So why we doing this?

I have chatted about this I think once or twice but it struck me again this week after reading a blog about the science capabilities. When people ask me what my job is, I usually joke that it's driving to beautiful parts of the country, invading a classroom, terrorising the teachers and hyping the kids! I know it's a bit more than this but sometimes I do wonder! 
Anyway, I was struck by the thought that actually PLD is about raising student achievement. For me, this starts with supporting teachers in looking at science education which can often be content driven and encouraging a more nature of science based curriculum. This means watching me teach science, exploring the science capabilities and thinking more deeply about the purpose of science... As you can see, it's really a focus on the teachers which I sort of hope feeds back to the students. 
The end result of the PLD is communicated back to the Ministry of Education by looking at whether there has been change in the staff in certain categories but also the students themselves. We could use the Science Thinking with Evidence assessment for this or teacher judgement and evaluations but the big thing I've been thinking about is do we think about raising student achievement in science?

a snail hatchling

Even more so, the PLD reports the school send in about student achievement are more focused on target groups, so now I can ask even more specifically do we think about raising student achievement in science for our target groups. When I was a teacher, I was all about ensuring that my lessons were suited to the different levels and sometimes the cultures of my classroom (depending on the topic... and yes, it would be different now!). I made sure that there were practical elements and that all would be able to complete the activity with extension bits for the quick finishers. If it had been reading or maths, then I had lots of assessment data, ideas for next steps and pathways mapped out but I don't recall doing this for science! In fact, I'm not even sure I had a 'target group' for science! I certainly was mad on assessment (it's one of my OCD bits) but it really wasn't for thinking ahead as it was all content based. 
The essence statement in the NZC says that science plays a significant role in society, so should this be steering our thinking a wee bit more? How significant is science? How 'good' should children be at science -and here I'm thinking about the nature of science rather than content although we do need good content to have good nature of science! How do we measure improvement? And importantly, how do we support our target groups to achieve in science (and at a growing rate)?

Seen in Whakatane and still one of my favourite fungus

To support students and to give quite effective feedback for the teacher and child, the arbs are a good stop. There are a lot of activities that will give a quick snapshot that has good quality information and is levelled. Another place is team meetings and staff meetings. What if everyone gathered some information and discussed it together? I really like the literacy and maths progressions and I use these when thinking about student efforts. Often, by putting work out on a table, teachers automatically start creating a science progression! From this, we can work out what we expect a particular year level to look like -you could even write up indicators. A good whole school activity can be observational drawings of candles in jars.

Although I know that assessment should not be the be-all end-all and we can get a bit too carried away with assessment, especially if it is Ministry-driven (!), I think it's an important conversation to have with other teachers. How do we really know that children are improving -and because of good teaching not children simply growing up!? 
Anyway, there's my thought for today.

Keep sciencing
Paul

Making Better Sense of Ancient Resources

I'm busy working with a lovely school in the Wairoa region and we're just starting our journey exploring the science capabilities. If your school is thinking of revisiting science as a PLD area, even if you're doing this internally without a lovely science facilitator, I really do recommend beginning with the TKI website and focusing on building understanding around these capabilities.
Anyway, the preplanned (and levelled!) lessons on the TKI science online website do use those older Ministry science resources but change the focus a little. I was busy scanning the recipes for the slimes and oozes lesson and was struck again by this gold sitting in our resource rooms!
The big issue is that balancing act between the thrust of the 90's curriculum's focus on children will learn stuff and our current curriculum's focus of children will explore how the natural physical world and science itself work. Both bits are important -we can't explore how to gather and interpret data, plan an investigation, and share results without students knowing more and more at each level of their science development. For children to know how the natural physical world 'works', they need to know some of that 'stuff'! I do worry that teachers may either go all out on knowing stuff or stay well away from asking any questions that may reflect whether students do know stuff!

Making Better Sense of the Material World

I've just taken a photo of the Assessment Outcomes for the lesson from the Making Better Sense lesson and wanted to show how these could reflect the science capabilities. There's a bit here that talks about listing physical properties --> this could fit very nicely into gather and interpret data with students working with the teacher to decide the success criteria -how do we list/find these properties? How many senses will we use? Another assessment outcome is about design, draw and label and that could reflect the interpret representations capability. Other outcomes here talk about investigating, describing and discovering which could also reflect a pedagogy about the nature of science.
With all the above examples, students will need some content knowledge as they develop ideas! I know that many teachers are focusing on the students need to know about magnets... but if I have that as my focus, I'm back to children learning stuff! Instead, I might think about assessing how students use their knowledge to develop the science capabilities. My teaching focus will be how diagrams are drawn or investigations are carried out. I might talk about repeated testing, recording results/data carefully, asking good questions to investigate, and how we share our results. If children understand how science works, then their results will be deeper as well as them knowing more 'stuff' which can often end up with more questions being asked!
The other side of this coin is that I will be using scientific vocabulary, science concepts and 'knowledge' to make sense of data. We can't throw out all the 'students learning stuff' but it does need to be within the context of actually we're all about children understanding how science works through rich science themes.
So, have another look at those old Building Science Concepts or Making Better Sense resources. Photocopy the assessment pages and then discuss how the capabilities could be more deliberately focused on along with what teachers may expect from students. Talk about the balance between the natural physical world and science itself explorations -what would happen if we only did 'knowledge'? What about if we only did 'science itself'? How could either of these questions impact the future for students (as that is the capabilities focus)?

Anyway, that's all for now! Keep sciencing.
Paul

Science Week

Kia ora koutou!
A really brief post today as I'm mad busy and about to rush off for a week down in Wairoa and Mahia. And once again Rocket Lab launches a rocket the week I'm down there and once again gets the day wrong... well played Rocket Lab, well played! The night launch last night certainly looked spectacular!

From stuff.co.nz

Anyway, next week is Science Week and the theme is "the Periodic Table". That's because of it being the 150th year of when the Periodic Table was created. It's a topic that I've really struggled to get excited about as students really come across this generally at Year 9 rather than at Primary School. I sort of have the same issues when I think about 'doing' stars or the Solar System... I'm just not sure how I can get the capabilities and nature of science into this...

That's my initial thinking but when I am challenged like this, I head straight back to the capabilities and the nature of science components to see how I could use the periodic table and there is a wee bit! For this blog I'm thinking more of the Year 7 and 8 students, although certainly year 5 and 6 children could have a play with these ideas. For juniors, some of the elements could be interesting to say -you know how they love big words (!), and the idea of all these elements making us up is quite fascinating to introduce at this level.

We don't tend to look at the science history aspect of the NOS strand, Understanding about Science, and this topic is a great one for this. Have a read up of Mendeleev and how he came up with the table. What did other scientists think? How did his work support others'? Because of the table, some scientists were able to find elements because of the spaces for elements that had not yet been found but Mendeleev was sure were there. This is a bit like finding the planet Neptune because the maths said it was there and when astronomers looked, it was!

Here at the IPL, the science team (Anne Barker, Stephen Ross and myself) have written blog posts and I've written a lesson for introducing the periodic table that you are most welcome to use. The link is: https://www.waikato.ac.nz/professionallearning/ and they'll be added this week. Other places to go is the Royal Society page and NZAPSE page. Of course, I have to add my colleagues up the hill here at the university, Science Learning Hub, who have collated ideas too!

If you're on my Facebook page (just search for science happening NZ), I'll post bits each day... hopefully!

Have a fantastic week! And next week too!

Keep sciencing on!