Thursday 20 September 2012

Controlled Assessment Graphs

I really want my triple science students to get maximum marks from their graphs.

It isn't going to be easy.

What constitutes a "complex mathematical technique"? And once you've used one how do you demonstrate "quantitative uncertainty"?

I know year 13 students who would struggle to do this independently.

The success will be when they do it successfully in their controlled assessment.





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Location:United Kingdom

4 comments:

  1. A complete guess here - how about error bars to show uncertainty? It definitely sounds like your controlled assessment is worse than ours (aqa). I presume that simply taking a mean isn't complex enough, but any more processing is a little challenging for gcse.

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  2. I've been teaching this today and the year 11 groups can cope with error bars, very well in fact, but generating the data to use via a complex mathematical technique is more confusing. An average is necessary for 4 marks, things like doing a calculation involving milliamps or calculating a rate from timings is needed for 6. It is much more difficult than even prior to 2006 specifications.

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  3. How about gradients if they are straight line graphs?

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  4. That wil do, but the efficiency graphs are not straight and neither are the enzyme activity vs pH. I can't see how you can do this without telling the students what to do.

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