UUÂãÁÄÖ±²¥

Simon Colebrooke, Matthew Smith and Zoë Thorn

Matthew Smith, Simon Colebrooke and Zoë Thorn travelled to the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado, in July to share  their messages about scale with delegates in one way or another.

Matthew, from St Paul’s School, London, spoke about microscale practical work, with an emphasis on how it can be made to work at the level of the science department, and the great benefits it can bring when realised at scale.

He drew on his experiences and those of the teachers and technicians at his school, who have now introduced 41 microscale activities to their schemes of work. Matthew was also hoping to whet American appetites for , which will be held at St Paul’s School between 8-10 July 2026.

Simon and Zoë, from Long Road Sixth Form College, Cambridge, presented their findings from a research project they have been running in collaboration with Anglia Ruskin University over the last four years.

The goal of the ongoing project has been to help A-level students to overcome some of their misconceptions about chemistry by carefully ordering the teaching of structure and bonding concepts by scale, from the sub-atomic to the atomic to the molecular and finally to the giant.

By treating scale as a threshold concept, they were able to improve pupil performance on structure and bonding assessments whilst finding that pupil enjoyment increased as did the sophistication of the questions asked in class.

To read more about Simon and Zoë’s work and to download some resources, see .

We all hope to return to future ChemEd conferences – in addition to a very warm welcome from conference organisers and fellow chemistry teachers, there was a panoply of opportunities to learn more about our vocation from the hundreds of enthusiastic talks, workshops and activities on offer.

Written by Matthew Smith.