A-level Chemistry Revision Workshops
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UPDATED (24/03/2024) - Welcome to the 2024 version of this website!
As previous years, FREE workshops will take place on the Newcastle University campus in Newcastle w/b 1st & 8th April 2024 - dates now confirmed. Please note that these will be offered first to our UCAS applicants for specific degree programmes through their attendance at our Offer Holder Days - I will advise my teacher contacts and publish on this website when they are open for general booking by any A-level chemistry students - likely to be early in w/b 25th March?
Unfortunately, I have still not been able to find a venue in central London at a weekend, so I currently won't be holding any workshops in London again this year. If anyone has any suggestions for, or indeed can offer, a London venue for 2024, please get in touch with me via the contact form on the Contact page.
Chargeable workshops will take place again at Nottingham University (dates now confirmed-bookings now open) and (formerly) Bideford College, now hosted by Launceston College (dates confirmed-bookings now open). Other venues are unlikely to be added at this stage - but if you would like to host workshops in Spring 2025, please do get in touch!
I was seriously considering offering an online option for 2024, but some personal and technical issues have sadly scuppered this!
There is a separate page listing all the venues and booking links - "Locations 2024" tab above - this is now active - will be updated with dates and booking links as workshops at each venue are confirmed.
Background to the workshops:
The former School of Chemistry at Newcastle University have run annual A-level Chemistry Revision Workshops during the school Easter holidays since 2009, when Dr Peter Hoare started them during his Royal Society of Chemistry School Teacher Fellowship secondment year.
They have been repeated each academic year since and continue to be very popular.
There are separate revision workshops for both AS (year 12 content) and A2 (year 13 content) Chemistry and are tailored to the content of the most common A-level Chemistry specifications studied in English schools, namely AQA, Edexcel and OCR (A&B). They also cover the majority of the content of the WJEC (Wales) and CCEA (Northern Ireland) specifications.
Workshops typically run between 10.00 and 16.00 each day. They include two interactive revision sessions, with a one hour lunch break (12.30 - 13.30) in between – attendees are expected to make their own arrangements for lunch.
Each revision session consists of a short summary of the key points and typical student misconceptions from each selected topic area. This is followed by a variety of on-screen questions which the students answer using electronic voting handsets, provided by the presenter at the venue.
Each student is also provided with a PDF booklet containing a comprehensive set of revision notes covering most topics for each year in advance of the workshops and at each workshop a shorter paper Abstracts booklet containing the specific notes and data needed during the workshop.
Workshop attendees are expected to bring a pen, writing paper and a scientific calculator to each workshop.
The presenter, Dr Peter Hoare, is currently a full-time STEM Outreach Officer in the Science Faculty and the former Chemistry Outreach Officer (2009 - 2017) at Newcastle University. He is a former secondary school chemistry teacher with 20 years experience in the classroom (1989 - 2009) and is also an A-level chemistry marker for one of the major English examining boards (since 1995). Peter has delivered well over a hundred of these workshops on the Newcastle University campus and in various schools, colleges and other venues across the country since 2009 and, for the five years pre-covid (2015 - 2019), at various Universities across England and Wales, previously supported by the RSC ChemNet scheme (2015 & 2016).
Please note that Peter is delivering the Newcastle University workshops as part of his current role working at the University; the other workshops are organised in a personal capacity as an invited freelance chemistry education consultant by each venue and are not supported or endorsed by Newcastle University (he delivered the RSC ChemNet workshops in the same capacity in 2015 & 2016 and Peter has always delivered the Nottingham workshops as an invited speaker by the School of Chemistry).
Please click on the "Locations 2024" tab above for details of all workshop dates and locations and links to book online.
Post-covid, I now have the experience, resources and technology to run these workshops online via Zoom - I haven't scheduled any sessions for 2024 due to some technical issues, but would consider doing so in 2025 if there is sufficient demand? - they would likely be run as a number of shorter (1.5 hr) sessions spread over a few weeks, either weekday early evenings and/or at weekends? If you or your school would be interested, please contact me via the "Contact" page link above.
Programme for the AS (year 12) workshop:
Preparing for your examinations on the yr12 / AS content of the new chemistry specifications:
Foundation Chemistry
Chemistry in Action
Programme for the A2 (year 13) workshop:
Preparing for your examinations on the yr13 / A2 content of the new chemistry specifications:
Organic Chemistry
Physical Chemistry
UPDATED (24/03/2024) - Welcome to the 2024 version of this website!
As previous years, FREE workshops will take place on the Newcastle University campus in Newcastle w/b 1st & 8th April 2024 - dates now confirmed. Please note that these will be offered first to our UCAS applicants for specific degree programmes through their attendance at our Offer Holder Days - I will advise my teacher contacts and publish on this website when they are open for general booking by any A-level chemistry students - likely to be early in w/b 25th March?
Unfortunately, I have still not been able to find a venue in central London at a weekend, so I currently won't be holding any workshops in London again this year. If anyone has any suggestions for, or indeed can offer, a London venue for 2024, please get in touch with me via the contact form on the Contact page.
Chargeable workshops will take place again at Nottingham University (dates now confirmed-bookings now open) and (formerly) Bideford College, now hosted by Launceston College (dates confirmed-bookings now open). Other venues are unlikely to be added at this stage - but if you would like to host workshops in Spring 2025, please do get in touch!
I was seriously considering offering an online option for 2024, but some personal and technical issues have sadly scuppered this!
There is a separate page listing all the venues and booking links - "Locations 2024" tab above - this is now active - will be updated with dates and booking links as workshops at each venue are confirmed.
Background to the workshops:
The former School of Chemistry at Newcastle University have run annual A-level Chemistry Revision Workshops during the school Easter holidays since 2009, when Dr Peter Hoare started them during his Royal Society of Chemistry School Teacher Fellowship secondment year.
They have been repeated each academic year since and continue to be very popular.
There are separate revision workshops for both AS (year 12 content) and A2 (year 13 content) Chemistry and are tailored to the content of the most common A-level Chemistry specifications studied in English schools, namely AQA, Edexcel and OCR (A&B). They also cover the majority of the content of the WJEC (Wales) and CCEA (Northern Ireland) specifications.
Workshops typically run between 10.00 and 16.00 each day. They include two interactive revision sessions, with a one hour lunch break (12.30 - 13.30) in between – attendees are expected to make their own arrangements for lunch.
Each revision session consists of a short summary of the key points and typical student misconceptions from each selected topic area. This is followed by a variety of on-screen questions which the students answer using electronic voting handsets, provided by the presenter at the venue.
Each student is also provided with a PDF booklet containing a comprehensive set of revision notes covering most topics for each year in advance of the workshops and at each workshop a shorter paper Abstracts booklet containing the specific notes and data needed during the workshop.
Workshop attendees are expected to bring a pen, writing paper and a scientific calculator to each workshop.
The presenter, Dr Peter Hoare, is currently a full-time STEM Outreach Officer in the Science Faculty and the former Chemistry Outreach Officer (2009 - 2017) at Newcastle University. He is a former secondary school chemistry teacher with 20 years experience in the classroom (1989 - 2009) and is also an A-level chemistry marker for one of the major English examining boards (since 1995). Peter has delivered well over a hundred of these workshops on the Newcastle University campus and in various schools, colleges and other venues across the country since 2009 and, for the five years pre-covid (2015 - 2019), at various Universities across England and Wales, previously supported by the RSC ChemNet scheme (2015 & 2016).
Please note that Peter is delivering the Newcastle University workshops as part of his current role working at the University; the other workshops are organised in a personal capacity as an invited freelance chemistry education consultant by each venue and are not supported or endorsed by Newcastle University (he delivered the RSC ChemNet workshops in the same capacity in 2015 & 2016 and Peter has always delivered the Nottingham workshops as an invited speaker by the School of Chemistry).
Please click on the "Locations 2024" tab above for details of all workshop dates and locations and links to book online.
Post-covid, I now have the experience, resources and technology to run these workshops online via Zoom - I haven't scheduled any sessions for 2024 due to some technical issues, but would consider doing so in 2025 if there is sufficient demand? - they would likely be run as a number of shorter (1.5 hr) sessions spread over a few weeks, either weekday early evenings and/or at weekends? If you or your school would be interested, please contact me via the "Contact" page link above.
Programme for the AS (year 12) workshop:
Preparing for your examinations on the yr12 / AS content of the new chemistry specifications:
Foundation Chemistry
- Atomic Structure
- Bonding & Intermolecular Forces
- VSEPR
- Moles Calculations
- Ideal Gas Equation
Chemistry in Action
- Enthalpy
- Kinetics
- IUPAC Nomenclature
- Isomers
- Alkanes
- Alkenes
- Haloalkanes
- Alcohols
Programme for the A2 (year 13) workshop:
Preparing for your examinations on the yr13 / A2 content of the new chemistry specifications:
Organic Chemistry
- Isomers
- Aromatics
- Carbonyl compounds
- Amines
- Spectroscopy
Physical Chemistry
- Acids, Bases & pH
- Rates
- Equilibria
- Born-Haber cycles
- Entropy & Free Energy
- Redox
- Electrode potentials