upd8: Crucial, Wikid & Segue
upd8 is a family of 4 products: Crucial, Topicals, Wikid, and Segue. To find out more, go to www.upd8.org.uk.
Crucial for GCSE
Assessment is getting tougher. That’s the headline change at GCSE, with 6 mark questions and more unfamiliar contexts in the written exam, plus a new, demanding ‘controlled assessment’ of planning and evidence skills. The consensus is teachers need to spend more time developing the skills, if students are to get good grades. And the time to start is now!
upd8 has developed Crucial as the most effective and affordable preparation for success. It fits into your existing course so you don’t have to buy a new one. 15 brilliant ‘Tool’ lessons teach all the challenging skills. Another 15 ‘Applications’ address the changed content – and make it sparkle – whilst practising the skills. Finally 30 exam questions will improve students’ performance through formative feedback. And everything is comprehensively trialled in schools to be super easy to use.
Find out more, click here.
Topicals
upd8 Topicals are a series of context-based secondary science activities, written in a punchy and innovative way to engage right across the ability range. All you have to do is go to the upd8 website register your name and e-mail address and then you can download hundreds of free upd8 activities. New resources are published every few weeks and over 45,000 science teachers have registered to date.
Wikid
Over 800 schools are already using Wikid, a completely new scheme of work for KS3 science. Content is delivered through 12 context based units; Forensics, Cook!, Extinction, Electro-mancer, A&E, Alien, Live and Kicking, Nviz, Catastrophe, Pyrotechnics, Species at War, and Studio Magic. The resources include lesson plans, PowerPoint sequences, activities, student worksheets, assessment material and a teacher’s guide.
Wikid uses the 7E’s to grab students’ attention:
| Engage | Elicit | Explore | Explain | Evaluate | Elaborate | Extend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hook students. Raise the essential question. | Find out what students know. Reveal misconceptions. | Give students first-hand experience to build new concepts. | Teacher input to formalise concepts and clarify key terms. | Formative and summative assessment pervades the sequence. | Apply concepts, starting with similar contexts. | Apply concepts to unfamiliar contexts. |
To find out more, or to subscribe to Wikid, go to www.upd8.org.uk
Segue
Segue (pronounced ‘seg-way’) means ‘a smooth transition from one thing to another’. It is a complete teaching programme for Year 9 science and it is designed to provide a smooth transition from KS3 to KS4. Using the same 7E’s philosophy as Wikid in Years 7 and 8, Segue starts to introduce GCSE material in Year 9. It covers more than 50% of the Core Science content, allowing you to enter students early in Year 10 if you wish.
Segue contains four context-based units; Reconstructors, Hollywood, Metahuman and Survivors and is designed to:
- Extend students’ How Science Works skills to prepare them for Core Science
- Systematically introduce concepts from the new GCSE specifications
- Provide plenty of evidence for APP
- Motivate and engage students across the whole ability range
- Maximise skills development and understanding of key science concepts
To find out more, or to subscribe to Segue, go to www.upd8.org.uk.
Wikid, Segue, and upd8 all share the same website: www.upd8.org.uk
Upd8 is a partnership of the Centre for Science Education and Association for Science Education. The Wikid and Segue projects are funded by, and dependent on, sales income.
