The Final Blogpost... well, for now anyway!

Hello and welcome to the first blog of 2020! This blog has always been about being responsive to what I'm seeing in classes and assuming (or presuming?!?) that if it's happening here it might be happening elsewhere too! However, I'm moving up the hill to take up the "Professional Experience Coordinator" position, placing students into high schools to learn about the marvellous profession of teaching. It will certainly be a whole new world (and yes, I've had that song stuck in my head all morning!) with a lot of new vocabulary too. However, I will still be doing a small amount of science and digital technology PLD so do sing out -and if I can't do it, I can suggest one of our other science PLD facilitators! That was the hardest part of accepting the new position, having to give up some exciting PLD plans for the year with schools I've worked with and loved, and schools I've never worked with but was very excited to!

I do hope that there may be the odd post after working in schools but not as often as previous years. And I can't imagine stopping thinking about science so that will pop up too, probably through Facebook (you can search "science happening NZ").

Right! So what have I been thinking about, science-wise? I've been thinking about PATs and assessment as well as the function of the first term: getting to know the children academically, emotionally and spiritually. Some schools do carry out the Science Thinking with Evidence assessment tool. There are two, one for Years 4 to 6 and one for Years 7 to 10 and both are online. I think they are a great tool to measure student progress in using the science capabilities.

If you don't use the STwEs, then how do you know what students are able to do when you focus on the science capabilities? Are they aware of them? Are children observing closely, inferring from data gathered? What does 'close observation' look like? Although I have my own list of what the capabilities look like at different levels, it's so much more valuable for teachers/teams/schools to sort this out for themselves: how do we think observation might be different for a Year 1 student and a Year 6?

Besides all this, teachers may just want to make some general comments about their classes as a whole -if we did a couple of the world famous Paul's science activities, it would show me how children are generally observing, writing descriptions, giving reasons, etc. It might be enough to show me that I need to do a bit more on using data to make sentences and not just 'it's out of my head' (although that is an important bit too!). And this is what I'm coming to for this term! Why not grab a few of the shorter activities for the term? Term 1 can be difficult with swimming, camps, athletics, etc but there's often little spots around the place. I remember my own bunch could be quite disillusioned with writing and reading, especially in the summer heat, but when it was a practical science activity, they were motivated. They might have to read (and sometimes order the steps correctly, which in itself could end up with interesting consequences!), or write up their reasoning as to what was happening, and then they were keen for literacy. I've had them outside with different height children measuring sprints and pacing to figure out how fast this dinosaur might have run if it was this tall...

As students do these activities you will notice the variety of observations, processes and how they draw their evidence and build explanations. Even spotting the range of these will give you ideas for the next activities...

• I notice that the observations are very basic, 
• I can see children aren't using maths measuring skills
• Their inferences aren't often connected to their observations
• The explanations show a good structure but seem to not have much data or proof in them

I like the thought of seeing the range of abilities and using this to decide next steps. It can also be good to think about what the next level might be for the children who are showing up at the top of the range -chat to the next level's class teacher! 

And that's what I've been thinking of. If you don't have my activities, you can use any you find on the internet -they'll be a lot shorter than my plans as I tend to use mine as PLD lessons to support teachers in thinking science capabilities-wise. I have loved sharing my thoughts with you all and I'm hoping that once the new job settles down a bit, I'll have more time to come back here! As always, read, use, share and comment! Oh, and ask questions -that could be the next blogpost!

have a fantastic term!