Support Pack

The Hodder Science Support Pack is designed to be accessible for those pupils who learn less quickly, particularly those pupils with low reading ages and poor literacy skills. These pupils are catered for because the material in the packs has:

• Low reading age, with particular attention to simple sentence construction and few, if any, subordinate clauses.
• Simple vocabulary level combined with use of the target vocabulary for that particular topic, enabling pupils to concentrate on understanding keywords and ideas.
• Pictorial and graphical representations to reinforce textual content.
• Clues and hints to assist progress with any exercises, e.g. first letters of words in cloze passages.
• Presentation and level of text density that is non-threatening yet does not look condescending to the slower learner.

The content of the Support Pack concentrates on two key areas:

• Activities to recap and consolidate previous knowledge, understanding and concepts, particularly those needed to be successful with the target topics in the chapter.
• Alternative activities to introduce the key concepts contained in the chapter.

The support activities are intended to support a whole chapter rather than specific double-page spreads and this is reflected in the title of the support sheet. They may be used as additional resources, either for classwork or homework.

Extension Pack

There are many ways to support the skills of the more able pupil. The Hodder Science Extension Pack concentrates on the key skill of 'improving own learning' with a series of extension sheets based around key concepts from the course.

These are intended to support the independent learning of the faster pupils and make use of a variety of active-learning techniques. The sheets are targeted at specific chapters of the book rather than individual spreads.

The activities pick up on contexts that can be used to give greater depth to knowledge and understanding. They practise all the key skills, but focus particularly on higher communication skills, numeracy, ICT skills, problem-solving and data analysis.

Examples of the range of approaches included in the Extension Pack are given below:

• Extended reading - analysing text, newspaper articles, scientific journals
• Research, report and presentation, using the library, CD-ROMs, the Internet, OHT and PowerPoint
• Practical tasks - problem-solving, investigations (Sc1), planning, analysis and extended studies
• Calculations and graphs - data analysis, surveys, problem-solving
• Display work, including posters, presentations, competitions, events
• Creative and factual writing - letters, diaries, poems, plays, modern language links, journalistic styles, quizzes
• Group work, such as role play, debates, collaborative presentations, 'jigsaw' group activities, consumer testing
• Creative opportunities, including cartoons, illustrations, drama, video, audio interviews, photographs/ digital images, animation
• Brainstorming - concept maps, spider diagrams, flow charts, mind maps, summary cards
• Different learning styles - kinaesthetic, visual, auditory, neuro-linguistic programming
• Issues-led science - SATIS, pollution activities
• Exchanges with other pupils - letters to pressure groups, negotiation activities.