How to organise and run an A level Chemistry practical training day

Our session was aimed at chemistry teachers or trainers who were considering running an A level chemistry training day aimed at teachers new to teaching A level chemistry. We were responding to reports from colleagues and the wider science education community of recruitment difficulties faced by science departments leading to newly qualified chemistry teachers being faced with heavy A level chemistry teaching loads from the outset of their careers.

Our session explained in detail how to secure funding for the training  event, the logistics of publicity and organisation of the day. We described the experiments we chose to train our participants, which were focussed on practical organic chemistry. We described how we delivered  training practicals in titration, reflux, distillation, recrystallisation and the use of melting point apparatus.

We reported that most of our participants had never taught the practicals on our agenda and were extremely grateful for the hands on experience. We also demonstrated how to assess these practicals in situ and record and use the data gathered. We described  how we sought to evaluate the success of the day by giving the participants a questionnaire at the end and shared how the  feedback from the evaluations given to the participants was overwhelmingly positive and how this  has encouraged us to repeat the event subject to securing funding again.