With the overhaul to the Queensland senior science syllabi, we know that a lot of you are looking for resources to prepare your students for the new requirements. We’ve put together this collection of resources to assist you in preparing your Y7–10 students for senior science with Stile.

Stile resources

1. Skill builder lessons

Our skill builder lessons cover the fundamental skills needed for major assessments in senior science. View the skill builder unit here.

2. Assessment templates

Our assessment templates are designed for junior students but mirror the senior requirements. They’re located in our Teacher Resources folder with other useful templates here.

• View the data test template here.
• View the student experiment template here. …

Specific, timely and effective feedback is considered to have one of the “most positive influences on student achievement”. Indeed it is the most effective approach documented by Evidence for Learning, and considered one of the Victorian Government’s ten High Impact Teaching Strategies.

Providing effective feedback can be challenging and time-consuming. Stile makes it easier for you in a number of ways:

• Incorporating features in “Teach” mode, such as “show student responses” and “show model answer”, so you can discuss student responses, address any misconceptions and build on students’ current understandings in real-time.
• Providing comprehensive model answers to help you formulate feedback. …

We want our young citizens to graduate from school scientifically literate and ready to tackle tomorrow’s problems; to be equipped to create a better future for themselves and for others.

We’re continuing to centre our lessons around important real-world issues that both challenge students and develop their critical-thinking skills. In a previous blog post we explained why we create science news lessons.

In our latest science news lesson, we’re tackling how social media can influence how we think, act and even vote.

The influence of social media

Social media is ubiquitous in our lives. Students have grown up with social media as a major communication tool and, increasingly, a source of information. While social media has a lot of advantages, there are important aspects that students need to be aware of. …

Stile’s mission is to make science interesting and accessible but still challenging for every student. We aim to do this by creating lessons that contextualise learning with real-world, socio-scientific issues that engage students in science. We want students to leave school with the confidence to tackle tomorrow’s problems and the ability to participate in public discourse around the ethics of scientific issues such as climate change, artificial intelligence or vaccination. This goal is constantly front of mind when designing our lessons. We want to help students to develop the skills required to tackle these issues, whilst also covering the curriculum.

Students’ interest in socio-scientific issues is increasing and so it’s becoming more and more important that these issues are included in science lessons. In December 2019, 628 secondary school teachers who use Stile participated in the inaugural Science Education Report, Shaping Sci-Ed 2020. These teachers from across Australia and New Zealand completed a 30-question survey designed to explore their views on science education and the impact Stile has in the classroom. Of the total respondents, 67% agreed or strongly agreed that students at their school were becoming more interested in social issues that have a scientific element. …

Squiz’s spaced repetition is the best way to master the learning of core scientific vocabulary, which helps ensure effective higher-order learning during class time.

What is Squiz?

Squiz is a free flashcard app available on smartphones and tablets that explicitly teaches definitions of scientific terms required for a particular Stile unit. It was designed and heavily prototyped with students to use as a pre-work, consolidation or revision learning activity for students to do in their own time.

It is the perfect accompaniment to Stile — every Year 7–10 unit in Stile has a corresponding Squiz with 2–3 levels of vocabulary to master. The vocabulary in each level becomes increasingly complex from the simplest vocabulary in Level 1 to more difficult in Levels 2 and 3. …

Stile is designed to be your ultimate sidekick helping you achieve a seamless blended learning experience in the classroom. But, Stile is also very well-suited to remote blended learning. In fact, distance educators have been using Stile remotely for years via video conferencing!

We’ve created this collection of resources (should you need them) to help all Stile users — from newbies to advanced Stilists — feel comfortable using Stile as a remote blended learning tool.

Resources for getting set up with Stile

• Stile’s Professional Learning Webinar series
  Stile’s Professional Learning Webinar Series explores using high impact teaching strategies to enhance science teaching and learning in your school — whether that be remote or face-to-face! …