Year 7 and 8 students engaging with science

I'd like to continue with sharing some ideas for our year 7 and 8 students. I do think that you can grab these for our younger children too though so do read on!
The last capability is "Engaged with Science":

http://scienceonline.tki.org.nz/Science-capabilities-for-citizenship/Introducing-five-science-capabilities/Engage-with-science

This is sort of the capability that will hopefully draw all the other capabilities together. Through developing Gather and Interpret Data, Use Evidence, Critique Evidence and Interpret Representations capabilities, students may be even more ready to engage with science. This is the one where students grab hold of science issues and can discuss these, perhaps even taking action. I like the thought that this engaging may be as simple as visiting the museum, or perhaps taking home the experiment from school to try with the whaanau! This week, a teacher shared how one of her students rushed up to her in the morning, sharing about how he had seen his shadow when he got off the bus -we had been exploring shadows the day before!
I'd also like to think that we can discuss other issues too that may not seem 'science'-based but certainly have an element of science that can be discussed. Of course, off the top of my head, I can only think of ones that are science issues (naturally!), but students may come in to chat about something they've heard on the news and the class could look at through a science lens. 
We need to work hard to develop the kaupapa in the classroom so that discussions can be had, different views can be shared, and we can disagree! Sometimes, simply because science says 'yes', it might not mean it's right -chlorinating the water could be one of those discussions. Yes, dentists say it is right to chlorinate the water and have informal data showing that there are more fillings in areas where they don't, but actually I really don't want extra 'stuff' in my water! 
Having a discussion can be quite difficult, especially if you like to be the chairperson! Creating a conversation so it's the tamariki talking between themselves is a great goal to move towards.
This week, we've had the Mycoplasma bovis disease in the papers a lot and some of you may be teaching students who live on farms. When I'm reading through the papers, I can see there are opportunities to discuss articles with the students (perhaps a great reading activity?) -what do they think? Can they back up their arguments scientifically? How do the papers present the information? Is it scientific (i.e 67% rather than 'lots')? Is it emotive? What is the language used? Some students may come to school talking about the anger and emotions farmers are feeling at the moment and it could be a challenge separating this from just thinking scientifically. However, I do feel that we need to be aware of these other aspects of this disease hitting the farms. Although we can talk about this from a scientific point of view, what other views are there to take into account?
"Wicked Problems" is a term that could well describe this and there are some good examples out there, as well as a book called Key Competencies for the Future from NZCER that I really recommend -a good read and well thought out for teachers. An example is feeding children lunches at school -if we do, it may cost schools money and parents are 'getting away with it', and if we don't, children are hungry, struggle to learn and can have behaviour issues... There isn't 'a' solution that will please everyone!
Another interesting issue is the current reversal for houses where methamphetamine has been smoked. Recently, Professor Sir Peter Gluckman wrote a report that our testing for meth use in houses was too severe and based this on scientific information... so what was used in the first place? And some disagree with the findings -that it isn't healthy and no new information has been used. 
For both of these current NZ issues, there's lots of science happening: vocabulary, scientists at work, data being analysed and this directly affecting society. The essence statement in the NZ Curriculum says: 

 and certainly this is the case with these two situations affecting people. 

Finally, I just want to remind you of other news that shows science playing a significant role, that shows scientists at work as well as specialist vocabulary in particular topics: the Hawaii eruptions! I'm certain lots of children would be interested in what's happening over there and could make for some interesting reading topics. 
And I wanted the chance to share some interesting photos I saw yesterday. I wonder what children would make of them? Good for "I notice, I think, I wonder"!

From mashable.com, satellite images during the day and night of the eruptions.

Anyway, I hope this has given you some ideas for science, discussions in the morning, or reading and writing time! As always, do share your thoughts!

Keep on sciencing!
Paul

Level Four Science for our Year 7 and 8 children

In my travels around the countryside (and always keen to head to new places so do ask!), one thing that strikes me is how we teach our Year 7 and 8 students. Quite often the question pops up "How do our Year 8s do in science when they get to college?" and unfortunately the answer can be "quite poorly". Students may be unfamiliar with the subject altogether, or not understand the vocabulary, or have little context knowledge, so feel quite insecure when heading into the classroom. In terms of the latter, I'm not sure that we should have our Y7/8 curriculum driven by knowledge needs of Y9 classrooms but even children going in knowing 'some stuff' may make them feel more confident in the attaining of some more!

The NZC nature of science strands and the context strands are quite general. Have a look and not only will you see a lot of it is the same as for Level 3, but also the verbs are not specific: explore, describe, appreciate, identify... (In fact, that could make an interesting activity for the staff: underline all the verbs): so what do these look like? How much "appreciate" is needed to be at Level 4? When will I know that students can "describe" at Level 4 rather than Level 3? I think these are valid questions but may also be quite different from school to school.

The other side of this is the how we teach science? How do we know we're teaching at a Level 4? I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of our teaching programmes may say we're teaching Level 4 but actually it's more likely Level 3 or even 2. Of course, if students haven't explored the topic before, they should start at an earlier level, but I think even when they have, we still tend to teach a hands-on approach that probably reflects lower level classrooms. The other issue is us! What if we don't really know enough science to teach Level 4? Or we don't really know what it should look like?

NZCER STwE Assessments

In answer to the second question, there are two options. We can start with the Science Thinking with Evidence assessments from NZCER. Besides actually finding out what level the students are working at in terms of the nature of science (the science capabilities are used for the Y4-6 tests), we can also look at the content of the tests. How are questions asked? What verbs are used? What are children expected to do? I think you might be surprised at the depth! Some questions may have contexts that if you knew about them would give you more confidence in answering them, but you can certainly answer them without knowing anything! And that's the key! Are we teaching our children the science skills and attitudes so that they can work in any context well?

The second option is the Assessment Resource Bank. I've been having a wander through today and have found lots of good examples of data gathering using statistics and measurement. Although the advanced search uses the nature of science strands, you can add key search words that are science capability based. Besides having tasks that will straight away show you how children could be thinking and how they are working at Level 4 with standardised comparisons to help you, I think there are some really good lessons that could be adapted from the assessments! Start with a discussion and 'the problem' (that just happens to coincide with the exercise!) and then let the students investigate, whilst we all critique our findings and research methods and then leave some space to investigate our wonderings that might result from our work.

Although these are assessments, I think they are fantastic starters for us teachers to build series of lessons around and they give us some ideas around how we perhaps should be teaching science at this Level 4. Pull out your Progressions in reading, writing and maths -if this is what we expect at Level 4, then we should be expecting the same for our science! I was going to put some links here -I like the Runny Honey, Propoerties of five drinks, Keeping drinks warm, but the list goes on (I have 11 tabs open at the moment!). With the arb site, you can save activities to your folders for later and you can make as many folders as you like!  

As always, I value your questions and comments (and requests for PLD!) and do check out my facebook page "science happening nz'.

Keep sciencing on!
Paul

Links: https://arbs.nzcer.org.nz/
http://www.nzcer.org.nz/tests/science-thinking-evidence
https://www.facebook.com/sciencehappeningnz/

Integrating Science

We talk a lot about the crowded curriculum and trying to squeeze in all the essential learning areas and one way to try and get a good coverage is the integrated topic... Let's do a unit on "the local beach" and we can then have social sciences (history and geography), science (sustainability, living world), art (sketching, painting, sculptures) as well as tikanga, literacy and maths, etc...  Then schools get facilitators (like me!) coming along and talking about how students are arriving at colleges not understanding big ideas about science, or even that they have ever done science! We encourage schools to ensure that students know they're doing science and that in science, we have a particular way of sharing ideas, carrying out investigations and communicating with others.

Although this would seem like two completely different ideas, I believe that we can have a lovely integrated topic and keep the science focus (or health or social sciences...) as well. I love the idea of authentic contexts and I think it enables students with all their different learning styles and passions to be engaged and enthusiastic -a six week science unit on "birds of the beach" will certainly interest me but may not be so interesting to everyone else! A six week unit where students are doing some science: counting the birds, observing their behaviour, investigating them further at school using the internet and books and then confirming back at the beach; as well as art: painting landscapes, the waves or whatever arty people like to do (!) may engage all students.

Particularly in the Year 5 to 8 classes, reading and writing may disappear and those literacy spaces become an area for authentic contexts where students are still learning those skills but within, for example, the topic of beaches:

• Visual Language: critiquing the warning signs at the beach, 
• Writing: describing the life of the beach both poetically and scientifically (they are different!), poetry, summarising data gathered,
• Reading: DoC websites, local resources (might be newspaper articles, websites or pamphlets) and school journals

I'm sure you can come up with many more ideas. Even within these times, I might still be reminding students that, if it is summarising data, we need to be careful with the language we use since we are writing a piece that reflects scientific thinking or communicating. If we're debating, it might have a bit of science writing and some argumentative themes too. If I am writing something poetic, I might remind students that in this context, we have more leeway, and we can use metaphors and adjectives as well as making sure that we are eliciting an emotional response in our readers. The same goes with reading... If it's an article, it should have a particular way of communicating ideas with the way it is written and the words used. I like to use the local papers and cut out letters and articles for students to read and critique.

I hope as you have read through this post, you can see the science capabilities or the nature of science shining through... By ensuring that I'm keeping that science label prominent, I'm hoping that students moving on to high school will understand how we investigate in science, how we communicate, and how we critique. Students are also aware that science is much more that "blowing things up" (and yes, I even got that description again last week!). They will be developing that science lens right alongside other lenses.

I'd also like to share about how I'd have the Key Competencies and Values right at the top of my planning running the whole unit but I think I'll leave that for another day!

I hope this helps -it would be a great topic to discuss in a staff meeting and I would have the Essence Statements in the NZC (p. 17) open to ensure that curriculum areas don't get diluted. It's something that I constantly wrestled with when I was teaching -I often wrestled with reading programmes that were completely disconnected with whatever topic I was currently playing with.

Have a great week, feel free to comment below!

Paul