The materials in this resource are from the Secondary National Strategy ‘Progressing to Level 6 and beyond in science’ project. They were intended for science teachers who are focusing on understanding students’ misconceptions.

The Understanding misconceptions teacher guidance file provides...

In this resource from the DfE Standards Unit, students learn to interpret numerical expressions using words and area representations, recognise the order of operations and equivalent expressions and understand the distributive laws of multiplication and division
over addition (the expansion of brackets). Most...

This resource looks at the key features, advantages and disadvantages of tidal power as an energy source. Students identify the features of a landscape which will maximise the effectiveness of tidal power, considering the ideal shape of the location, whether the machinery will interfere with other activities,...

Purpose: Some topics are difficult to teach and may benefit from providing additional contexts, so helping students make links between the topic and the wider picture.

Teaching approach:  Respiration is a topic that students find challenging.  In the past, there has only been a limited range of practical...

This booklet, with editable student worksheets and teacher's notes, gives six examples of how articles published in Catalyst could be used to help students develop their understanding of how scientists work.  It also suggests how similar activities can be developed...

[b]Functions and their derivatives:[/b] the objective of this activity is to develop skills in working with functions, their derivatives and function notation. The suggested activity begins by asking students to explain what is meant by f'(3) and what is the difference between f(2) and f'(2). There follows a...

This resource provides a lesson in which children understand and use negative numbers in the context of
temperatures. Looking at the temperatures of different cities, they find missing temperatures and temperature differences. Temperature scales are provided which could help children who need a visual...

In this resource from the DfE Standards Unit students are introduced to fractional and negative indices to enable them to evaluate numerical expressions using negative and fractional
indices and use the rules of indices with integer and fractional powers of variables. Students should have some knowledge of...

The materials in this resource are from the Secondary National Strategy ‘Progressing to Level 6 and beyond in science’ project. They were intended for science teachers who are focusing on using models (both physical and abstract) to teach and challenge students...

This QCA document describes through case studies and activities how the P scales can be used in a range of educational settings to assess the progress of students.

The P scales were designed, like the programmes of...

In this resource from the DfE Standards Unit, students make links between percentages, decimals and fractions, represent percentage increase and decrease as multiplication and recognise the inverse relationship between increases and decreases. Most students will have met these concepts before, however, many will...

In this resource from the DfE Standards Unit, students confront and overcome common misconceptions about probability, count equally likely outcomes using diagrams, discuss relationships between theoretical probabilities, observed outcomes and sample sizes and calculate probabilities of dependent and independent...

Produced by Becta, these case studies illustrate how information communication technology (ICT) can be used to enhance teaching and learning in science.

Particles and their behaviour are a hard-to-teach component of chemistry, not least because these are difficult concepts to visualise. This case study...

[b]Using positional vocabulary[/b]: the objective of this activity is for students to practise using positional vocabulary. The suggested activity requires students to hide an object in the classroom, then give directions to other students in order to find the missing object. The resource contains many prompts,...