Science Education News (SEN) Journal 2018 Science Education News Volume 67 Number 1 | Page 55

YEARS 7 – 12 IDEAS FOR THE CLASSROOM

By Dr Col Harrison ; Coordinator of Science , The Pittwater House School

The first really new Stage 6 curriculum for almost 20 years deserves to be accompanied by a new approach , and that certainly appears to be the message given both during its development and following its launch . Now it is time for the Science teachers of New South Wales to get to grips with a prescribed inquiry approach to their teaching , and terms like ‘ depth study ’ and ‘ including , but not limited to ’. For my money , one of the biggest challenges has been the interpretation and delivery of depth of coverage in stage 6 Science courses within a limited time frame . Incorporating technology , such as a blended learning or a flipped learning approach , may help drive difficult content delivery out of the classroom and free up some time during class for more investigations and group and individual problem solving .

As a life-long learner I have been constantly reflecting on how to improve the quality of my own teaching and this prompts professional reading , collaboration , and often , further study . The movement of conceptual transfer from the classroom to the available technology to allow students to review this material at their own pace has been gathering momentum over the past decade . Such new pedagogies as ‘ blended and flipped learning ’ are beginning to appear more regularly in the literature , with regard to their impact on student learning ( Herreid & Schiller , 2013 ; Tucker , 2012 ). The flipped model , in broad terms , pushes the didactic transfer of information from the classroom to a video format that can be viewed at home . Then homework questions , which students often struggle to complete , can be undertaken in the classroom with peers , and under the supervision of the teacher . This flipped learning model has been gaining some traction , but still has its critics ( Jensen , Kummer , & Godoy , 2014 ). Some of this research has also been undertaken in the context of senior Chemistry . Schultz , Duffield , Rasmussen and Wageman ( 2014 ) found that students who were taught using a flipped model performed statistically higher in assessments and were positive in describing its influence on their learning ( Schultz , Duffield , Rasmussen , & Wageman , 2014 ).

This article describes a modified flipped learning approach to support the 2018 Year 11 Chemistry curriculum . The WRX ( Watch , Read , eXplain ) outlines the sequence students undertake as a component of their commitment to Chemistry . Instead of being set questions and worksheets for homework , students are provided with a video on youtube to view , in addition to one or more pages from the prescribed text to read prior to class . Most classes then begin with a review question or two and an activity , which could be an inquiry-based investigation , a modelling activity , a series of questions related to the concepts or even some group problem solving on mini whiteboards . The WRX work tracker is updated each week in order to let students know what they need to watch and read in preparation for class ( a term tracker is great , but in schools , almost impossible to follow ). An example of the work tracker is shown in Table 1 .

Table 1 : WRX Work tracker

Before Wednesday ' s lesson Watch Video PSM # 8 AND / OR Read Text pp . 81-83

Before Thursday ' s lesson Watch Video PSM # 9 / 10 AND / OR Read Text pp . 97-99 , 101- 103

Before Friday ' s lesson Watch Video PSM # 11 / 12 AND / OR Read Text pp . 86-87,90,96- 97

Several years of producing flipped learning videos , which can be found at www . youtube . com / PassingNotesOz , has taught me probably more lessons than my students . The most critical piece of student advice I received , which created much greater leverage in terms of students actually watching videos to the end , was “ the videos are too long , you need to cut them down ”. An easy solution was to argue that some concepts could not be cut back and needed to be dealt with in an extended way in order for students to grasp the concepts . This was just an easy solution , so it was better to think about how else the flipped approach could be structured to maximise learning time in the classroom . Years of feedback and experience has refined the process and given birth to the Chem300 series ( See figure 1 ).

Figure 1 : Intro for the Chem300 series on youtube .

55 SCIENCE EDUCATIONAL NEWS VOL 67 NO 1