Are you looking for creative teaching tips for Cambridge IGCSE™ Combined and Co-ordinated Sciences? Then take a look at our blog post from experienced teacher and author David Martindill.
David is an author from our new Cambridge IGCSE™ Combined and Co-ordinated Sciences series. You can listen to David discussing more top teaching strategies with fellow author and teacher Dr Steve Owen in our Brighter Thinking Podcast episode on stretch and support in upper secondary science. You can also watch David’s webinar on ‘Tips to support teaching Cambridge IGCSE Combined and Co-ordinated Sciences’ and download his presentation.
David Martindill
The Cambridge IGCSETM Combined and Co-ordinated Sciences courses offer learners a distinctive opportunity to delve into the subjects of biology, chemistry, and physics. Students of the subject often have one teacher who takes responsibility for all three subjects, fostering stronger classroom bonds. As a result, there are prospects for cross-discipline, or synoptic, discussions. Some fascinating connections can be explored. Consider how photosynthesis is linked with energy transfers, or even how moments, homeostasis, and reversible reactions have features in common!
Despite these advantages, there are also some drawbacks to consider. Frequently, teachers may feel secure in delivering two science subjects, but rarely three. Consequently, they might find it challenging to introduce topics contextually and extend learners’ thinking. Moreover, sustaining their motivation can become a hurdle. Some learners prefer one or two of the three science subjects. How can we mitigate these issues?
A very effective strategy is to prioritise active, engaging, and collaborative learning opportunities. The great advantage of these methods is their versatility, as they can be easily integrated into almost any lesson. Whether used as an initial assessment, as a hinge question midway through a class, or as a plenary activity, they can prove highly beneficial. Furthermore, these approaches demand minimal planning, sometimes requiring just a few minutes of thoughtful preparation before the lesson. Let’s explore some of them.
What’s the story?
If you provide learners with a collection of key terms they could be asked to produce a short paragraph using all/ most/ some of them in a correct context. This approach helps alleviate the ‘cognitive load’ of recall, facilitating learners’ demonstration of higher-order thinking skills. This subtly shifts the focus from Assessment Objective 1 to 2, supporting those who might have forgotten some vocabulary.
A simple example would be to provide learners with these four key terms: oviduct, fertilisation, haploid, and diploid. There are a number of ways in which they could be incorporated into a paragraph. One would be to say that fertilisation involves the fusion of haploid cells, in the oviduct, to form a diploid cell. Introducing an element of competition can be fun. Who can produce a paragraph that reads well but has the fewest words?
What’s the question?
Encouraging learners to design questions from a brief mark scheme is a clever way of activating their knowledge and understanding. A novel approach to this is to ask learners to construct questions for provided answers. This is a great way to slightly modify the ‘traditional’ use of questions in lessons. To make it even more relevant and challenging, insist that learners use the correct command term in their questions. Some examples are shown in the table below.
Bingo
Why not host a competitive learning game called ‘bingo’ with your learners? Provide each learner with a grid of nine squares. Then provide 15-20 key terms on the board, taken from the topics listed in the syllabus. Learners select nine words at random to fill their grid. Ask a volunteer to read the definitions of each of the 15-20 key terms out loud and in random order. The first learner to tick off their nine words and call ‘bingo’ wins. You may wish to use examples of answers for which there are two or more possible questions, perhaps focusing on different science subjects. An example would be ‘two cells.’ Questions could include ‘what is an outcome of mitosis?’ and ‘what is a battery?’
Odd one out and taboo
Odd one out is an interesting way to encourage holistic, whole-syllabus thinking. It involves challenging learners to identify the similarities and differences between key terms by identifying which one is least related to the others. For example, the odd one out in the series ‘shark, dolphin, whale’ is most likely to be the shark, because it is a fish and the others are mammals. Some examples, however, prompt more debate. For example, the odd one out in the series ‘glucose, sucrose and starch’ could be glucose, because it is the only one to give a positive test with the Benedict’s reagent. But perhaps it could also be said to be starch, because this is only found in plants.
Taboo forces learners to consider how to outline a concept in an alternative way. Learners are to describe a concept to their peer without mentioning 3-4 key terms. For example, ask a learner to describe the structure of diamond to a fellow learner, but without using the key terms ‘carbon,’ ‘hard’ and ‘covalent.’ This forces them to reconsider their vocabulary and consider deeply their knowledge of the topic. Differentiation is easy – increase the number of taboo words!
Opportunities for very high-order thinking are possible with both activities. Could you encourage learners to identify the odd one out, or engage in the taboo activity, using words taken from each of the sciences? With plenty of imagination, you could!
Making links
Providing opportunities for unusual tasks can help learners develop their higher-order thinking skills. A good example is to encourage them to look for patterns and connections in their learning. Ask them to brainstorm every situation in which they measured time in an investigation. Or at least two situations in which the risks of an investigation have been the same. Analogies are another opportunity to develop similar skills. How is the flow of current during electrolysis like the pulmonary circulation, or how is a battery like a mitochondrion? Perhaps prompting learners to write an examination-style question that includes all three sciences. Obvious examples could involve anaerobic respiration, rate (speed) of reaction and motion. A question could feature the context of an athlete running in a race. Can your learners think of any others?
Summary
The ideas presented in this blog post are diverse but have some key themes in common. Making sense of the science for themselves, rather than being told what to think – therein the definition of active learning. The teacher can wander around the room, listening to the unfolding dialogue between learners. This is something that is often neglected and the benefits are enormous. Identifying and addressing misconceptions in real time is formative assessment in action, a powerful approach to facilitating learning. Extrinsic motivation versus intrinsic motivation. Which of these do you think would work best with your learners? Why? Can you conceive any others?
