Dissemination and Innovation Workshop Day One

Day One

Enhanced Teaching and Learning in the classroom

Yesterday began with an SLC project to enhance teaching and learning in the classroom. It involves 3-4 teachers from one department working collaboratively to plan a lesson. Whilst there were reservations about releasing teachers in one department at the same time, there was huge scope for not only improving teaching and learning but breaking the age-old fear of lesson observations being judgemental. This uses them properly. The group plan a lesson together but don't know who will teach it until a couple of days before so everyone has to be comfortable with the content. We tried the preliminary stage very quickly......chose a topic, wrote down how we would teach it, distilled all the best bits....... Hey presto - great lesson. In reality it takes a lot longer! But the potential for encouraging departments to collaborate is huge. When the lesson is taught, the rest of the group observe. They are reviewing the lesson - not the teacher - and looking specifically about the pedagogy of how science teachers can best help students to learn.


The Myelin Basic Protein Project

This example of Authentic Biology at school was truly amazing. Presented by Dr Dave Colthurst from The Simon Langton Grammar School, along with 2 year 13 students. To say that the students presented well would be a huge understatement. We were stunned at what they had achieved, how it was presented and at how Dr Dave Colthurst had made it happen. Find out about it here www.mbp-squared.com.


Nuffield Foundation

I was reminded of the many resources available from the Nuffield Foundation, but also introduced to some that are newly available. If you haven't visited http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/teachers recently - have a look. Practical work for Learning is new....... looks really useful


Genomics on the curriculum?

Bella Starling from NowGen summarised the work they have done to update curriculum content with respect to genetics and genomics. Again, useful and interesting with resources available for school here.   http://nowgen.org.uk/education/