Getting started
Introducing the Levels Mountain
The Levels Mountains are tools to help teachers and children to visualise what it feels like to make progression in Science. If you look through the Levels Mountain you will see that progression is all about moving from experiences, through sorting and grouping, to forming simple descriptions, the application of subject specific vocabulary and ultimately to forming more and more detailed explanations.
The development of literacy skills in a scientific context are key to enhancing progression through the Levels in Science. However all too often literacy is seen as being separate from Science lessons. The skills of speaking & listening, discussion, debate, reading and writing are all vital to ensure progression in Science.
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The Levels Mountains gradually formed as a result of classroom trials and evaluations by all the teachers within the Cams Hill Science Consortium in partnership with Hampshire Local Authority Science Inspectors and many schools across Hampshire, East and West Sussex. During this process we were all sharing ideas for visualising and describing the characteristics of each level and applying Professor John Gilbert's ideas of models and modelling. We are very grateful to all the teachers for their ideas and suggestions and would particularly like to thank Stella Paes (then of Costello Technology College) for her early ideas.
The Cams Hill Science Consortium are currently developing and evaluating versions of the Levels Mountains for the new KS3 and KS4 courses and for post16 Science courses. For further details please contact us via www.thinkingframe.com.
We published an article in the Association for Science Education's School Science Review in March 2005 which explains in more detail how the Levels Mountain can be used in KS3.
