Assessment of planning in practical exam - Part I

What does Assessment of Planning mean in Practical Exam?

The practical assessment incorporates assessment of Planning which has a weighting of 15% out of the entire paper. One, or more, of the questions may be set and require students to apply and integrate knowledge and understanding from different sections of the syllabus. Many students find it IMPOSSIBLE to do well in this section. And this is not true.

What are the requirements for Assessment of Planning?

Students are expected to be able to:
• identify key variables for a given question/problem
• outline an experimental procedure to investigate the question/problem
• describe how the data should be used in order to reach a conclusion
• identify the risks of the experiment and state precautions that should be taken to keep risks to a
minimum

Any example? It's quite confusing..

A typical question could be:

"Plan and produce a procedure to investigate the percentage yield of copper(II) oxide using appropriate reagents and chemicals in the laboratory. You are given a sample of copper(II) carbonate, P."

Wow! How do we go about doing the question?

It is important to plan BEFORE writing your answers down. Just like planning for a composition. A systematic thinking process would be:

Step 1: Ask yourself this question -> What is the objective of the experiment?
- To investigate the percentage yield of copper(II) oxide

Step 2: THINK of the general approach that you would want to use for your experiment by applying scientific concepts that you have learnt.

• Copper(II) carbonate can be decomposed upon heating to form copper(II) oxide and carbon dioxide gas.
• A fixed mass of copper(II) carbonate is heated strongly until all has completely decomposed to form copper(II) oxide.
• Copper(II) oxide is then left to cool and weighed.
• The mass of the cooled copper(II) oxide is then measured to determine the percentage yield of copper(II) oxide.

Step 3: Identify variable(s) and conditions that will affect the experiment.

• Variable to be kept constant: Mass of copper(II) carbonate, P

Conditions:

• Heating of copper(II) carbonate till constant mass
• Size of copper(II) carbonate particles
• Clean and dry apparatus

Step 4: Write your suggested procedure as a series of step-by-step instructions.

• State the appropriate apparatus to be used.
• Describe how you would collect the data.
• Describe how the data collected should be processed to fulfill the purpose of the investigation.

In my next post, I will be sharing more on HOW the procedure should be written.