Sciences – National Qualifications Update
We can now confirm that three Higher Cross-Authority Writing Workshops will now take place as follows:
Session 1 – Evening session 5pm – 7:30pm on Wednesday 19th March and all day Thursday 20th March 2014. Venue: Stirling Management Centre, Stirling
Session 2 – Thursday 24th April 2014. Venue: SSERC, Dunfermline
Session 3 – Tuesday 27th May 2014. Venue: Glasgow, to be confirmed. Note: Date changed due to clash with Biology Markers’ Meeting.
The purpose of the days will be to provide practitioners with the opportunity to share existing materials developed for the Higher Sciences qualifications and co-develop further materials as required including resources for each Higher Unit, banks of questions etc. Our hope is that we will have groups collaborating to support all five sciences Highers including: Biology, Human Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Environmental Science. Education Scotland and SQA colleagues will also be attending to work alongside practitioners.
Each local authority is invited to identify one practitioner to attend. This should be a Faculty Head, Principal Teacher and/or someone with experience of developing course materials for national qualifications. Nominations should be sent to Grant.McAllister@educationscotland.gov.uk by 5pm Monday 10th March 2014. When submitting nominations please provide the following details: name, role, school, email, subject specialism and dietary requirements. Our hope is that the same representative will attend all three events to ensure continuity but we realise that this may not always be possible.
One place for each local authority is guaranteed providing nominations are received by the deadline. Places not claimed by this point will be reallocated to other authorities. A limited number of reserve places will also be available to ensure balance across each of the five Higher qualifications. Authorities can nominate a second individual, from a different subject specialism, to be added to this list. We will notify reserve list nominees about availability of places shortly after the deadline on the 10th March.
Other updates:
- The high-level summary notes, videos and presentations from the NQ Sciences events which took place at Hampden Stadium in December 2013 are now available on Glow: https://portal.glowscotland.org.uk/establishments/nationalsite/Science/DiscussionIdeas%20%20Noticeboard/Hampden%20events%20-%20NQ%20Sciences%20Dec%202013.aspx?PageView=Shared
Please note: you may need to click the compatibility view icon and/or refresh button in the top navigation bar of your internet browser to see the videos.
- At the Hampden events, one of the requests was for condensed versions of SQA documentation to be made available. A condensed guide has been produced by Brian Smith of South Lanarkshire Council and is now available on the NQ Glow Portal: http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/nqcoursematerials/subjects/s/nqresource_tcm4826680.asp
- Most of the N3 and Higher sciences materials commissioned by Education Scotland have now been published and are available on the NQ Glow Portal: http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/nqcoursematerials/curriculumareas/sciences.asp
An extensive range of course materials for Higher Sciences is available from Education Scotland’s NQ Higher Sciences website: http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/highersciences/
The cross authority writing group’s approach to National 5 Hydrogels assignment has been published on the NQ Glow portal. http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/nqcoursematerials/subjects/c/nqresource_tcm4827127.asp .
Highland council have kindly shared their mapping of changes from traditional higher to CfE Higher for Biology, Chemistry, Human Biology and Physics. Again available on the NQ Glow Portal.
South Lanarkshire have produced a guide to assessments in the sciences at national 3, 4 & 5. This has been adapted to into subject specific versions and are available on the NQ glow portal http://bit.ly/1lcuFGn
The sciences glow 365 site http:\bit.ly/glowsciences continues to be populated with more materials including resources for National 4 & 5 Biology, Chemistry and Physics.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has an educators’ group: http://is.gd/circulareconomy. The Ellen MacArthur foundation has a number of resources suitable across the sciences and interdisciplinary learning activities. The Scotland’s Environment Website Youth Discussion competition is aimed at 5-18 yr olds and closes on 31 March. The competition has an environmental theme so it could cover a range of areas within the curriculum.
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