I'm sitting in my office and enjoying the quiet and a beautiful view of the Kaimai ranges shrouded in cloud. Generally in Te Aroha it's either windy or wet or both... or going to be soon! I do love our wee town and it is very quiet at the moment. I hope you all are well and coping with the online schooling situation which for some families and teachers must be quite difficult. I'm a bit gadget mad so we have plenty of devices floating around but not all families can do that.
I realise the school holidays have been moved forward and I'm expecting lots of teachers will spend them preparing for a term two continuing on with this situation. I realise that science isn't probably at the top of your list but I've been thinking, why not? We're wanting lots of activities that involve students not only being educated but also entertained. I did see a funny meme the other day that said, with all the children at home, parents will realise, it wasn't the teachers!
For online work, I'm certain you've had lots of helpful advice. Our own Digital Technologies team at IPL have stuck some google docs up with ideas and apps to use and I think Core Ed are doing the same. I've recently been quite into the Google Keep app/website as a post-it note place and could see it being used quite successfully for students too as they can share particular notes with particular people. Padlets can be great for students brainstorming too -it's free for educators and you can make it public so students simply head to the site without logging in. As I have said, there are lots of organisations stepping up to support teachers, take advantage!
Onto science! With students not having access to the box of readers, the Connected Journals are available online with google slides. I tend to use bit.ly to give them a catchier name for students but a hyperlink works too! There are many themes represented both from a nature of science point of view and contextually, for example, the weather. You could set up some comprehension questions from an article, children could carry out the experiment at home (and take a photo to prove it!), or they could set up their own investigation... I wonder if all fish do that... I'd like to investigate whether an octopus does...
For any level (and knowing that parents are home as 'willing' readers and writers!), could children do some I notice, I think, I wonder activities? I know that sometimes the problem can be parents taking over the experiment or the activity so you could have a few pointers as to how parents can be facilitators and not doers! Some activities, like copters could work if they have access to a printer and scissors. You could also weave in the maths, reading and writing -simply reading the experiment is a reading task, gathering data could be measurement, and then writing it up for others covers some writing!
- Head outside and lie on the grass for one minute (or stand if that's too hard). Put on a blindfold and describe what information your other senses are giving to you? Alternatively, get your parents to put an object in your hand... what do your other senses tell you about the object before you look at it? Children could compare their environments through padlet... can they all hear traffic? What about birds (and I wonder what kinds of birds they are hearing)? Could we set this up in stats with graphing the class results? With older students perhaps they could look at locations -what are students noticing in different places? Could we predict what someone would hear at a particular place from our data (and could we then find out if we knew someone living at that spot, eg the principal!?). How many words can you use to describe your object? Who can come up with the most?
- Apparently Autumn is on the way... prove it! Can students prove this mathematically? Can they prove it with what they notice outside? We've got a hebe that's leaves are dying but I don't know if it's because of Autumn or just dying because of my lowly skills as a gardener! Each few days, head out to a particular plant and take some observations of it -can they find one deciduous and one evergreen? Are their differences and similarities?
- What if...? I do enjoy these and students would need to find out more information to be able to predict... What would happen if all the animals were in lockdown too? What would happen if bees were shut up in their hives? Or Canadian geese had to stay in one place (I watch them flying over our place every morning and evening!) Do we need these animals anyway? I can't imagine the point of wasps and I think I'd be quite happy for them to disappear... but what if they do play a vital role somewhere in the world? I've seen some people set out the 1 week, 1 month, 1 year type thing, and it's quite interesting to predict the future! There's also some neat youtube "What if" videos too.
- Kitchen science can be fun as well! And something the whole family can participate in! There are numerous experiments you could share with students but what I'd be more interested in is the where to next. What's another experiment they could try based on an "I wonder" from this one? Can they write it (or video) to share with other students? Could other students critique their experiment? It might be the way the data was gathered or the way the experiment was carried out. It might even be the conclusion. And it's always fun making hokey pokey. Except for me. I just cannot make the stuff! One year I tried several times until my wife pulled me away from the kitchen!!!
- I wonder... Start the morning with a wondering -and you can make them hard! Sometimes our questions are difficult. Sometimes even scientists don't know the answer -we're still not sure about gravity and how it's here! Hopefully down the track you can get the children to ask the question in the morning too. One per day, everyone sends their ideas to that person and at the end of the day, the questioner shares what they've found out, which may be the answer!
- Watch a movie and spot the science... Plenty of movies have some pretty good science hiding in the back... Bug's Life is all about saving food for winter: is this true? Do some animals really do this? Why don't all? Are there some animals that work together (and parasitic wasps don't count in this category!)? Another good one is Moana and the navigation techniques... What about Up... If kids had enough balloons, could you lift up your house? As an aside, I used to use movies for reading and get children to read the subtitles and answer questions -they loved it!
- Thinking of outside, get the children to set up some experiments... if they had left over bread that's gone stale, what colour bread would birds go to first. Cut it into quarters, stick some food dye on it and observe! You could do it with ants too -a little bit of sugar and food dye but on a nest far from the house!
- Finally, simply carrying out an experiment with stuff around the house. I've got plenty of these that just use straws or balloons but there are also plenty of websites that can help. Remember we're interested in more than just learning the 'why' but using the experiment to explore the way we think, how science works and developing science skills. Having kids in small groups would help: they all carry out the experiment and then share their results and develop a conclusion. I think it would really help with their understanding about science -they'd all need to carry out the experiment the same, gather data the same, etc, to be able to share!
I really feel for you all at this time. It's hard enough simply being stuck in your own homes, but to be caring for a class full of children who have become part of your family and are now all separated must be very hard, . I'm thinking of you all and very available for a conversation, a support, or simply a couple of activities to help you out with your class.
Be well, stay safe
Mauriora
Paul
