Thinking Through Science 1 Pupil's Book

Rather than reworking the efforts of yesteryear, Arthur Cheney and his co-authors have produced a KS3 course with a difference. Thinking Through Science is a textbook, a teacher's handbook and a set of worksheets that draw heavily on research evidence of effective approaches to science teaching. As the title implies, the CASE (Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education) project features strongly, with many activities that help stimulate and develop children's reasoning.
The teacher's resource book alerts teachers to common pupil misconceptions, opportunities for formative assessment and links with literacy and numeracy. It is refreshing to see a handbook that attempts to elaborate on the ideas underpinning the learning activities. And as the authors believe good teaching is that which advances children's thinking, the exercises emphasise information processing, reasoning, creative thinking and evaluation.
...for those teachers who are tired of the double page spread (where design dictates content) and the mind-numbing, fill-in-the-gaps assessment exercises, this course will reinvigorate the parts that others have failed to reach.

The pupil's book is bigger than most other courses offer for a similar price, with a lot of information as well as a wide variety of activities for pupils, including opportunities for literacy, numeracy and ICT.
The teacher's book and CD-ROM together provide all that is needed to be able to meet the current requirements of the National Curriculum by using a bought-in scheme...
It is refreshing that the short end-of-unit tests are there to check on pupils' understanding rather than trying to assign levels to them.There are helpful examples showing how assessment for learning can be done throughout the course.
These materials are worth considering by any school looking for a new key stage 3 course...whether already using the CASE strategy or not. For those using CASE, it also provides a lot of extension work and many examples for bridging.

The vividly illustrated books will be attractive to students of all abilities...
A thought-provoking book. The novel approach makes it an excellent way of stretching students.