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