Science in y9

[exgov]

My ds is in y9 and has just been given books for each science - e.g. OCR Gateway GCSE Physics - Revision and Classroom Companion. This book appears to cover all the information needed for 6 modules of the GCSE Physics course (66%, not including practical assessments.). But it's only about 90 pages of big writing - it covers a lot of interesting topics but with no depth. Someone please tell me this isn't the whole of a GCSE science course? And if it is, what is he going to be doing for the next two years, because I'm sure they could cover this lot by the end of this year! I know nothing about what is covered in the modern courses - could anyone enlighten me?

[PuzzleRocks]

Bumping for you.

[scienceteacher]

I don't teach the OCR course, but you ahve said the book has revision in the title, so that would suggest that it is just summarising the information.

We do the Edexcel course, and the textbooks are reasonably detailed but they don't cover the full specification. There are loads of extra resources that we use, which are companions to the textbook.

[exgov]

Thanks, scienceteacher (and puzzlerocks).

Someone suggested to me today that they may be starting GCSE thoughts early, since the KS3 SATS have just been pulled from under them - that hadn't occurred to me. I suppose the work for y9 is still to be done, but there will be spare time that was to be used to practice papers, do revision etc. And I suppose good teachers would teach extra depth anyway, even if it wasn't in the syllabus - wouldn't they? If they thought it important (she adds hopefully...)

[scienceteacher]

The GCSE specification is quite different to anything they have have been doing in KS3. They have only just changed the KS3 specs and so far it is only affecting the current year 7.

We have never been constrained by SATs at our school, and I generally teach up in Year 9. That means that I cover the QCA topics for Year 9 but in the depth that you would expect for GCSE and beyond. I do much the same for my Year 8s for topics that are not visited again in KS3.

In GCSE, the course is much broader than it has been in recent years, and consequently a bit shallower. There is a great emphasis on 'How Science Works', which includes lots of issues and current affairs which haven't traditionally been part of a science specification.

[snorkle]

I've not been very impressed by what I've seen of the science GCSE courses. Ds is in year 10 and a natural scientist, but the course is very undemanding and I personally think lets children like him down.