Developing Leaders - I have seen the light!

Traditional science lessons have often begun with teachers presenting students with science vocabulary words and asking them to write the words, find the definitions in a dictionary or the glossary of the textbook, match the words to definitions, or use the words in a sentence. In this model of instruction, words are often presented in isolation and students are tested on the words alone, without application to concepts. In order to enable pupils to learn specific words, definitions and be able to talk confidently about science is a skill that needs to be developed over time and used often in lessons to help pupils to become self regulators in their own learning. One of the big problems that I see in lessons is that student can't talk about science or use high level literacy skills such as evaluate and analyse. They also struggle to make their own notes or write a detailed method to an investigation. This is going to be increasingly important as we see the removal of coursework and the practical skills are examined during the written test. So my focus for the course will be looking at closing the largest gap which is pupil premium students. I aim to achieve this by looking at improving literacy in science. I know from my A level students that they love to talk about chemistry and they find it a useful revision skill. So if I can implement the use of literacy in science, hopefully I will see an improvement in pupil premium students.