A fully-resourced lesson which has been designed for GCSE students and includes an engaging lesson presentation and associated worksheets. This lesson looks at the three limiting factors of photosynthesis, focusing on the graphs that they produce and ensures that students can explain why temperature is a factor. This lesson begins by introducing the students to the definition of a limiting factor. They are challenged to recognise that it would be photosynthesis which is limited by carbon dioxide concentration and light intensity. The third factor, temperature, is not introduced until later in the lesson so that students are given thinking time to consider what it might be. Having been presented with two sets of data, students are asked to draw sketch graphs to represent the trend. The limiting factors on the light intensity graph are taught to the students so they can use this when working out the limiting factors on the carbon dioxide graph. The remainder of the lesson focuses on temperature and more specifically why a change in this factor would cause a change in the rate of photosynthesis because of enzymes. The student’s knowledge of that topic is tested alongside. Progress checks have been written into the lesson at regular intervals so that students can constantly assess their understanding.

A fast-paced, engaging lesson that looks at the separation method of distillation and focuses on the use of key terminology in the correct context. This lesson has been designed for GCSE students but teachers could use it with KS3 students who are looking at the mixtures topic. The lesson begins by challenging the students to state which mixture from a choice of three could be separated by distillation. A lot of the key terms involved in this lesson and the separation topic as a whole begin with S and are often incorrectly used. Therefore some time is taken to ensure that the students know the difference between a solution, solute and solvent and can pick out the substances which would apply to each of these terms in different examples. Students will learn how distillation involves evaporation followed by condensation and the next task gets students to compare boiling points to understand how the difference in these points allows the separation to occur and will also recognise that distillation results in two substances at the end as opposed to the one in crystallisation. The remainder of the lesson challenges students to apply their knowledge to two understanding checks - a summary passage on distillation and then a description of how ethanol and water are separated.

This is an engaging lesson which uses a range of tasks and quiz competitions to ensure that the important details about elements are embedded so that students can use them in related Chemistry topics. The lesson begins by looking at the chemical symbols that are used with the elements. Students do not have to know the symbols off by heart because of the widely available Periodic Table but a sound knowledge will always help going forward. Time is taken to ensure that students understand how the symbols have to be written so that those with two letters consist of a capital and a lower case letter. In a race against each other, students are challenged to complete a crossword by converting symbols to the name of elements. This will result in a winner, a second placed and a third placed student who can be given a gold, silver and bronze medal. The atoms within each of these medals is explored so that students can learn that the gold and silver medals will only be made up of one type of atom and are therefore elements whilst the bronze is an alloy. The remainder of the lesson looks at some of the uses of the different elements and a homework task gets students to put this into written form. This lesson is suitable for both KS3 and GCSE students.

A highly engaging lesson that looks at the structures that are found in the 1st line of defence and explores the methods of action use by phagocytes and lymphocytes. This lesson has been designed for GCSE students but could be used as an initial recap with A-level students before they go on to learn this topic in greater detail The lesson begins by introducing the meaning of the 1st line of defence. A quick competition is used to challenge the students to recognise the names of some of these structures when their names have some letters missing. Time is taken to discuss the action of the cilia and skin and then students are challenged to make links to the related topics of enzymes and pH as they complete a passage about the role of hydrochloric acid in the stomach. Moving forwards, students will learn that there are two types of white blood cells, phagocytes and lymphocytes, and the details of their actions is explored. Key points such as the specificity of antibodies and the involvement of enzymes are discussed in detail so that this topic can be understood to the depth needed at this level. In addition to a number of games to maintain engagement, progress checks are written into this at regular intervals to allow the students to assess their understanding.

This lesson looks at the two stages of protein synthesis, transcription and translation, and focuses on the key details that students need to understand this potentially difficult topic. The lesson presentation has been deliberately written in a concise way to encourage the students to summarise the two stages and pick out the key points which will enable them to form longer answers when necessary. The lesson begins by introducing the students to RNA, and a quick check is done to see how much they can recall about the other nucleic acid, DNA. Moving forwards, students are challenged to study the structure of DNA and RNA in SPOT THE DIFFERENCE before being challenged to explain why RNA is necessary in this process. Time is taken to look at important sections such as complimentary base pairing and the identification of amino acids from the codon. A number of quick competitions have been written into the lesson to maintain engagement and the progress checks are regular so that students assess their understanding and any misconceptions can be quickly identified and addressed. This lesson has been written for GCSE students but should a teacher want to teach an introduction lesson on protein synthesis before going into more detail at a later date, then this would be suitable.

This is a fully-resourced lesson, designed for GCSE students, that lteaches students how to prove that mass is conserved in a chemical reaction and guides them in the explanation of why some reactions do not give equal masses when measured. The lesson begins by introducing the law of the conservation of mass. Students will learn that they can expect questions which challenge them to prove that mass is conserved through the use of the relative formula mass. Therefore, the next section of the lesson focuses on the skills associated with this calculation and looks at more different formulae such as those with brackets. Students are given an opportunity to check their skills before trying to prove mass is conserved in three chemical reactions. All questions have displayed mark schemes so that students can assess their understanding. The rest of the lesson looks at instances of when the mass of the reactants does not equal the mass of the products. A practical method for the decomposition of copper carbonate is provided if the teacher wants to use it, so that students can collect results which show this difference in mass. Discussions are encouraged in order to get students to offer explanations as to why the mass of the products is lower. Once the gas has been identified, students are further challenged to consider apparatus that could be used to collect and record the results to again prove conservation.

A fully-resourced lesson that uses a range of tasks, understanding checks and quick competitions to guide students through calculating the relative formula mass for substances with a range of chemical formulae. The relative formula mass is required in a lot of calculations, such as those that involve moles, so it is an important skill to get right. Worked examples are used throughout the lesson to visualise the metho for the students. Initially, students will learn how to calculate the mass from simple formulae before helpful hints are provided for harder formulae such as those that contain a bracket. Students are given the chance to apply their knowledge by proving that mass is conserved in a reaction. This lesson has been written for GCSE students but could be used with higher ability KS3 students in lessons that are looking to push knowledge forward