Beating the numbers through strategic intervention materials (SIMs): Innovative science teaching for large classes

• Main Author: Alboruto, Venus M.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Science education; Skills; Students; Teachers; Teaching; Virtual reality
• ISSN: 0094-243X; 1551-7616
• DOI: 10.1063/1.4983982

The study aimed to find out the effectiveness of using Strategic Intervention Materials (SIMs) as an innovative teaching practice in managing large Grade Eight Science classes to raise the performance of the students in terms of science process skills development and mastery of science concepts. Utilizing experimental research design with two groups of participants, which were purposefully chosen, it was obtained that there existed a significant difference in the performance of the experimental and control groups based on actual class observation and written tests on science process skills with a p-value of 0.0360 in favor of the experimental class. Further, results of written pre-test and post-test on science concepts showed that the experimental group with the mean of 24.325 (SD =3.82) performed better than the control group with the mean of 20.58 (SD =4.94), with a registered p-value of 0.00039. Therefore, the use of SIMs significantly contributed to the mastery of science concepts and the development of science process skills. Based on the findings, the following recommendations are offered: 1. that grade eight science teachers should use or adopt the SIMs used in this study to improve their students’ performance; 2. training-workshop on developing SIMs must be conducted to help teachers develop SIMs to be used in their classes; 3. school administrators must allocate funds for the development and reproduction of SIMs to be used by the students in their school; and 4. every division should have a repository of SIMs for easy access of the teachers in the entire division.