SALTERS GCSE SCIENCE NEWSLETTER

Spring 2002

Reminder: Coursework Assessment Marks
Once again (doesn't it come round quickly!) we are approaching the time to send off your record of coursework assessment marks. Please note that the record sheets and MS1 form should reach your moderator by 15th May. This will be the last round of moderation and examinations under the scheme which has been in use since 1998.

Web-site:
Some Salters users may already be aware that we have a web-site for the Science Education Group at York, which includes a section devoted to Salters GCSE science.

This newsletter and all future ones will be on the web-site - making it available to anyone who cares to visit the site, either from your school or from home.

There is also a forum on the GCSE site. You can use it to pass comment on any aspect of the course or the support materials, or to ask questions. We hope that it will stimulate lively discussions between users. It would also be a very effective place to share information about useful resources. Have you found a video, leaflet, web-site, etc which has useful ideas or information? Please put a note about it on the forum!

In the past, attempts to establish user-groups have been frustrated by travel costs and the difficulty of finding times when everyone could attend. We hope that the web-site will allow easy communication and encourage users to share their experiences of the course. A lively forum could serve many of the functions of a user-group, without even the need to leave your key-board!

Support materials:
Both Teacher and Student materials have been completely re-structured to match the new specification. New Student Books (one for each year) now provide complete coverage of the required content, so that they can be used as a text for learning and revision, in addition to their use to support teaching in the classroom.

As always, we have drawn on the experience and expertise of teachers who use Salters. The six writers who have written the new chapters all have experience as teachers or examiners of the course.

Materials for teachers have also been completely redesigned. Now that the course content is covered in the Student Books, it is no longer necessary to have student sheets that deliver content. Thus, we have been able to cut down the number of sheets, and particularly, to minimise the number which students need to retain.

The Teacher and Technician Resource Packs (one for each year) contain notes and student sheets for activities which provide basic coverage for the specification. A CD-ROM contains files for all of this material, to make it easy for you to customise the course to suit your needs, or for different classes. It also contains student sheets for many other activities which provide alternatives, enrichment or extension to the ones in the TTRP.

Thus, you still have access to all the wide range of activities which make Salters so motivating, even though they are not all supplied as hard copy!

The year 10 materials have been very well received. The year 11 Student Book is due in June, with the TTRP following in July.

End-of-unit Tests
The end-of-unit tests are now available. If you are a user school, and sent in an order form for the tests, you should receive your free set by post within a few days. If they fail to arrive, contact the main OCR switchboard, and ask for the despatch department at Windsor Street.

For non-user centres, or for additional copies (at a cost of £5.00 each), contact OCR Publications division on 0870 870 6622.

The tests are available on paper only. For each unit, there is a 48 mark test. It should be possible to complete this (just!) in a 40-minute period. For use with lower achieving forms, the first 30 marks of each test provide a shorter test covering grades G - C only. This avoids the demotivating effect of facing lower-grade candidates with questions targetted at grades B, A or A*.There is a mark-scheme for each test, and a grid which can be used to record part-scores for a class, allowing analysis of how effectively each aspect of a unit has been grasped by the students.

Many thanks to teachers at the 20 user schools which took part in trials to help develop these new tests. Student scores on the tests were correlated with their final GCSE grades. The average scores of those who achieved each grade were: A*=36; A=31, B=29, C=25, D=21, E=16. Where students had taken tests for at least half of the units, the correlation between their average test score and final grade was good (+0.86). However, for individual test results, the correlation fell to just +0.12. The mean scores should be interpreted with some caution: average test scores for students who finally achieved grade CC ranged from 17.5 to 32.4!

Sc1.1: Ideas and Evidence
This new aspect of GCSE Science assessment forms part of Sc1, but is assessed through the written examinations. The overall weighting corresponds to about 6 marks on each exam paper (3 marks on the second day paper for single award science). Thus, it may well appear as part of a longer question.

The emphasis will be on showing understanding of principles, so questions will usually emphasise data interpretation rather than recall. An example is given in the final chapter of the new Student Book 2, as well as several in the sample examination papers (available on the OCR web-site).

Several spreads in the Student Books refer to aspects of Sc1.1. In the near future, we plan to compile a set of references which will be put onto the web-site.

The new coursework assessment scheme
The emphasis in coursework has been on continuity from the established scheme. Any activity you have used successfully can be used in the new scheme. However, there are opportunities to widen the scheme to include non-practical investigations (e.g. modelling using computer simulations, or data surveys based on web-searches). There are also changes to the aggregation rules.

It has been disappointing that very few Salters Centres seem to have taken advantage of the training meetings offered by OCR. Please make sure that you have received the OCR coursework support booklet (and studied its contents!). There will be a new round of training in the autumn. I hope that as many centres as possible will try to send staff.

If you have any comments regarding these items, please email

Peter Nicolson

or

Nancy Newton

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