Adam Boxer, Heena Dave, and Gethyn Jones’ Cracking Key Concepts in Secondary Science is undoubtedly the hot book of the summer, with seemingly every science teacher on Twitter talking about it, and for good reason. This is a cracking book with plenty of useful explanations, models, analogies, and examples just itching to be used.
[Disclosure: I have a professional relationship with one of the authors. I have tried to be objective throughout by supporting any 'praise' with evidence]
Structure
Cracking Key Concepts starts with a very short introduction outlining the reasoning behind writing the book - just because you know something well doesn’t mean you necessarily know how to explain it well - before jumping into the nitty-gritty.
The first chapter essentially explains explanations. It breaks a good explanation down into its components - the authors call it “The DNA of a Powerful Science Explanation” - allowing the reader to see the thinking behind the explanations outlined throughout the book and thereby providing a great aid for writing your own.
Following this brief journey through the fundamentals of explanations, the book is split into three parts - biology, chemistry, and physics - with each part subdivided into topics. I was pleased to see it has a thorough index (even listing the words in the diagrams!) making the book very easy to navigate which is useful for something intended to be very practical.
The topics are broken down into the following:
- Relevant ages - The topics covered are those that come up in KS3 and/or KS4. There is nothing explicitly for KS5 which is understandable, although, I do think by using the 'theory' outlined in the introduction and taking the explanations as worked examples, it could probably be applied to KS5 fairly easily. A slight majority (52%) of the explanations are for KS4-only concepts, whilst just under 21% are on topics that could come up at any point during a student’s 11 - 16 schooling. For specifics on the breakdown across subject and key stage, have a look at the table below.
- What the students should know already and What students should know by the end - these are self-explanatory, so I won’t expand on them.
- Most, but not all, of the topics also have a little Explanation spiel, most accurately described as 'an explanation of their explanation'. It’s a few sentences telling you what the point of the following pages will be, for example for one of the biology topics it’s to “explicitly distinguish between the structure and function of plant and animal cells” (p20), whilst the explanation for one of the physics topics talks about how faulty force diagrams can “cause confusion, rather than clarifying the issues” (p229).
- Every topic has an explanation broken into Steps, guiding you through the process. I want to be clear that these are not scripted explanations - they are recommendations of sequencing and things to say, as well as analogies, examples, and models to use.
- Dotted throughout the explanations there are some Tips and Tricks which often give a bit of background as to why a particular approach is being recommended.
- Each topic ends with a list of questions or a description of the type of question to use to Check for Understanding.
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| * Balancing equations is a KS4 topic but is, as pointed out in the book, increasingly being incorporated into KS3 schemes of work. I’ve counted it as 11 - 16 / KS3 & KS4 |
The Explanations
The explanations are broken down into Steps as opposed to 'lessons' or any other division, because, as we know, some classes will take more or less time to navigate a topic than others. These Steps are clearly titled and their sequencing is well-justified.
Throughout the explanations there are diagrams, but only where necessary. An underrated thing about these diagrams is that they don’t look like they’ve been drawn by a professional graphic designer. A lot of books that talk about dual coding theory or harnessing the multimedia effect have these beautiful diagrams that, if I’m honest, can be off-putting if you think your work couldn’t possibly match up. It’s refreshing to see 'real teacher diagrams'. Another underrated aspect of the book is that the authors follow their own advice - they avoid unnecessarily complex language, electing instead to put any jargon-like 'official' terminology into the callouts (more on callouts in a bit), explaining that whilst that might be the 'proper' term, it is unfamiliar and unnecessary for the reader’s understanding and so has been deliberately omitted.
Personally, I disagree with some of the phrasing used in one or two of the explanations, particularly around respiration. Obviously everything we teach is a model, and as George E.P. Box put it "all models are wrong", but I think there is space to be more true without losing that simplicity of the model that makes it easier to understand. Of course, every time we teach something new, we essentially ask ourselves "how much truth are we willing we forgo in order to increase foundational understanding?" and everyone's answer will be different. It's certainly not something worth chucking the whole book out over!
The other criticism I’ve heard is that the book isn’t comprehensive enough - that we teach so many more topics and there aren't enough of them covered. Whilst I am inclined to agree - sharing more well-practiced explanations that have a successful track record is probably a good thing - the book is already 315 pages long (not including the index) and any longer it becomes ridiculously enormous and stops being so practical. I'd also argue there are enough examples that one could easily use them as a model to write one's own good explanations. In fact, this is a suggestion made by the authors at the end of the introduction.
The book is fantastically laid out. The headings are very clear, and the margins and font are a good size. The 'bonus information' (top tips, research/theory, &c) is kept separate in little boxes, allowing you to essentially ignore it until you’re at a point where you want to read it. Throughout the introduction there are specific boxes called “callouts” which contain juicy bits of theory, or specific justifications for certain choices the authors have made. Often I find, when the bonus information is interspersed within the main text, it can be a lot to take in at once; by boxing this information into said “callouts”, this problem is neatly side-stepped. Boxer, Dave, and Jones even ask that on the first reading, you shouldn't pay any attention to the callouts, in order to give the main text your fullest attention.
Overall
For ECTs, I think this is a very valuable book; the suggested explanations have been tried and tested, saving you the trial and error of finding the ones that work.
As a more experienced teacher, I think it is still useful. Between them, Boxer, Dave, and Jones cover 29 different topics - there is likely to be at least one thing you hadn’t considered before in there! Plus, the questions listed in the Check for Understanding sections are great 'off-the-shelf', or you can use them as a starting point, (along with the rest of the book) and tailor them to something more specific for your class(es).
Further Reading
The book helpfully gives some suggested further reading; I have repeated a few of their recommendations below, alphabetically by title:
- Memorable Teaching - Peps Mccrea
- Teach Like a Champion 2.0 - Doug Lemov
- The ResearchED Guide to Explicit & Direct Instruction - Adam Boxer & Tom Bennett (eds)
- Why Don't Students Like School? - Daniel T. Willingham