silent movie

One of the most boring things I had to deal with last year was teaching carbohydrate structure. I could barely keep my eyes open for it so I pity the poor students with this one. I tried my best, but resigned myself to the fact that it’s boring. I don’t have to do it this year with the new A-level students, but I will have to cover carbohydrates with the BTEC National year two students.

I’ve been reading around the Geoff Petty website in preparation for this thing I’m going to on Tuesday with the post-16 science network and to help me with my scheme of work writing. It’s not something I’ve had a lot of practice with (I sort of did it last year, but not very effectively). That and assignment writing for the BTEC students. Teaching post-16 in a new build as a secondary qualified NQT was a strange career choice all things considered. Ah well, steep learning curve or something….

Anyway, carbohydrates. I had access to an interactive web tutorial and awful looking PDF worksheet (I hate workheets as a general rule – I try to make sure the only ones I usually give out are practical instructions) and we sort of trudged through it and it was OK. Just, boring.

This year I’m abandoning the tutorial and worksheet altogether, I’m going to have some model making, games with molymods and a bit of a mission and medal activity using a silent video.

I’ve made the silent video based around the tutorial I had already, because I didn’t want to over complicate it. For the plenary session of the carbohydrates lesson (I think – that may change). I’m going to get students to plan and record a voice-over that explains the carbohydrate detail in the video. For those who progress very quickly I’m going to get them to design or decide on an opening and closing image as well. I’m probably going to get them to record in class either on their mobiles and bluetooth it to me, or on one of the couple of microphones I’ve got.

The video is made in pulp motion so will be really very quick to add the sound to and time the video to the voice over. If students decide they want music as well then they’ll have to sort out a track and come back to me with it.

Then for the starter of the next lesson, we’ll watch and evaluate each of the videos that they have made. I think it has the potential to be a bit more interesting than a worksheet!