GCSE and A-level teaching resources

Chalkbored and Labmouse

Chalkbored

Chalkbored advertises and briefly summarises the book of the same name. However, at the bottom of the screen, in a small font, is a link to a list of 'resources for high school chemistry: worksheets, labs, handouts, and PowerPoint lessons'. Although a US-based site, there is much here that is potentially valuable for UK courses, especially at GCSE level.

The 86 resources cover five familiar chemical themes - Matter and chemical bonding, Quantities in chemical reactions, Solutions and solubility, Gases and atmospheric chemistry, and Hydrocarbons and energy. For each theme there are suggestions for student practical activities, which you must risk assess before using with your students. The worksheets offer good explanations and include clear diagrams. The notes are interspersed with examples and questions (for which there is usually a separate file with answers). My only criticism of the worksheets is that there is sometimes a bit too much information on a page.  

Most PowerPoint presentations are accompanied by a pdf file containing a summary of the slides, which is useful for putting into teaching files. But again I recommend you do some advance planning before using the presentations because there are some oddities, such as the use of unbalanced equations in the PowerPoint on the reactivity series.