentially there isn't
enough time to do all the practicals, it
might be that we don't have the
resources,
sometimes the practical just doesn't
work there'll be students who through no
fault of their own will not be able to
collect data.
Some students are absent and otherwise
will not be able to complete really
important aspects of their chemistry
skills, so sample data wherever
you get it from is important and
don't be shy to use that if you have to.
Let's do graphing skills now this
is a key part of handling data and if
we're being honest leaving every past
paper I've seen will include aspects of
graphing, there's nearly always a graph
question. The problem with graphing is it
takes a lot of time, I don't know about
your students, but for my students it
usually is something that's quite rushed
toward the end of the lesson. They're
really enthusiastic about doing the
practical they love collecting their
data, but then there's lots of groans and
moans and I say right guys, now it's
time to use the data and plot a graph, it takes lots of time of the end of the lesson, sometimes
rushed, sometimes not completed, often
also there's a homework sometime then
again not completed so graphing skills
is something is really important but
often we don't really give it the time
it needs because it's so time-consuming.
In remote learning students have a fair
bit more time if they're not doing the
practical work that means they're not
collecting equipment, setting up
equipment, packing equipment away that
means I've actually got more lesson
time with the students. What I've been
doing with them is really drilling them
with a number of key skills and graphing is one of them, now I'll share with you a
technique that I've developed this is
just me that I use with my
classes, but I've found it very
successful the students like it and
obviously there's a really positive impact on
the quality of the graphs they produce
but also their confidence when it comes
to graphing they don't groan and moan as much
now when they see a graph question we do
graph
in a lesson it's really simple and it's
called SLAPUK it's a nice easy thing
for children to remember and each of
these letters stands for a really
important aspect of a graph that the
students will have to remember so what
my students will do when there's a graph
question or ask them to do a graph it's
a piece of work they're doing they'll
write the letters SLAPUK in the
margin somewhere on their work and as we go through the graph they'll tick each
aspect off as it's completed so it's
been with scale and this a real bug bear
of mine when I'm marking students work
their graphs are often far too small so
we say scales really important and make
sure that the graph is more than half
the page if you actually look at marked
schemes for past papers it'll often say
the graph has to take up more than half
the page and so that's a rule of thumb
that I use that's just good science the
bigger the graph is the more chance
that students have of having an accurate
graph and it makes it easy for them to
plot their points. Intervals must be
regular and I have spent a lot of time
I'm sure you have too looking at graphs
where students go up in strange numbers
threes, nines, fourteens this makes it very, very
difficult for them to plot them off
actually even harder for you as the
teacher to mark their work so I insist
that my students only go up in ones,
twos, fives, tens, fifties, hundreds these
regular numbers make it much easier for
them to block their graph accurately so
S stands a scale, L looks that's the line
of best fit and this is one of the
things that students will often forget to do don't they'll plot a graph beautifully all the
points are on there however they'l lose a
mark because they haven't plotted the line
of best fit and without the line of best
fit it makes it very tricky sometimes
for them to see the pattern in the graph.
Axes and labels again another part of
the graph is commonly forgotten by students
in their rush to plot their points
they often forget the basics the key
things they need to do and actually
labelling the axes is one of those.
The plot now again I'm quite strict with
my students I give them a one millimeter
tolerance, that would be a one small
square on a piece of graph paper so they
need to be really accurate, a technique
I use with them is called the
reverse checking method what they will
do is they will plot a graph and then
they'll cover up the results. The users
plot the graph from and draw a new results table
based on the data from the graph they've
just drawn. If the data they draw on
their results table from the graph
they've just drawn matches their source data
that means they've plotted their graph
accurately and there are no errors if
the discrepancy is there it means that they
need to go back another look at their graph
because it's obviously mistakes on there
this takes a bit more time but the
payoff is that you don't lose marks on
their graph. U, units I'm sure in common
with nearly every teacher the number of
times all right please add units it's
phenomenal and but it's a key part of
the graph and they will again lose marks
for not including that so it's really
important to make sure that students are
always including their units on their
graph it's just good science and that
we're trying to train our students to be good scientists onwards into an A-level or IB
onwards into universities, so getting
these basics right are really, really
important so when I'm marking students'
work in my class this is what I use as a
guide for myself to mark them and I'll say
is the scale correct is there a line of
best fit, are the axes labeled, is
there a plot accurate, are the units there
and finally sometimes depending on the
type of graph don't need to be a key so
if there are two lines on a line graph
or it was a bar graph with different
variables I will ask there to be a key
on there as well so when I'm marking my
students work they know this is why I'm
looking for I think it's really
important for the students  to know what
they're working towards and their
assessment objectives all of my students
know every time I mark their work this
is what I'm looking for
actually when I'm marking I write this on
their work as well it's really improved
their confidence and crucially it's
really improved the quality of their
graph work. Okay if we're moving on now,
interpreting data, so the final aspect
we're going to look at today is
interpreting data and again I bring you
back to the assement objectives
experimental skills and investigations
and it's really important for them to be
able to interpret data now here's where
I'm gonna go a little bit off script and
a bit of an interesting, it's
a technique that I'm going to describe
which isn't particularly scientific but
it's something that I use as a really
important way to engage the students and
improve their ability when it comes to
interpreting graphs and I find most of 
my students are English as a second
language learners, English is not their
first language and often they lack the
language ability to describe what's
going on in the graph they'll really
they'll try and jump in straightaway to
explain or they'll describe when they
should be explaining so it's a really
important aspect of our training of
the students and their education to be
able to look at it wrong and understand
that and interpret that so what is that
there are issues and there are
difficulties of some of our students
with training we can improve, so what I'm
gonna speak about for the next few
minutes is a technique again that I use
with my students that you may find you
might find useful
so here the technique that I've got it
on the screen there a picture of a graph,
this is a graph from an A-level biology
question now you might wonder why for an
IGCSE chemistry class would I use an
a-level
biology graph, the reason for that is to
take away any kind of subject knowledge
what this does is it means that students
are not thinking about explaining or
they can see because the students really
would have no context, they might have an
idea about what the concentration of
ethanol is, yeah absolutely, but the
intensity of red coloration, an arbitrary
unit makes makes it a very complicated graph
for the students, they have no expertise
on this and no real understanding, so
they cannot explain, they have no ability
to explain what this graph shows, what that
does is it forces them just to describe
they can only describe what the graph
shows. Now I've used lots of different
sources
you can go outside of science I've used graphs from geography, from business,
any sort of numerical data in the graph
format can be used to remove the subject
expertise of the students and force them
just to describe what's happening, so
that's the first part of the technique.
What I've done with this one often is
giving students multiple different
graphs on a worksheet while remote
learning and ask them to go through and
describe what's happening in each graph we
come together as a class, I'll put each
graph on the screen and go around the
room as they okay
Ahmed what did you have, how did you describe this graph?
Sasha can you now describe
graph number 2.
What is that showing? Miriam graph number three can you  describe the pattern and
that data and so by focusing on those
skills are describing focusing on the
language that really empowers students and improves their ability to describe what
they're seeing in the graph, here's where we get a little bit interesting and I think
this is a pretty much one of the best
techniques that I've developed with my
own students and it's around
storytelling and the students are much
better at telling stories than they are
describing graphs I think that's probably
true of all human beings
okay humans generally. I'm very good at
telling stories so what does this have to do with a graph, what does this have to
do? Well I say, imagine the graph is a film okay and
you're gonna tell me the story of the
film
so first things first what's the general
pattern, what's the general pattern of
the data and they have to mention both
variables and I say this is a bit like a
film or a story in that
it's that plot so overall in the film
what is generally happenin? Let's take
the film like Titanic, what happens in
Titanic? While they're on a boat it hits
an iceberg and the ship sinks.
Generally that's the plot of the movie
so overall in the graph we just showed
my students say well as the concentration
of ethanol increases the intensity of
red coloration, an arbitrary unit also
increases so very soon they've got a
plot line there, overall what is
happening so that's simple and that
would, you know when I'm marking their
work I'll give them credit for spotting
that. That's fine
however is it true for the whole plot
if that pattern is the plot true is that
whole thing is there anything
interesting to happen to specific points?
I said these are the interesting parts of the
story, but plot twists ok, so
it's really important for them to look at
the plot twists and the interesting bits
of the film's although in Titanic yes
this ship hits the iceberg and sinks but
what else happens in the story you know
are there plot twists? An interesting
part and again we'll go back to the
graph very, very quickly, what I'll say is
ah it is the pattern the same all the
way through? Are there interesting parts And the
students say well actually between zero
and hundred twenty there's a really
small increase, not very much increase at
all, they say after 30 there was a very
very steep increase, they might say that
reading for 40 didn't really fits in
with a pattern of the others so we look
for the plot twist what's the
interesting bits what are the anomalies
the students are then looking for a little
little aspects of the graph that don't
fit in and again that comes down to
training them and getting used to a
certain way of looking at graphs every
single time when they start doing this -
the first time they'll think you're crazy
they won't really get it, but actually
once you've trained them a number of
times doing this it becomes second
nature to them and they'll do it almost
automatically, again it's exciting that
I've found especially by remote
learning a way to really improve
students ability when it comes to
graphing. Again I'll come back to 
resources and there are a number of
resources, here's another example from
the CUP IGCSE Chemistry Practical Workbook
where again, built into every single
investigation
there are graphing opportunities, but also
opportunity to interpret data so the
students here for this example would plot a
graph and then they'll be an expectation that
they would answer questions and take readings from the graph, so again there are
resources out there for you to use that
can also support and strengthen by
remote learning what you're doing now.
I'm conscious of time and we're getting
very close to the 45 minute cut off so
I'll just start to summarize now
mindful you'll have lots of questions
I want to give plenty of time to
answering those questions, so in summary
what did we kind of cover today what are
the key messages that I'd like you to take
away from this session?
Well the first one is we can still do practical, that's the key thing let's not abandon
practical working, we can still
do practical work but please we need to take
care with this for the reasons I
mentioned safety, equity of access but
then let that scare you there are still
possibilities as I described of simple,
safe, accessible practicals for students to
do and where we can we should definitely
try to promote practical work as science
teachers and not let students completely
lose those skills in the remote learning
period so that's the first thing I'm
emphasizing, please try if you can to
promote some practical work but it needs
to be the right way, not just when it's
bang let's make soap, or let's make bath
bombs, that's fun and there's nothing
wrong with that but it doesn't really
fit in with the skills the students need
to have as scientists as part of the
IGCSE science specification. The second
thing is it's absolutely possible to
still collect data so even though we are
not physically doing it we can still
collect data by simulations or from
the home investigations let's not throw
up my hands and give up and say well we
can't get data, there's nothing wrong
with using simulations. Of course we would all rather be doing real practical work in
the lab I know that I'm the same, however
if we can't do that let's look for the
next best thing and as I've shown with
PHET and there are other packages out
there, other software out there we can
still get students doing practical work,
collecting data and with the right
packages they're even aspects error and
evaluation that could be built into the
investigation, so please don't be shy of
using simulations, nothing wrong with
that that's all pre-prepared data,
absolutely fine to use again we want to get students plotting graphs, handling data, doing
maths based on their data. It's
absolutely fine to give students data
whether that comes from a package like
the IGCSE CUP Practical Workbooks
that's fine, or your own data that
you've come up with yourself practically,
or whether you find it from other
sources on the Internet,
that's also absolutely fine, but if you
want students to practice those having
data skills we need to give them some
data so please do carry on giving students
data to handle
and this was really the hardest sell but
actually interpreting data can be fun
and we just have to look for lots of
opportunities that we can use to give to
students and look at having data
interpretation in a different way. I
think if we look at it you know with a bit of a sideways
glance we can make interpreting data fun
and I think if we do those things then
the students are much more likely to be
engaged and much more likely to want to
take part in our remote learning
chemistry weekly sessions. all right I
think that's everything in terms of the
content that I wanted to cover today so
I think this is the point now where I
hand back to Tamsin and I'll try to
answer questions for you to put to me, I think. Wonderful thank you so much Michael right so it's
been wonderful having you here today
thank you so much Michael you've done a
wonderful job today, thank you so much
thank you all for coming and thank you
for your great questions. We've had some
lovely thank yous coming in from
everyone who's attended today for you
Michael, so goodbye everyone
I'm going to end the session here enjoy the
rest of your day and good luck with your
teaching!
