Reinventing the wheel

If you do the same practicals year after year you get to know all the pitfalls but it can get a bit boring, for that reason it is a good idea to introduce some new ones each year. Another good reason to do this is because second year students might pass on information to the first years, this information will be particularly useful if you happen to have commented on the work telling the student what they should have mentioned in their evaluation, this is cheating and you can't then use the report for assessment however that's not the biggest problem. One of the main reasons for doing practical work is to get students to apply what they have learnt in a novel situation, if they simply get the answers from someone else then they won't have to think for themselves and therefore won't learn anything. I also realise that if students were to find there way into this website and read the exemplars they would have an unfair advantage for that reason I am including a set of new practicals without teachers notes, exemplars etc. I have tried all of the practicals myself but haven't done them with my class yet, when I use them with my class I will post an evaluation on the blog.