UPD8

How Science Works

• Main page
• Buy now!
• Register your interest
• How science works
• Plan, teach and assess
• Course overview
• Questions & answers
• What people are saying
• Two year Key Stage 3
• What makes upd8 wikid tick

The upd8 wikid approach is ‘Infuse, Teach, Apply, Progress’.

Infuse

How Science Works infuses the whole approach to wikid units. Trial schools agreed: 75% thought the characters in the stories helped students see 'how scientists work'. Let’s take the idea of ‘working with evidence’ (reliability) and show the Forensic unit helps you fix this concept into students’ minds.

Teach

One week of lessons in the Forensics unit explicitly teaches about reliability through a plot about a 'cold case’.

Click through the online presentation extract. You’ll see how the activity builds student understanding of this challenging idea through a concrete thinking tool – a game of darts. Students can do this practically by dropping water from pipettes onto a target.

 

Apply

The other 3 teaching sequences in Forensics provide opportunities for students to practise using ‘working with evidence’ as they decide how reliable evidence is.

Progress

‘Working with evidence’ is such an important idea in science
that the year 8 unit 'Live and Kicking' takes students further forward, and then it's revisited again in year 9 'Adolescence'.