I am a highly qualified and experienced secondary school teacher with a passion for providing an inspirational, high-quality education to students aged 11-18. My resources provide useful visual support for teachers during lessons and activities to aid learning of scientific concepts.
I am a highly qualified and experienced secondary school teacher with a passion for providing an inspirational, high-quality education to students aged 11-18. My resources provide useful visual support for teachers during lessons and activities to aid learning of scientific concepts.
This simple to use and engaging resource provides a useful framework for a lesson on conduction, convection and radiation. Depending on how much time is available to you, I like to demonstrate conduction through particles by inviting my students to stand next to each other, shoulder to shoulder, vibrating slowly. I then “transfer energy” to one of the students, invting them to vibrate faster, knocking the students (particles) on either side of them, transferring the energy on. To help demonstrate convection, I use the potassium permanganate practical. I usually allow the students to carry out a practical on radiation during the following lesson.
This creative, fun and easy-to-use resource helps explain the difference between heat energy and temperature. It includes questions for students to answer and a link to a useful video on the topic.
This resource introduces the menstrual cycle and the main hormones involved in regulating the cycle. It includes a fun snakes-and-ladders game to help students learn more about what happens at each stage of the cycle and encourages students to create their own summary resource.
This resources provides useful images and videos to help stimulate discussion and learning about the evolution of life on earth. Students use the internet to help them construct diagrams of the geological time scale, including the times and names for the geological eras and periods, as well as descriptions of important events of life on Earth.
This lesson begins with a ‘graph description’ activity and opportunity for students to make scientific predictions. Included in the first couple of slides are links to useful video resources for the topic. There is then an option of two different practical investigations. The first invites students to design an experiment testing how the gradient of a ramp effects the speed of the car, whilst the second asks how the height you drop the ball from effect the height of the bounce.
This resource provides an easy to use, simple and useful introduction to the differences between physical and chemical changes. The first slide can be used as a starter, to initiate discussion and inspire students to offer up ideas about the differences between physical and chemical changes. The second and third slides provide a useful visual that can be used to help explain the differences between physical and chemical changes. The resource also includes some fun, quick quizzes to help assess the class’s understanding of the differences between physical and chemical changes.
This engaging and easy to use resource provides a useful visual aid for introducing the changes that occur in lungs during during inhalation and exhalation, how lung volume can be measured and the factors that effect it. If you have a bell jar model of the lungs available to you, then the lesson is supported well with a demonstration.
This resource introduces anaerobic respiration and compares aerobic and anaerobic respiration. The lesson begins an activity comparing the equations for aerobic and anaerobic respiration, it then explains why people get stitches and pant heavily after exercise. It considers the advantages and disadvantages of anaerobic respiration and how it can be used commercially. The resource includes past paper questions and answers, as well as a graph for students to describe and explain.
This resources revises the difference between plant and animal cells, introduces the main cell organelles, their structure and function, as well as the main differences between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells.
This resource explains the difference between pure and impure substances, challenges students to compare graphs of pure and impure substances, and explains what is happening at a particle level during heating. Students then complete a simple practical where they measure the temperature of a substance as they heat it and then use a graph of their results to conclude whether or not the substance was pure or impure.
This resource introduces the Darwin and Wallace, their research and the theory of evolution. Included within the resource are a few links to videos that I find useful for introducing the theory and also opens discussion on the relationship between the two scientists. It invites students to consider whether Darwin cheated Wallace out of his rightful place in history, a question that often leads to great class discussions.
This creative and easy-to-use resource introduces leaf structure and function. It begins with a discussion about adaptions and the structures that make leaves specially adapted for their function. It includes cross-sectional diagrams through the leaf for students to label, before inviting students to design an experiment to investigate whether plants lose more water from the upper or lower leaf surface. It includes a writing frame to help support students as they design, carry out and evaluate their experiments, as well as a true or false quiz to finish.
This resource introduces the limiting factors and the factors that affect the rate of photosynthesis. Students describe and explain a series of graphs before discussing why greenhouses are used to optimise conditions for photosynthesis.
This resource covers pyramids of biomass and calculating the efficiency of biomass transfer. It explains how pyramids of biomass are draw, why biomass decreases at each topic level, and the equation for calculating the efficiency of biomass transfer.
This resource introduces the water cycle, the key terms relating to the water cycle, and how polluted water effects the water cycle. The resource includes activities for the students to complete, for example students describe the journey of a water molecule from a river high in the mountains, through the atmosphere and eventually back to the starting point. The resource also includes an experiment that students could complete to investigating the effect of pollution (acid rain) on seed germination.
This resource provides a useful visual aid for introducing and comparing the processes of meiosis and mitosis. The resource includes links to videos on the topic, questions for students to answer, and a true false quiz. One of the tasks instructs students to create a video, poster, or model on mitosis or meiosis. This activity could either be completed during lessons or as a homework.
This resources goes step-by-step through the stages of the cells cycle. It provides useful visual aids for explanations as well as short descriptions about what happens at each stage.
This resource provides an incredibly useful visual aid for the topic of ‘colours of light’. It covers everything from refraction and dispersion, to colour filters and explanations for why objects appear differently in different colours of light.
This lesson introduces the key terms for the genetics topic, including: genotype, phenotype, dominant, recessive, homozygous and heterozygous. It provides a useful visual aid for introducing these key terms and includes a short quiz to test student understanding.