Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
- Materials and their properties
- Physical processes
Scientific literacy is supposed to be taught through the other three areas. The
program of study builds the basis for planning lessons. The NC reduces the amount
of facts to be learned by the students and instead emphasizes spiritual, moral, social
and cultural development, key skills, and thinking skills. Science, for example,
“provides opportunities to promote moral development through helping pupils see
the need to draw conclusions using observation and evidence rather than precon-
ception or prejudice, and through the discussion of the implications of the uses of
scientific knowledge, including the recognition that such uses can have both
beneficial and harmful effects” [
24
].
According to the NC, students should develop key skills in the following areas
through science: communication, working with data, using ICT, team work, auto-
didactic competence, problem solving.
The way chemistry appears in the science curriculum will be laid out next.
During
key stage 1
it is one of the main goals for students to develop skills in
scientific inquiry. They learn to observe, explore, and ask questions and they begin
to work together to collect evidence. They evaluate evidence and consider whether
tests or comparisons are fair, they use reference materials and they share their ideas
with their classmates using scientific language, drawings, charts, and tables.
In “materials and their properties” students use their inquiry skills to find out
about the influence of heat and cold on everyday materials. They group materials
according to their properties and learn that properties influence the use of materials.
While improving their inquiry skills in
key stage 2
, students start using models
and theories for explanations and discuss the positive and negative effects of
scientific and technological development. In “life processes and living things,”
they discover the role of plants in producing new material for growth. In “materials
and their properties,” they study the differences between solids, liquids, and gases.
Students investigate mixtures of substances, produce solutions, recover solids from
solutions by filtering or evaporating, and use their knowledge to decide how
mixtures might be separated. At this key stage they also talk about reversible
changes (changing the state of matter) and nonreversible changes in substances
(chemical reactions like burning).
In addition to a further improvement of their inquiry skills in
key stage 3,
students learn how scientists work together to be more successful in research and
how important experimental evidence is to support scientific ideas. In this key
stage, chemistry takes over a major part of the curriculum. In “life processes and
living things,” students learn about the chemical reactions in the photosynthesis
process of plants and about elements that are crucial for plant growth like carbon,
oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen. In “materials and their properties,” students
deepen their understanding of the states of matter by applying the particle theory.
They characterize materials by their melting and boiling point as well as their
density. They are being introduced to the periodic table of the elements. They learn
that every element consists of identical atoms, that different elements vary in their
