KS3 Published Schemes

I am asked a lot what scheme will I be going for.

I had a free trial of the kerboodle online resources and was pleased with the quizzes and the idea behind how they work, but I was less impressed with the worksheets. Too much paper and not enough to make a lesson from. I feel that the lesson resources really missed the point. I did think that the questions they contained were good, and there were some strong links to contexts.

I knew then that buying kerboodle would not be enough. Luckily a copy of exploring science was sent out at this point. I wasn't exactly pleased that I was unable to find my school on the Pearson website and I had to make a phone call for Pearson to realise that we existed. I felt sorry that the reps that found me were not going to get the business. However, I have always found the worksheet resources for exploring science useful. So we have bought the worksheets from Pearson too.

I did look at the Collins resources and thought that they could have been more imaginative and really what I was buying was more of the same. The Hodder 'progress science' resources didn't do it for me either. I wanted something different.

However, I did buy "better teach science" by Hodder. These activities seem very imaginative and are linked to a context. Something that I couldn't do myself.

I hope that all these resources can compliment what we have an help to build a strong key stage 3 curriculum that helps students understand science.

For those of you who will criticise me for not writing our own and buying *worksheets*, we are a department of 6, only 3 of whom teach key stage 3. And more than that I want to explore the interactive resources that the publishers now offer. I will subscribe to the new exploring science textbooks in September, the interactivity in them looks amazing and is something that I could not hope to do to such a level and in such quantity.

I continue to strive to a 'perfect' key stage 3 scheme, aware that none of the published schemes are quite it.

The cost for what I recommend is upwards of £1600.