How we got on with the A2 in 2002: report from Taunton's College, Southampton
What students like most about the Nuffield Chemistry A2 is the investigation. Our students are encouraged to choose individual topics and to research them carefully. We use the investigation as extension and differentiation material for our best students too. The facts of commercial life being as they are in the under-funded FE sector, we also have to use their reports as key skills portfolio material and have awarded key skills level 3 in IT and in communication for the best of them. No luck with application of number, but then a chemist who can't do sums is a bit of liability in the lab in any case! We've had students looking at beer, wine and Sprite, the vitamin C content of fruit juices and how this changes, corrosion studies ( a lost archaeologist who wanted to find out at what rate Excalibur might rust) and polymer compositions.
What students have found most challenging has been the lack of mock examination material. This cohort of students have been the guinea pigs from key stage 2 onwards and are tired of being told, however gently, that their teachers are not sure what they will be facing in the summer - especially in terms of the much altered synoptic paper. It's been a bit of a struggle to remaster old questions so that they conform to the new specification for Unit 4 too - and I am still a little at sea over the proposed changes to the balance of the special study questions. Fortunately, I have a group of great students who pat me on the head and say 'There, there' when they see that I'm struggling too.
The greatest challenge for teachers has been resisting the temptation to go and stack shelves in Safeways until the DfES re-establish contact with Planet Reality.
When teaching A2 Chemistry next time I [the teacher] will have a very much better idea of what is expected of the students in A2 papers. I was very disappointed with the spread of marks in the Unit 4 paper and have 'volunteered' to mark Unit 4 papers to find out just what my colleague and I were doing wrong.
It sounds as if I've done nothing but moan. There have been some good points. Teaching the AS second time around has been fun - but the kids are making adverse comparisons between the AS chemistry content and, for example, their physics specification. We should just about finish the specification this year, in spite of the awful mess that the Queen's Golden Jubiliee has made of the examination timetables this year. I guess that we are just more relaxed - teaching the same thing twice, with no syllabus changes, is a great luxury.
The students do like the emphasis on practical work - long may it continue - but funding issues mean that we are being pressurised to accept larger classes in labs whose size remains fixed. Graham Hall of Halesowen College's CD-ROMs have been a great help here, but looking at a monitor is not developing the manual dexterity or observational skills needed in any experimental science.
Jenny Wells