Purposeful Practicals – our menu of new resources
19 September 2024
Ally Davies, Science Subject Advisor
Practical science lessons are busy, noisy, exciting opportunities to explore skills and understanding from the GCSE specification. However, this can make it difficult to ensure everyone is safe, has collected good practical results, and has also understood why they are carrying out each task. While students will be able to tell you that they enjoyed the practical, will they also remember why they did it?
Our new research-informed resources support teachers and students to get the most out of practical lessons and have been designed to be especially helpful for early career teachers (ECTs) and those teaching outside of their specialism.
Choice
In our GCSE science qualifications, there are no ‘required’ practicals. We give teachers the freedom to choose any practical activities that meet the Department for Education (DfE) requirements for apparatus and techniques. These activities can come from our suggested Practical Activity Groups (PAGs) and any activities chosen or developed by the teacher. We know that some teachers value that freedom of choice, while others may prefer more guidance.
Purposeful Practicals Menu
Our new menu of Purposeful Practical resources has been prepared to give teachers guided choice – alternative ways of meeting the same practical requirements. Each suggestion in our Purposeful Practicals Menu is tagged to the existing PAGs so you can easily see how it contributes to the overall practical requirements of the specification.
Teacher and technician packs
Beyond the choice of activities, the resources give teachers and technicians everything they need to prepare and run the activities. Our resources include notes for technicians including health and safety guidance. We know that different schools have different equipment, so our packs help teachers and technicians to customise activities to work with the equipment they have available.
Research informed
Research shows that students understand the purpose of their practical activities (and learn more from them) if teachers have decided a clear focus and if that purpose is made explicit to the students. Each practical activity in our Purposeful Practicals Menu includes a set of questions to support students in developing procedural understanding. This helps teachers to make the purpose of the practical explicit – so students can more easily understand why a step is important, where to observe to understand what’s happening, and how to improve the validity of a method.
Our Integrated Instructions use a dual coding approach that has been shown to reduce extraneous cognitive load, helping students to focus on the teacher’s intended purpose for each practical activity.
Assessment
Our menu does not change any of the requirements of the specification or assessment. It’s simply a new, research informed set of resources to help all teachers, but one that we hope will be particularly supportive for those with less experience.
Support for Gateway and Twenty First Century Science
These resources have been prepared specifically to support the Gateway Science suite. As the practical requirements are the same for both our GCSE science suites, these resources can also be used by teachers and students of our Twenty First Century Science specifications.
Summary
Our goal is to empower teachers with the freedom to choose practical activities that best meet their needs while providing the necessary support and guidance. By offering comprehensive resources, clear focus, and flexibility, we aim to enhance the practical science experience for teachers, technicians and students alike.
Full resource packs will be available to download from Teach Cambridge before the end of September 2024.
For those without access to Teach Cambridge, one example of each resource will be available on our public website:
Stay connected
If you have any questions, you can email us at science@ocr.org.uk, call us on 01223 553998 or message us at X (formerly Twitter) @OCR_science. You can also sign up to subject updates and receive information about resources and support.
If you are considering teaching any of our qualifications, use the expression of interest form to let us know, so that we can help you with more information.
About the author
After teaching physics and science for over 20 years, Ally provided and managed professional support for teachers (at Isaac Physics and for the Institute of Physics). He joined OCR in November 2021. He is committed to making science education more inclusive. In his spare time, he enjoys nature and the outdoors, walking, cycling, and gardening.