Spiral Learning In Chemistry

In my opinion, learning chemistry is not just about rote learning, but developing a set of skills such as logical and abstract thinking, applying an understanding of the symmetry and geometry of molecules and so forth. For these skills to be developed effectively, I believe students need time to assimilate them gradually. For this reason, I advise going through the course content as quickly as possible so that the student becomes familiar with the challenges and skills required to succeed in the course. The content can then be revisited as many times as possible, always adding more depth to the student’s knowledge. This is termed “spiral learning” and I am firm supporter of it. The advantages of this approach are several, namely: -Students finish the course content quite early in the academic year and so they have time to plan for work on weak areas, which boosts their confidence. -Past paper questions usually interlink different topics, so finishing the course content early means past paper questions can also be introduced early -Learning becomes more enjoyable and effective as there is no need to cram in lots of information on a specific topic in one go, as every topic is expected to be covered in different rounds of increasing challenge.

Currently the Royal Society of Chemistry actively supports this type of learning and has contributed in creating a course specification based on this, namely OCR B Salters. From the teacher point of view, this approach is highly demanding as it requires the tutor to have a thorough knowledge of the subject and past papers in order to scaffold the learning so that every time that the course content is revisited the level of challenge in the topics is increased.