“How to stop the dip at the start of Y7?” This is a question that I find myself asking every year regardless of whether I’m teaching lot’s of KS3 or very little.  We all know from years of experience that for a range of reasons, students don’t seem to make the amount of progress you’d expect which given the gains they’ve made at KS2 is disappointing.  As we enter this school year I’m taking the approach that the start of secondary school is a critical time and it is important that our new recruits get off to a flying start.

The most important question that I think needs asking is “why is there a dip in the first place?”  This is always a bit of a contentious questions and I’m pretty sure that there’s no one answer to it!  There are however, a few key factors that I think might play a part; 

• Changes in social groupings
• Changes in routines
• The switch from a single teacher to discrete subjects
• The differing emphasises of primary school and secondary school
• The onset of adolescence and the cognitive and emotional changes that come with it
• The huge discrepancy between the amount od Science students from different schools have covered
• And finally, and probably the factor that does the most potential damage; As teachers we treat Y7 students like they are small children again, when the reality is that by the end of KS2 many of them will have been given lots of responsibilities and treated like grownups to a certain degree!

So, what to do to prevent this happening, is the question that we need to ask ourselves.  With this question in mind I intend to try and do things differently this year, trying to factor in both activities that will help develop skills students will need, and keep the enthusiasm that Y7 students have towards Science at the start of their secondary carrier.  Below I’ll endeavour to get down some of the ideas and pedagogies that I’m going to try and put in place.

Start the year with a bang and focus on those key skills that students need to have to help them maximise the progress that they make during this first year.  After spending a little time on routines and expectations, I think some sort of flashy demo (INVOLVING FIRE) will help grab students’ enthusiasm right from the start.  This can lead onto general discussions about what science is and what we need to try and find out and achieve.  Introducing group work at this stage will also be a key feature as this will lead into students being able to learn more independently.  In small groups students will discuss what they think Science is and what they think we want to find out.  At this point I’m going to introduce a short booklet that will help focus students on what they need to think about during the introductory period.

Getting students to focus of what Science is and what they want to achieve.  At the start of this school year I’m going to try and get students to define what excellence is and the steps they need to take in order to achieve their goals.  To help them do this I intend on setting up a small Science fair at the back of my lab so that they can see some of the best examples of work from the previous year.  After my new year 7s have had a look I intend to get them to write a short paragraph on what they want to achieve.  In an ideal world they should be able to give themselves a few steps that they need to take to get there, however, experience tells me that many of them will need a little guidance.  Before getting students to do this then I will go through a few examples of things they might want to think about.

Lab safety is possibly the most important thing to go through with students as many of them may not have worked in a lab before or in some cases ever thought about carrying out an experiment.  Firstly, I think it’s important to try and get students to identify hazards in the lab for themselves.  The traditional way of doing this is to give students a picture of a lab and then get students to identify as many hazards as possible.  To improve on this idea, I intend on constructing a 2d model lab that can be set up in the middle of the room so that I can gather students around it.  I will then be able to ask specific students to identify hazards in the model.  After this starter activity I’m going to give each small group of students a series of scenario where they need to explain what safety precautions need to be followed.  I’ll finish this section of lab safety in a slightly more traditional way and get them to put together an instruction leaflet.  The only major difference is that I’ll have uploaded instructions on what students need to do on youtube so that they can finish them for homework.  

How to carry out a simple experiment (lighting a Bunsen burner) is always one of the stables at the start of the year for any Y7s.  If there’s an activity that really engages students, it’s lighting Bunsen Burners and over the years I’ve seen all sorts done with this activity.  I always liked the idea of giving students a Bunsen Burner licence as it follows on nicely from many students getting pen licences from primary schools so helps keep that continuity.  So, the take this idea to the next level students will have to carry out a simple experiment where they boil water using a Bunsen Burner.  On top of having to write their own simple instructions to light a Bunsen Burner, they’ll also get a chance to take a few readings that in later lessons they’ll be able to analyse.  I’m intending for students to add in their instructions into the same leaflet that they wrote their own lab rules in previously.

Using data is an ever more important skill that students need to develop considering the level of questions where students will need to manipulate data in exams.  The question is “how to make this interesting and not just an exercise in filling out worksheets?”  The way I’m intending to attack this section is to start off by modelling how to use the data they have collected in a previous lesson.  Students will then have to present their results to another group to help develop another skill.

For a student new to secondary school, the beginning of year 7 is a time to reassess your goals and reinvent your interests and passions. The start of Year 7 should not be about ‘easing them in’ or ‘making it fun’. Instead it should be about the skills students will need to achieve in Science over the next five years!

I hope that these ideas help you think differently about how you can approach the start of Y7 in maybe a slightly different way. 

You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook @teachlikeahero. 

Thanks for reading

D Chalk