Chemistry SBA for CSEC® - A Teacher's Guide

• Olando Gayle

Chemistry SBA for CSEC® - A Teacher's Guide is an e-book intended to assist chemistry teachers to properly assess the science process skills of students.  Its main aim is to ensure that the School Based Assessments (SBAs) of chemistry students are properly organized, executed and marked. The book is intended as a guide for chemistry teachers to be used in conjunction with the student's book, i.e. Chemistry SBA for CSEC - A Student's Guide.

It is hoped that as this book is used by teachers of chemistry, SBA results will be greatly improved and that there will also be an improvement in the quality and number of passes in chemistry at the CSEC level.

Section A looks at how to design a lab project, the investigative project and the types of skills to be covered and assessed. The content of this section is similar to that in Section A of the Student's Guide except that it addresses teachers.

Section B contains a number of sample experiments and their suggested mark schemes, and are related to some of the experiments found in Section B of the Student's Guide. The section also includes sample answers and diagrams of apparatus for the experiments featured.

Section C contains the experiments to be conducted with students. These are the same experiments found in Section B of the Student's Guide. In the Teacher's Guide however, the diagrams of apparatus for the experiments are included and lines for writing (usable if teachers choose to print - an option which they will be given).

Key Features:

• Starts with an introductory section containing
    - notes on the School Based Assessment (SBA) process
    - suggested formats for the SBA
    - skills to be covered in the SBA

 

•  Includes space for recording the results of experiments (usable if teacher chooses to print), as well as observations, and the diagrams of apparatus.

• Incorporates proposed mark schemes for experiments - a useful guide for teachers.
• Provides in Section B suggested answers and explanations of the mark schemes.
• Gives teachers tips on how to succeed at teaching chemistry
• Includes an index which helps teachers to quickly locate material on various topics.

Look Out For:

It is very important to note that Section C in the Student's Guide addresses three traditionally difficult topics:

• the mole concept
• calculations involved in electrolysis
• the identification of ions

Teachers can only access this important information by obtaining a copy of the Student's Guide.

 

Online Resources for Teachers

Extra resources have been provided for teachers in the form of 11 PowerPoint presentations (converted to PDFs), nine of which are intended to help them deal with the teaching of some traditionally difficult topics. These PDFs will be available for download at the same time that the Teacher's Guide is downloaded.