The Edexcel past papers app – the future of revision?

I have mixed feelings about our for-profit exam boards.  On one hand they are a drain on school resources – costing and arm and a leg in fees.  On the other hand it encourages competition and with Pearson embracing new technologies it seems to be leaving the other exam boards behind. I had a promotional …

APP and Wikid Science – how they fit well together

I attended a county APP network meeting last week which included a show & tell session.  Being a model of good organisation I remembered that I was meant to be taking something two day before.  I could have simply gone through my schemes of work and picked an example of how we use APP, but …

APP for teaching assistants

Whilst APP isn’t perfect, it does provide a useful framework of outcomes for teaching assistants to use with the students they are supporting. Teaching assistants working with individuals or small groups of students could use the APP criteria to ask appropriate questions with the intention of moving individuals on.  Using the APP gives a structure …

Using off the shelf APP materials with students with SEN – my experiences

For several years I’ve used level assessed tasks as one of my peer assessment tools in science lessons. I’ve used them with a range of students of different abilities from foundation tier GCSE to Entry level and below. Usually I’ve used them part way through a topic to check understanding and highlight opportunities to develop …

Why don’t teachers get APP? (Assessing Pupil Progress)

I read the volume of anti-APP threads on the TES forums, I listen to the comments of my secondary colleagues and I speak to friends who teach in the primary phase.  On top of this I’ve checked out the growing software industry making APP tracking products and I’ve spoken to colleagues who are responsible for …

Wikid Science KS3 – my reflections on the new Year 8 units

Having taught almost three of the new format Wikid year 8 units I had to post an update on my progress with Wikid, and my thoughts about the scheme. In terms of organisation the new year 8 modules are a huge leap forward.  Lessons are organised into folders by lesson which makes a huge amount …

What’s the best way to average marks over a year? How do you work out yours?

I’m sure that we all use spreadsheets to collate student data.  Some teachers will collect many pieces of data over a year.  How do you calculate an average mark? I took some KS3 APP data (you can’t see it all here) and calculated the average in different ways.  As you can see the method of …