Curriculum Links Part 1: Underlying Principles

In this blog, we look over some useful reading to consider when planning out your curriculum – what are some of the underlying principles upon which we should start to build. This is partly inspired by Matthew Benyohai’s blog where he discusses disconnect we sometimes see between principles and practices. This list is by no means exhaustive, and we’d love to hear any more

Curriculum Broader Themes: Embedding Equations Into The Curriculum

Adam Boxer goes into real depth about a way in which to embed equations and formulae into the curriculum to make them more manageable for students and to allow you to carefully build up their abilities. 00:00:00 Welcome and introduction 00:02:00 Outline 00:03:40 What contributes to the challenge of an equation question? 00:08:10 What is

Curriculum Soapbox: Radioactivity

Ruth Ashbee discusses how we need to be very careful in our use of language when talking about radioactivity. The KS3 booklet that Ruth discusses (as well as all of her other amazing KS4 physics booklets) can be found here.

Curriculum Chats: Electricity

Previously, we asked on the twitter page which topics in each of the sciences you thought required the most thought in the curriculum. For physics, you (perhaps unsurprisingly) chose the topic of electricity and in the video below, Bill Wilkinson, Ruth Ashbee, Gethyn Jones, and Tom Millichamp get together to discuss just that. Please let

How do you ensure that teaching in your subject enables pupils to know and remember more?

Ryan Badham (@mr_badham) is a second in charge of Science and an Associate Vice Principal at The Holmesdale School. How do you ensure that teaching in your subject enables pupils to know and remember more? This question was posed to me by a member of my school’s leadership team and the following blog is my

How can I use spacing in my A-Level class?

We know that by spacing practice over time we can help our students’ retention of core knowledge. What’s not so easy is a) convincing students that this is a good idea and b) actually implementing it in the day to day hustle and bustle of school life. In this blog, Rob King takes us through

How does cognitive load theory affect teachers?

We talk a lot about the cognitive load that we impose on students and how to get the most out of them without overloading. In this blog, Matt examines how he felt overloaded himself as he worked his way through a difficult explanation – it’s so important that we take this into account so that

How can I use explicit instruction to teach declarative knowledge?

Much of the teaching we do is of declarative knowledge: facts and ideas like what a giant ionic lattice is, or the parts of the EM spectrum or reflex arcs. Matt Perks has made many valuable contributions to CogSciSci and last year wrote a couple of really good blogs about common pitfalls teachers make when

How does a good night’s sleep affect student retention?

We are all probably worried that our students don’t get enough sleep. We are also probably worried that our students don’t remember as much stuff as we would like them to. In this blog, Andrew Watson looks at a simple experiment which tested the relationship between spaced practice and getting enough sleep. Definitely one to

Why do my students find it so hard to apply their knowledge?

Application of knowledge to another context is one of the holy grails of teaching – it means that your students can take what they have learnt in your classroom beyond the confines of those walls. In cognitive science literature, this is referred to as transfer, and is by now a well-researched concept. In this blog,