Working Scientifically with Tassomai
We’ve added some exciting new content to Tassomai to specifically target AO2s and AO3s. This “Working Scientifically” course has fewer than 160 questions, allowing students to cover it rapidly in the build up to exams — and to increase it’s effectiveness we’ve added images to some of the questions, allowing us to really focus on practical questions and to help students associate Tassomai learning with their exams!
How will this new course benefit students?
Tassomai has, historically, been focussed on AO1 content — the program’s format and question style means it is so effective at teaching students the AO1 content that it allows teachers to spend the majority of their time teaching AO2s and AO3s.
With last summer’s website refresh, however, we are now able to make big improvements to Tassomai which we couldn’t do before — with the newest one being displaying images alongside questions, something which we’ve wanted to do for years. This has allowed us to create content to target AO2s, by showing students experiments or pieces of apparatus and testing them on this, and AO3s, by asking students to interpret the information they are shown in a graph or a dataset attached to a question.
Another benefit is that these images will also familiarise students with what they will see in the exam — our multiple choice questions are extremely effective for helping students with factual recall, and the addition of images which are similar to those that they will see in the actual exam will help prepare them even more for May and June.
How is the course structured?
We have designed this course with respect to two major learning areas;
1: General Content:
This part of the course will help to enforce the general rules and ideas that apply across all the sciences, looking at:
- Variables: Their general definition and how to describe them;
- Risks: Hazards in the environment and the general safety precautions we take to mitigate them;
- Analysis: How to identify different gradient changes and anomalies, and what they both mean;
- Evaluation: Identifying correct procedures (and why they are correct) and learning how to improve experimental procedures.
2: Subject Specific Content:
- Variables: Recognising certain variables in specific experimental procedures.
- Method: The pieces of apparatus required for a given experimental procedure.
By structuring the course in this way and combining these different learning areas, we have been able to cover 80% of the AO2 and AO3 marks — despite the course not even being 160 questions long!
How do I get the course?
This “Working Scientifically” course will be automatically added to all students who are studying either AQA or Edexcel, and at no extra cost. If you decide that you do not want this to be added to your students’ accounts, then please just get in touch (although we really would recommend that all AQA and Edexcel schools decide against opting-out — we think this will provide a huge boost just before exams!).
Unfortunately this course is currently only available for schools who are taking exams with AQA or Edexcel — we are currently creating similar courses for the other exam boards, but they will not be ready for this academic year.
If you have any questions about this course or any other aspect of Tassomai, please don’t hesitate to get in touch — and good luck in the upcoming exams!
