We have taught together for 14 years. Over that time in collaboration with other colleagues we have tried numerous strategies to improve the low A-level pass rate at our sixth form college with some success. During the Covid-19 lockdowns, we again looked at the question of how we could improve our teaching and our learners’ outcomes.
The result was a curriculum redesign aimed at helping learners better understand the fundamentals of chemistry. This was an intentional shift away from factual recall and analysing mark schemes. We reasoned that giving learners a better grasp of the chemistry fundamentals would allow them to tackle any exam question, motivate them to learn facts, and allow them to apply their knowledge to future situations.
Around 2600 learners attend our sixth form college in Cambridge, with around 80 in each year group studying chemistry. Our students have varied previous chemistry experience, including a mix of double and triple science GCSEs, and their prior attainment is lower than the national average.
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Fundamentals of chemistry, for age range 16–18
Fundamentals of chemistry provides preparation worksheets that together make up a module guide for learners, along with lesson worksheets and teacher guidance with answers to all questions. The first part of the course is available now.
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Fundamentals of chemistry, for age range 16–18
In the first part of Fundamentals of chemistry, find preparation worksheets that together make up a module guide for learners, along with lesson worksheets and teacher guidance with answers to all questions. Download the resources from: rsc.li/WHEELBARROW
A flipped approach
Our seven-week introduction to the A-level content – titled Fundamentals of chemistry – exemplifies our approach. We teach the OCR A-level chemistry B (Salters) curriculum, but this introduction course is applicable to many post-16 qualifications.
The teaching sequence is designed to help students pass through key thresholds in their learning. We have identified scale as an essential theme with lessons presented in order of increasing scale – from subatomic particles, to atoms, to molecules, to giant structures. Learners encounter key ideas, such as moles and intermolecular forces, multiple times at different scale levels.
We have produced a bespoke module guide which lists lessons in teaching order. Each student has a physical copy of this. For each lesson, they complete two pages of preparation work independently. The first page is revision and the second introduces new content, and has page references to our online Kerboodle book to encourage students to read ahead. Typically, teachers start the 90-minute lessons by checking that learners have completed the preparation work while learners complete a short question (usually a calculation on an appropriate subject).
In every lesson, we give learners worksheets that include questions to cover all pertinent content and challenge misconceptions. We find Johnstone’s triangle incredibly helpful in getting students to think about the relative scale of different aspects of chemistry – all our worksheets include macroscopic, submicroscopic and symbolic in a banner at the top. At the end of each week, we post answers for the preparation work and worksheets on our Microsoft Teams channel. The marking of these forms part of students’ weekly independent work.
Teaching tips
If you’re looking to introduce flipped learning workbooks to your post-16 teaching, here’s what we’ve learned:
- Focus on the most important facts. The revision section of the preparation work should be directly relevant to the new lesson content and review only essential ideas. Avoid attempting to mop up misunderstandings at this stage.
- Limit the amount of new content. The preparation work should be a gentle introduction so students don’t find it too daunting to compete.
- Base learning on observed phenomena. For example, ask them to explain how the bond angle in methane is 109.5⁰ when p-orbitals are at 90⁰. This avoids students learning a set of the rules, such as how to determine bond angles, without being able to link that information to other knowledge.
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Consider teaching content that is not on the curriculum. Sometimes knowledge beyond the exam specifications can help students better understand the chemistry they do need to know. We helped our learners improve their understanding of shapes, for example, by teaching orbital hybridisation, a topic that is not directly examined at A-level. - Avoid repetitive questioning. Sequence questions in each worksheet to introduce procedural and conceptual variation so you can check then challenge understanding. An example question of this type is ‘How many oxide ions are in a crystal of Rb2 O if there are 5 x 1021 Rb+ ions?’
- Build large models of giant ionic/covalent substances. We have combined model kits to build lattices with over 1000 ions. Ask questions such as ‘How big would this crystal be in real life and what mass would it have?’ This avoids common student misconceptions such as believing diamond is smaller than buckminsterfullerene because textbook images typically show a diamond lattice with about 20 atoms.
- Use diagnostic questions and mind maps to probe student understanding of terminology. Then, constantly check with them to determine if they are badly wording answers or have genuine misconceptions. What an element is and what a giant structure means are two common points of confusion. Also, be careful with your own use of language in class to avoid unintended confusion.
A positive outcome
Our learners’ response to this new way of teaching has been really encouraging. They are much more engaged with chemistry and we have noticed a massive increase in the number and type of questions asked in class, including more higher-order questions. Many of the student questions are quite creative and we are not always able to answer them easily. Learners’ written responses to exam questions have also improved.
This project has also reawakened our teachers’ love of chemistry. We are more aware of the issues faced by our chemistry students and are more empathetic to their needs.
We have begun applying this teaching approach to other areas of the A-level specification including polymers, rates of reaction and organic chemistry.
With thanks to our Long Road Sixth Form College colleagues Adam Al-janabi, Robin Baker, Deborah Giveen, Susan John and Bridget Sutton for their input into this article
Find out more about flipped learning
Here are some flipping good articles about this teaching approach and videos to use with your learners: