Lifelong Learning Programme

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Teaching Resources

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TEACHING RESOURCES INFORMATION

TITLE OF TEACHING RESOURCE
Chemistry for Junior Certificate Science
IMAGE
NAME OF AUTHOR(S)
Various
NAME OF PRODUCER
Second Level Support Service (Chemistry/Science)
DATE OF PRODUCTION
2010 ongoing
TYPE OF PRODUCT
Web Site/Portal, Downloadable material
LEVEL OF CHEMISTRY KNOWLEDGE
Medium
PEDAGOGICAL APPROACH
Cooperative learning, Problem solving
SUBJECT AREA
Fundamental Chemistry
TARGET GROUP LEVEL
Lower Secondary School
LANGUAGE/S OF TEACHING RESOURCES
English
DESCRIPTION
Students in 90% of Irish secondary schools study science for the first three years as a combined science curriculum. the chemistry accounts for one third of the work and assessment and this web site is in support of the teachers and their preparation. It has been developed by a team of experienced teachers seconded from their teaching posts to provide virtual and actual support to teachers.
The aims of the Junior Science Support Service are:
to promote student-centred learning and investigation; to assist teachers to work together effectively in school; to assist non subject specialists; to help teachers to integrate ICT in science teaching and learning
This excellent website contains a wealth of support materials for teachers, including:
Science Syllabus: The revised syllabus document is set out in three sections. In each section, the main topics and sub-topics are described, along with the associated learning outcomes.
NCCA Teacher Guidelines, updated February 2006
Curriculum Plannning: Unit 9 of the planning document from the SDPI
Electronic graph paper: This simplified excel spreadsheet allows students to input data to produce a simple line graph. The graph is drawn as the student or teacher inputs the data.
Bulk recipes: This document contains quantities of solutions required per class for the three years - supporting the chemistry practical work.
Mind map reader: To view the interactive mind maps on this website, it is necessary to download this viewer. It is a zipped file which will need to be extracted before it is installed.


Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) for materials used in this section can be obtained from
http://chemistry.slss.ie/ph_materialsafetydata.html
COMMENTS
Excellent ideas to support teachers in their efforts to provide science education at this vital stage of the students' careers. The junior certificate should be an excellent foundation for studies in chemistry or any of the other sciences. However, in the event that the student opts not to continue their studies in chemistry they should at least leave junior certificate with some appreciation of the relevance of chemistry to their lives.
NAME OF THE REVIEWING ORGANISATION
Limerick Institute of Technology

Comments about this Publication

Your comments are welcome


Date: 2012.09.01

Posted by Tsechpenakis Sakis (Greece)

Message: Ι found this web site, superb!!! This portal is a “super tool” for the chemistry teacher of a junior high school. Of course some of the subjects presented, are not included in the Greek ministry of education, syllabus for junior high school chemistry, but the main skeleton remains the same.
In Greece, in order to organize our lesson, we are given some general directives for teaching the subjects, describing the necessary laboratory exercises throughout the year (4-6 per year) and the number of lessons we have to spend on each subject. I should point out that the Chemistry lesson in the Greek Junior High School Curriculum, is only scheduled only for one hour per week and only for the last two school years! This means that during the entire Junior High School, a Greek student, will attend, in the best scenario, about forty six 45minute lessons of chemistry. So, in such a limited time-schedule, a Greek Chemistry teacher, would make only a partial use of such a “rich” in resources, web site.
Surfing through this portal, made me admire, the power tools, our chemistry colleagues in Ireland, are equipped with! It literally organizes the daily courses of Chemistry, in a way that the teacher doesn’t have to improvise all the time to keep his pupils alert!! He is given a variety of resources and ways to approach a certain subject with just a click of the mouse! It depends on him to choose the resource he finds suitable for each class and subject.
The portal is organized in three greater sections:
a) Classification of substances
b) Air – oxygen – Carbon Dioxide- Water
c) Atomic Structure- Reactions- Compounds
Each section contains 5 to 10 subjects. Each subject, has the goals for the students already presented. The teacher and the students find themselves with 6 distinct parts for each subject:
• Introduction (some Word documents are presented here describing what the pupils are going to encounter)
• Resources (teacher support material- word documents plus web-links with supportive information for the teacher, ready, plug and play! Powerpoints for each subject, and links to fantastic interactive on line experiments through the skoool.co.uk web site)
• Investigation (the student informative documents for the laboratory work, for each subject)- In some subjects more than one exercises is proposed!
• Background (Some information for the substances used are presented)
• Assessment (the students are redirected to on line self assessment tests, in order to evaluate their knowledge on each subject)
• Web links, with even more things to be involved with!!
Furthermore this site provides the teacher with a link, for the MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheets) documents for all the substances to be used. This is of paramount importance for the safety of the children in the Lab. No matter how experienced the Chemist actually is, a pre-printed MSDS, is always a good and importantly, quick reference, to assess and avoid any possible danger!
To make a long story short, this portal enabled me to find out, how the syllabus of Chemistry could be organized by the authorities, in order to untie the hands of the Chemistry teacher, especially in a tight time schedule! With the help of such web sites, organized to fit each country’s Science syllabus, chemistry and the other sciences could evolve to become students’ favorite lessons in high school! Which, after all is the aim, for us all!

National Reports on successful experiences to promote lifelong learning for chemistry The national reports on chemistry successful experiences to promote lifelong learning for chemistry are now available on the related section of the project portal. The reports presents examples of successful experiences in the partner countries and the results of testing of ICT resources with science teachers.

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