Five pieces of work that are marked, one per unit and one at the end. They are not decoration on top of the tests — they are the places where you have to put everything together at once, which is the only place I can see whether you can.
Every task page has the same four parts, and they are in this order for a reason.
| Part | What it does |
|---|---|
| The situation | A real problem, with enough detail to constrain your choices |
| Who it is for | A specific audience, because who is reading changes what belongs in it |
| What to hand in | The deliverable, and the parts it must contain |
| How it will be judged | The criteria, in plain language, before you start |
| Task | Unit | The short version |
|---|---|---|
| The Unknown Substance | Matter, trends, and bonding | Identify a coded solid from its behaviour, then weigh the risks and benefits of a real substance |
| The Reaction Prediction | Chemical reactions | Take an industrial process apart into equations, and predict what a related reaction would do |
| The Yield Investigation | Quantities in reactions | Design a reaction, measure what you actually get, and account for the gap |
| The Water Report | Solutions and solubility | Measure what is in local drinking water and compare it with the real standards |
| The Chemistry Showcase | Finale | Present your work and defend it under questioning |
Read the criteria table before you start
Not after. It tells you what separates a level 3 from a level 4, and reading it first is worth more than an extra hour of polish at the end. The pattern is always the same one described in How Marks Work: level 4 is not more work, it is judgement.
Four rules that apply to all five
Every number carries a unit and a defensible number of significant figures. This is the year that stops being a formatting preference. A mass reported as “3.4756 g” from a balance reading to 0.01 g is not more precise than one reported as “3.48 g” — it is less honest. See Significant Figures and Units.
Every claim must be traceable. You will never be penalised for saying “I could not find a reliable figure for this”. You will be penalised hard for a number nobody can trace, including one you half-remember and one a search engine summarised for you. Name the source, and name what kind of source it is: a government agency, a municipal report, a safety data sheet, a professional body, a peer-reviewed article. See What Counts as Evidence.
Say which way your errors push. Naming a source of error is Grade 10. This year the sentence has to include the direction: product left on the filter paper lowers the recovered mass, so our yield is an underestimate. A limitation with no direction attached is a gesture, not an analysis.
Say what your work does not settle. Every task has a section for limitations, and it is the section I read most carefully. A confident claim with no limits stated is weaker work than a modest claim that knows exactly where it stops.
Safety applies to tasks exactly as it does to labs
Anything you design and run is checked by me first, in writing, with the hazards and your response to each hazard included. School reagents only, at the concentrations supplied. Nothing from home, nothing from another room. The full agreement is in Safety in the Lab and Lab Safety and WHMIS, and none of it is relaxed because the work is yours rather than mine.
Late? Talk to me before the due date and we will make a plan. Afterwards there is much less either of us can do. If you are stuck at the start rather than at the end, that is a different problem with a better fix — Getting Unstuck, then Help Sessions.