Class discussions

I have had a lovely couple of days working in Huntly with the Year 1 to 4 children which are always a lot of fun to work with. Teachers had planned out a lesson and I was meant to be co-teaching alongside them... although I always feel a better descriptor would be interferer or interrupter!
As a part of the lessons, there were opportunities for class discussions and watching these in action really got me thinking about the whole idea of 'on the mat' time (or 'sitting at desks' if they're seniors!).
It's not something I have spent time musing, it really is a 'right now' type of thing but I think it's a valid topic for schools and syndicates to be discussing further. I'd like to ask the question of 'why are you using a class discussion right now?' along with 'how will you know that you have achieved the objective?'. For example, if you are have decided to see whether children understand what you did yesterday with them, how will you know that they all understand? 
The class discussions that I was a part of sometimes had the same children answering, small groups disengaged -who would be brought back in to the discussion "And what do you think Paul?" followed by a "Please listen carefully so you do have a view"! My time in front of the classrooms I'm certain were no different. There were certain children I'd ask because I thought they would know the right answers for everyone to listen to so they knew as well, certain children I didn't ask because I didn't want a 7 1/2 minute response or a gripping account of how their cat went missing the other night (and I know you all have those kids too!). But if the point is knowing what the children understand, and the medium is "class discussion", was this best?
Sometimes class discussions can be a bit of 'teacher tennis' with the teacher firing the ball out, children answering back and then the teacher firing out to a different child. What if the discussion could carry on without the teacher so other children instead responded? Often students aren't really listening to the person before them -they're desperate to have their view even if it's already been shared three times! 
This isn't a topic that I'm an expert in but I wanted to share my thoughts and observations, not as criticisms but more of 'so how can we improve these?'. And I'm thinking of me visiting classrooms too! One teacher shared how she almost forced the discussion by asking a question and then simply stopping... those seconds of waiting for a response would have been very long! Slowly children did get the idea that this was their discussion not hers!
The science talk moves (on the TERC website) are brilliant to support this kind of thinking with well thought out prompts to promote conversation. 
If it's always the same group of children playing the class discussion game, how could you better involve them? If you want them all listening carefully, how do we do this? As I said, I'm no expert but this week's discussions came up with some ideas...

• changing the culture of what class discussions are
• lots more work in pairs or threes or even groups rather than 'teacher tennis'; children 
• children recording ideas shared in a discussion -the teacher might prompt this or scaffold it... Ooooh, that's really interesting... make a note of what Paora has just said about a ski car working best on the sand. We might investigate that tomorrow. 
• wrapping up the discussion by getting children to write down what they learnt from the discussion or an interesting point or a question that they've had resulting from the conversations
• using the talk moves... or even better, the children using the talk moves! 

I guess that you would need to model and scaffold the children through at first but I'm imagining better discussions! A question that popped into my head as I was writing these ideas: how are children accountable to listen during the discussions? Is being silent enough to 'appear' to be engaged?

I think this would be a great topic for staff meetings -what do teachers think? And how can we improve the point of them?

Anyway that's all! I'd love to hear your ideas about how to enrich class discussions. Why not stick some of these questions in your planner to think about your next discussion (or one you've just had). You could even video one! I get a lot of teachers doing this with my modelled lessons. Now I want to go back to see how the discussions were for all the children! 

thanks for reading

Paul

Juniors and Seniors -what do you know?

Kia ora koutou
This is just a quick post (mind you, I do say that a bit!) from a thought that popped into my head this week.
On the wall I have two NZC posters which have been up for quite some time. I decided to look closer and something about them struck me. One is for levels 1 and 2 of the curriculum and the other for levels 3 and 4. I have a funny feeling I downloaded them from the Ministry of Education website. Really the posters are focusing on the two different levels of the Key Competencies but they also had a different title on each with the juniors one titled "Emergent Understandings" and the seniors one "Developing Understandings". 

http://jodyreganmath.blogspot.com

It was a bit of a light bulb moment for me. Sometimes when I'm in junior rooms, I can see teachers working hard to develop quite intense and complex ideas for the children to get their head around. I'm always amazed when the children are able to share back what they've learnt but the minute I start asking questions it all starts to fall apart a bit. I'm not against going in-depth into science topics and certainly as the children learn more, they get hungry for more. One teacher I worked with told me once that her class had studied bubbles for the whole term. It wasn't a unit that the teacher had planned out every activity and direction before the class started but one where the teacher had some capabilities foci and the children led the whole inquiry themselves. This is exactly what science should be about! 
Anyway back on track... In the junior classes we're dealing with "emergent understandings" -just the beginning bits. We don't have to worry about whether or not children understand magnetic fields, tectonic plates, photosynthesis or the molecular structure of matter (all real life examples) we're just introducing these ideas to the children! We'll use some scientific vocabulary but the big focus is those ideas for Gather and Interpret Data concepts, and growing awe and wonder and curiosity AND an idea of what science is about (phew!).
If the seniors, and I mean Y5-8, are "developing understanding" this might make the programme at this end a little different. There's still space for new ideas, but to me (and here's the light bulb moment), if the children are developing understanding, there has to be some understanding that they have been exposed to in the junior room. And here's the big questions... do we know what the children learnt during the junior years? Do we know what ideas were shared, what units were taught so we can develop these ideas and understandings further? 
For some reason there does seem to be "junior" themed units: shadows, butterflies, float and sinking, etc but I reckon these are all great with the seniors too. With such beautiful weather outside, take the kids out quick and get them to point out their shadows. Now ask them to stand with their shadows on the other side of themselves -a lot will try to do this which shows where their understanding is: the emergent level: the sun's light source is creating a shadow of me. As a teacher I might try to develop it further with the seniors with "translucent" and "transparent" and what shadows actually are and...and... I might even dig out the Building Science Concepts shadows book for levels 1 and 2 and see what's in there!  
As I said earlier, there is room for new topics for the seniors but I love the idea of this 'learning pathway' happening through the school. As I wrote this sentence, the thought occurred to me could any 'new' topic the seniors want to do be at least introduced at a junior level? It's up to the junior teachers to find out what senior teachers might be wanting to do units on and vice versa!

faithlivedout.wordpress.com

And that was my light bulb moment!

Data, oh Data, wherefore art thou?

No I'm not going all Shakespearean on you... or (if you're a bit nerdy like I'm rumoured to be) Star Trek The Next Generation... I'm talking about the data we use for that first capability Gather and Interpret Data and then needing it for further analysis with the Use Evidence capability (and elsewhere too!).

Often in science we either think of the first capability as simply observations using our senses or we might gather some very simple data like how far a car will roll down a ramp. Particularly for our older children, grabbing hold of good data to formulate rich and robust explanations is really important. Although we can gather that data ourselves, there's plenty of places we can find some examples to use...

www.nzmaths.co.nz

The nzmaths website has the Figure it Out series and there are three that are specifically science-based (although I think there are others you can use too). Some of these have data for their own activities (which are good in themselves) but why not grab out that data and do some of your own activities with it? 

Jo Mathews, one of our University of Waikato maths facilitators, is great with the whole statistical literacy idea in science. She once brought in some data and said nothing about it... from memory, it was just a pile of numbers! She challenged us to figure out what the data were saying, what it were measuring. I really liked this idea and it could be an easy one to do yourself. Grab the weather data from the last week and take off all the measurement units. Can students start making sense of this data? If you shared the unit measurements, what does the data now say?

Matamata Piako District Council website

 Another place to go is your local council or environmental council website. The one above is from my council and is easily accessed. The fourth capability also comes into play, Interpret Representations. What do we need to know to be able to read this? Why is the information presented like this? Is it easy to read? Why or why not? What information might be missing? Remember that the author is deciding which data to show and how -might there be more going on here? I'm curious that my local council doesn't elaborate on results or action points or even share what all the terms means and if I should be worried or not!
Besides graphs, tables are useful too: 

Also Matamata Piako District Council data

Again, challenge our children -what do we think of the data? What is it showing? And not showing! 

If I'm doing a topic study on the oceans, get children to analyse data, think about it and then use it for explanations. And an extra step -could children critique theirs and each others data? Scientists do this all the time! There are some who think climate change is real and others who are challenging the gathering of the data and the interpretation of it.

So there's some ideas for data! I hope it helps! If you would like further conversations about statistical literacy or science or the capabilities, get in touch!

Paul.


FUN FACT... "data" is actually a plural word! The correct grammar is to say "The data are showing us..." and after three years of knowing this, it still sounds weird!

Planning a science unit...

I hope the beginning of the term has gone well for you all. I have had a busy time with schools and planning for the term's science -which is always fun! From the discussions I had with the teachers, I thought it might support others who may also be planning.

I have developed a wee resource with laminate cards that we use to prompt our thinking with units that are for the whole term or longer. I wouldn't go to this length with smaller units (or lesson progressions) although often my lessons for teachers are that thorough simply because I want to support them in their thinking about the science capabilities.

My cards are used really to prompt our thinking rather than have all the answers. The first card is The Big Idea -what's the really big idea that underpins the whole unit. It's the thought that encapsulates science, reading, maths, social sciences, whatever! It's global and probably not an assessment WALT -for example, children appreciate the world around them or children take action.

Next is the NZC Principles, Vision, Values and Key Competencies. I know that these sort of happen all the time, but are there elements that can be deliberately focused on? With my work over the past couple of weeks, teachers have picked out critical and creative thinking themes and sustainability ideas. We also need to look at our own local school curriculum -the values or virtues, etc that the school uses. As with the NZC bits, are there any that we can particularly focus on? I like the idea of starting with these as they need to underpin the unit and the term's teaching.

Because this is a science unit (albeit integrated with other curriculum areas), we'll start with the Context Strands. I've been thinking lots about the idea of shifting from single context strands (i.e. Term Three is "Material World") to topics that can incorporate more than one strand. I might have a focus on one,  for example "Planet Earth and Beyond" and the Moon and Sun, but I might be able to develop some ideas in the "Physical World" with light and shadows. Remember, we don't assess student content knowledge, these context strands are the vehicle we use to develop student science capabilities or the nature of science. We still need the contexts to be rich and robust with lots of deep thinking and action happening though.

Now it's the stuff I particularly like! Science capabilities or the nature of science if you prefer. Remember that they are sort of interchangeable -you don't need to use both. The science capabilities can be found on the TKI site (try googling "science capabilities TKI") and again you'll probably be using more than one. I try to get teachers to focus on the capability that might be more suited to that year level so Gather and Interpret Data (G&ID) for the juniors, Use Evidence (UE) for the middles, and Critique Evidence (CE) for the seniors. I know that you need to use G&ID to develop UE thinking and you need both for the CE capability so all will be happening. It's just that as the teacher, I'm focusing on one particular capability, that's what I'm going to be assessing and using for my learning intentions. Of course, we will be looking at Interpreting Representations and possibly Engaged with Science too and they go across the levels.

Onto other curriculum areas... What else can you do with this topic? I like the idea of reading and writing (and oral language too I guess!) all wrapped up in the topic rather than simply independent stories that don't fit what we're studying as well as maths integrated. In a conversation I had last week, we talked about how to integrate reading and science, without losing the reading elements and gaining the idea that students can continue to develop their thinking about how the natural physical world and science itself work. It might be as simple as unpacking tables or diagrams, or did the scientist infer or observe and how do we know from the text...
We can also do some art or technology, etc too. One of the big things with integrating is that we still call science science. It's not topic. We might be doing a big unit on "The Lake" but when we do science-themed activities, we make sure that children realise that. Children are heading to high school without realising that they have had science lessons -they may remember topics but not make the connection. Of course we also want students to know what science is but that's what this whole blog is about!

I also had some extra cards -Tikanga Maaori, Digital Technologies, Citizen Science, Environmental Science, etc to stimulate thinking and further activities.

The final step is resources -where do we find them? They are pretty much everywhere but some ideal places to go is the Science Learning Hub, TKI might have some ideas,  Royal Society but also DoC, Landcare as well. DoC's lessons are great but besides that, here are lots of NZ resources for us to use. We don't need to download a ready-made unit -and most seem to come from the States but can create one as the unit progresses and student inquiry develops. I might have a couple of starters but then I want children to run the unit! If I do use some NZ lesson plans,  I'll need to adapt them for my class and if they're from overseas, I'm pretty certain they won't have a nature of science or capabilities focus.

Well, if you've got this far, well done! I'm happy to send out a pdf with the cards on to help with planning -just email me: paul.ashman@waikato.ac.nz.

Have fun, and enjoy your science for this term!
Paul