I wrote this as part of a blog post for one of the clusters I work with and thought it might be interesting for others...

http://i.istockimg.com/file_thumbview_approve/63703977/5/stock-photo-63703977-rubber-duck-bathing-on-puddle-in-the-nature.jpg

I was excited by the discussions during the workshop around the Use Evidence capability and it's difference to the Gather and Interpret Data capability. As we said, all the capabilities do tend to float around together with no definitive line between them but we can look for certain things. To use a bit of an example shared yesterday (and I've changed it a bit so no copyright breached!)... We've had a lot of rain in Te Aroha and the front yard is gaining it's own water feature with birdlife... "I'm thinking it's probably because the ground can not drain away that much water -I've dug some gardens and know that in some places it's all clay." To me (and this is my interpretation!), this is not really an explanation but more of an inference (the "Interpret" bit of the first capabilities). Observation: puddles of water on my front lawn, ducks swimming, seeing lots of rain. Inference: water's not draining away perhaps because the soil is clay (which I've seen when I've dug in other places. To make this an explanation I think I would need to do a bit more investigating -how do I know the soild where the puddles are is clay? How do I know that Te Aroha clay doesn't drain the water? I think I need more actual evidence rather than basing my explanation solely on my inferences (since an explanation has to be based on evidence!). So I'm going to dig up some samples from my front lawn and put some of this soil in perhaps a bottle with the bottom cut off, and then pour similar amounts of water as I have got in rainfall over and measure the drainage as well as observe what happens at the top. I might notice that the water actually soaks into the soil and only a little drains out. So then I'm going to pour more water on and monitor. I'll also check the actual soil -what type is it... is it clay? how do I know? From this I can now build up my Explanation: (and again I'm making this up as an example!) I noticed all the puddles and inferred it might be the soil type and too much rain to drain away. After I did an investigation, I noticed that when I poured water onto a sample of my front lawn, it could drain 25% but the other 75% stayed in the soil overnight before draining away over three days. When I poured another rainfall amount on, this water couldn't soak into the soil because of the existing water so pooled on top. From this I think my inferences were right -there was too much rain and because of my front lawn, water takes a long time to drain through it so a lot will just make puddles on the top (for the ducks!).

I could then critique -how did I pour the water on? Was it at the same rate as rainfall? Was my sample of the front lawn big enough? How many samples did I dig up? How many times did I do the experiment? 

I could also use the Interpret Representations capability by writing up my findings, sharing how I carried out my experiment, draw a diagram of my bottle drainer and then perhaps also a picture of my front lawn as a cross section showing how the water drains (my own little water cycle!).

So what do you think of this example? Questions? Thoughts? Wonderings?