| Award level | Criteria breakdown | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Bronze | The student described and evaluated a few possible approaches to completing their project | My project can be done more than one way. I could do an experiment or just take a survey. Doing an experiment is good because I will collect primary data which I can evaluate. However, it will take a lot of time and could cost quite a lot possibly to get all the equipment. Doing the survey would be good because I could ask lots of people in a short amount of time, making my project’s results more reliable. The downside is that my results will be of what people think, and the truth might be different from what they think. |
| Silver | The student identified a range of possible and relevant approaches to achieving their aim. They explored the pros and cons of each. | To achieve my project’s aim of, “finding the healthiest crisp” I could use multiple approaches. I could perform a series of surveys, with people answering how frequently and the type of crisps they eat, and comparing this with a measures of their health (either self-reported or by getting them to do test to measure their health). The benefits of approach are that I can get a large amount of data, as filling out surveys is quick and easy. The downsides are that it will be difficult to get any conclusive results. This is because there are lots of factors that could affect someone’s health e.g. amount of exercise, age, diet (excluding crisps). I could carry out practical experiments on different crisps to measure their nutritional value. These tests could be to measure their calorific values, and the amount of sugar, salt and fats in 100g of crisps. The benefits to this approach are that the experiments proposed are relatively easy and quick to carryout. This means that I will be able to carry out the experiments multiple times, increasing the chances of reliable and conclusive results. The difficulty to this method is relating it back to people’s health. Also, there are a large variety of crisps – different brands, flavours, potato or other type of crisp etc. This means I will need to find a way to narrow down the crisps that I will test in these ways. |
| Gold | The student identified a range of relevant approaches – drawing on research and best practice in the field. They evaluated the approaches in detail. | In the lesson, I could formatively assess my students and gather information on their learning in multiple ways – each of these have their positives and negatives. Method: Asking the class questions and choosing a student to answer using a random generator Positive: This method of selecting a student is fair, as the student is chosen at random. This avoids the issue of only choosing students confident enough to volunteer their answers or those that feel they know the answer (when other students in the class may not). What’s more, if the student is correct, I will know that at least one student has understood the content – and depending on the student, other students are likely to have understood too. If the student, is incorrect then I will have an opportunity to address the misconception or wrong information in front of the class – potentially addressing multiple students’ misconceptions at once. Negatives: As the students are chosen at random, and because this is a new topic, there is a chance that a student lacking confidence is selected and ‘put-on-the-spot’. Asking the student when they don’t know the answer, may result in their self-confidence being further undermined. Also, this method of assessment only definitively tells me whether this student knows the answer, and not if the whole class understands. What’s more, if it is a closed question – I won’t know whether the student has understood the answer or if they are regurgitating facts. If I wanted to ask multiple questions, then this is a time-intensive way of gathering information about the class’s learning – which is not ideal as I need to address a lot of content in this lesson. Method: Using an online quiz where students answer multiple-choice questions in pairs or small groups. Positives: This method is the most comprehensive. It ensures I reach the entire class and is a relatively simple process to set up. Negatives: Working in pairs or small groups could bias the results or lead to cheating. |