It’s been over a month since the coronavirus lockdown began – with schools closed and GCSE exams got cancelled here in the UK. Many families are still adjusting to the new temporary norm. Understandably, many students have fallen out of their daily routine. To add to this, some students, especially year 10 students are anxious about missing out on a whole terms’ worth of work. While many schools still provide daily assignments, students worry that they may not be able to cope without the usual structure. They ask questions such as – how can I learn and cover all this content by myself? Or, what am I going to do about experiments? These are worth 15% of our final marks.
In this post, I’ll address your concerns by answering your questions. I’ll tell you what you can do to get started and show you how you can still learn effectively from home whilst schools are closed.
Let’s get started!
Question 1: How do I get started with my learning during the coronavirus lockdown?
Answer: Start by structuring your day. Create a brief timetable to help you focus on what subjects to cover every day. A good place to start is to use your school timetable, but reduce the length of each lesson by half. So, if your lessons are usually 1 hour long, reduce them to 30 minutes each.
I have suggested this for two reasons. Firstly, at home, it is difficult to maintain the same level of focus you do at school without someone keeping you on track. If you try to replicate your school’s day, you’ll easily get demotivated and give up quickly. Let’s be honest, it’s even hard for many students to stay focused in the classroom. Secondly, by cutting the time in half, you’ll be able to get through more in a short amount of time. This will help you accomplish more and you’ll feel more motivated to keep going.
Homeschooling should be a relatively relaxed, but still productive environment. So, schedule in large amounts of time for breaks, lunch and hobbies. A good idea is to spend your mornings learning, say about 8.30 to 1 pm and then your afternoon watching Netflix, catching up with friends online or simply relaxing with your family. Remember to still take short breaks during your learning time.
Question 2: So, how do I know what to cover?
Answer: Your teachers will most likely be providing you with assignments for each subject. However, you must have a larger picture of what you need to cover. This will help you go in-depth and have a better understanding of the topic so that you are well ahead by the time school reopens.
The easiest way to get your hands on the curriculum is to ask your teacher for a copy of the ‘scheme of work’ (SOW). The SOW is a condensed document that contains the topics you need to learn, when you need to learn them by and what specific lesson objectives you should cover. Some SOWs also have links to books and resources you can use for each topic, which is useful.
You can also search your exam board followed by “GCSE Science Specification”. This will take you to the website where you can download the curriculum. The disadvantage of directly using the exam board specification is that it can require quite a bit of reading to figure out what you need to know. But some students do prefer using it, so it’s good to know.
Question 3: What are the best resources to use for GCSE Science during the coronavirus lockdown?
Answer: Below are some of the resources you can use to help with your learning. Many companies have even provided their resources for free to help students during this time.
Books
Pearson Edexcel – If your science exam board is Edexcel, you’re in luck because they are currently providing their online books free during the coronavirus lockdown period. You just need to fill in a short form and you’ll be given access to several of their online resources across various subjects.
The other two exam boards haven’t provided the same offer but you can still access their information from some of the other resources I’ll take about below.
Websites
BBC Bitesize – BBC Bitesize provides online resources for students from all levels from primary to secondary school. The best thing about BBC Bitesize is that all the information on their website is directly based on the curriculum. So, if for example you are studying AQA Combined Science, you can go directly to that page on their website, choose the topic you want to learn and start studying.
There are also lots of videos and animations to aid your learning as well as questions and quizzes to test your knowledge. If you want a more relaxed way of learning, they’ve recently introduced ‘daily lessons’, which you can also check out. I highly rate BBC Bitesize, they have been producing study resources for students for a very long time and I even remember using them when I was at school.
Achieve in Science – This is a new one I came across. There’s a small yearly fee of £6.25. But it has everything you need to learn science. From PowerPoint lesson presentation slides to homework, videos and more. You can just use this resource alone and nothing else and you’ll be covered. You can checkout Achieve in Science here.
Videos
If you’re struggling with a topic and you search that specific topic on YouTube, thousands of videos will come up. But you want to make sure you watch videos that are focused on the UK curriculum. Here are my top recommendations for UK curriculum-based videos:
Free Science Lessons. This is a well known and loved channel, summarising the main topics in biology, chemistry & physics from the AQA specification. There are tons of content there and I guarantee there’s nothing there you won’t be able to find.
Cognito. A new but quickly growing channel that summaries all the content form the AQA spec for Maths and Science. They have really good colourful diagrams over explanations which is great for visual learners. I highly recommend you check this one out.
Emma the Teachie. Emma is a Biology Specialist and creates lovely videos with diagram illustrations. This channel is only for biology but I highly recommend it if you want to improve your subject knowledge in biology.
Question 4: How can I learn the curriculum similar to how it’s delivered at school?
Answer: Thanks to advances in technology, learning no longer need to be confined to the classroom. Many learning tools now replicate the classroom teaching environment. That is – the ability to see and interact with the teacher, to see presentation slides and to be able to write. My two favourites that I use are Zoom and BitPaper.
Zoom. Zoom is a video and screen-sharing tool like skype. It has been around for almost a decade, used largely for work conference meetings and in the online tutoring world. With the recent COVID-19 outbreak, it has gained immense popularity. Even my 73-year-old mum has learnt how to use Zoom to tune into her weekly church services and to connect online with me and my siblings.
So, what’s good about zoom? Zoom allows you to see the other person, and interact with them in the same way you would at school. Presentation slides can also be shared and the teacher can talk over them. I show you how I do this is my How I Tutor Science Online video. The other thing Zoom is good for is that you can easily type in the chat and send website links or documents to the other person.
Zoom is also very stable. If you have a poor internet connection, Skype can disconnect very easily while Zoom maintains a clear audio and picture quality.
BitPaper. BitPaper is the second tool I use, in combination with Zoom. It is an online whiteboard created by a team of tutors and teachers who understand what’s needed for learning. It is simple and easy to use and has tools that allow you to write easily, change colours, rub something out, copy and paste diagrams and much more.
Here is the video I made showing you How I Tutor Science Online using Zoom and BitPaper.
Question 5: How can I hand in my work and get feedback?
Answer: A popular online tool that can be used to replicate the classroom is Google classroom. This is what I use to send homework and feedback to my students for our online tutoring sessions.
There are two ways you can access google classroom.
The first way is to click ‘JOIN’ on your email invite link and follow the instructions. This will take you straight to the specific classroom where you can check your classwork and announcements.
The second way to access google classroom is by following these steps.
- Go to google.co.uk
- Click on the 9 dots at the top right-hand corner, next to your profile picture.
- Scroll down until you see ‘classroom’ (a green icon with a yellow border). Click on it.
4. This will take you directly to the main classroom homepage where you will see all your classrooms in folders or boxes.
5. To enter a specific classroom, click on the title of that class.
6. Click on classwork at the top to check for any work due.
7. If you have not yet joined a class, click the plus (+) button at the top right hand corner, next to your profile picture. Then click join a class and enter the class code.
Question 6: What about experiments?
Answer: For experiments I recommend checking out Malmesbury Science. They have step by step videos on every required practical for science.
There are also several easy science experiments you can do at home. From general science experiments to the core and required practicals that gets assessed in your exams. I’ll be diving deeper into this in the next post.
Conclusion: Coronavirus Lockdown Answers to your questions.
This post has given you all the tools and resources you need to feel confident learning from home during the coronavirus lockdown. By using some of the resources outlined, you will easily and confidently cover the curriculum and put yourself at the top of the class in the next academic year.
Need more help with your studies?
Contact me for a free online tutoring consultation today!
