Does coffee cool down faster than tea?

Kia ora koutou
Today I was playing with a supposition that I've had for a wee while, so I carried out a wee experiment with Anne looking on (she was in the midst of trying to eat lunch!). As we chatted and I gathered data, we ended up realising this could be quite an interesting one to share, about the process of our thinking, etc.
I had always thought that when I made myself a cup of tea (regular tea with milk), it always stayed hotter than if I made myself a jarrah coffee that doesn't have milk). These were my noticings, my observations. So today, I set up an experiment with a mug of hot water (for the pre-mix coffee) and a mug of hot water with some milk in (representing the tea). Now, I didn't write this up using a scientific method, this was the exploration period or, as Anne called it, the play. In my PLD sessions with teachers, I often talk about the benefit of letting students do the same experiment twice. There may be a few differences but the first session is the chance for students to have an explore, ask questions, and develop some thinking whilst the second session will build on this and perhaps have a more scientific bent, for example, we better measure the amount of milk carefully or we need to record how many stirs of the spoon.

The initial experiment. The feijoa is just an innocent bystander in all this. 

I recorded the data, a little haphazardly, and then we talked about what I had found out, whether what we were thinking was happening and where to from here. I found that as I did the 'play', I was starting to think more carefully about measuring, about other ideas to try out and what to do with the data. I also found out that my prediction that the hot water and milk mix would cool down at a slower rate wasn't really being reflected in my initial data. As more people tried to eat lunch (with one very concerned that her coffee would end up being experimented on), they started posing questions and wonderings too -the main one being about the milk and it's fat content, with the fat possibly retaining the heat, and how could we check that? We were discussing why the data might be reflecting certain results. Noone used google, we were just chatting about what might be happening.

Version Two!

I tried the experiment again with actual tea and jarrah coffee (and yes, I'm not sure why I didn't start with that either!) and again measured the temperatures of the two liquids. I tried to make them the same way I normally would and that threw up questions -you stir the coffee a lot more than the tea and did you add the same amount of milk to the first cup?
At the end, we talked about the data I had gathered and critiqued some of the recordings. Had I made sure it was exactly every 30 seconds? No, but reasonably close (and is that good enough?). How will you show the data -bar graph or line graph? Bar graph but you could use a line graph as it is measuring time... (which I ended up doing as well!)

 Because I started thinking about this as a science experiment and an opportunity to get critiquing happening, I decided to leave it a little messy... Is the line graph clear enough? Does it need more information? Do children know how to read a line graph and summarise what they can see? Do they understand the function of all the parts of the graph -the table, axis, etc... and now we have maths happening!
Wrapping this all up, we discovered that our initial results seemed to suggest that tea was getting colder faster and that it was all in my head. You can see I'm using tentative language as we haven't tried all the variables -was it the amount of stirring, the type of milk, the coffee powder itself, etc. We needed to have this preliminary activity to start our thinking, to begin to consider the variables at play and develop more wonderings from this. I like the idea of sharing the data with students and perhaps the graph and getting them to critique what I had done -was it scientific enough? Does it matter about the anomalies? From here, I might choose to experiment with a bit more purpose and in a more scientific way, ensuring that the procedure could be replicated by others.
This science idea came from my own wonderings, which I'm hoping we all have... why does tea slop in the cup when I'm walking along or the suitcase wheel around madly when I'm rushing to the terminal at the airport...
What are your wonderings?

Have a great term break, and see some of you next term!

PS, I'm on Facebook... look for science happening NZ and you should find me... I hope! If not, sing out because it means I've done something wrong! 

Inferences vs Explanations... one point of view!

Kia ora
I hope you have all had a lovely short week and about to start the weekend, ready for the last week of the term! First, a correction from Anne... I wrote about 'phylus' as part of classification -and it should have been 'phylum' -it's good that I have science experts keeping an eye on me!
This week I've been let loose in classrooms and doing the good ol' soda water and raisins experiment. Feel free to email me if you'd like a copy (a comment here won't help as I might not know your email address!).

https://www.giftofcuriosity.com/states-matter-dancing-raisins-experiment/

As we were talking about the experiment afterwards, the teachers and I were discussing whether what the students were saying were explanations or not. At first glance they were: I'm noticing the raisins and there are lots of bubbles all over them and all the bubbles make the raisins go up and down... If we think about this from the science capabilities (head over to TKI to check them out!), then explanations come under the Using Evidence capability quite nicely... children use evidence to build an explanation, it's not just I notice this, I'm thinking this is why...
And this got me thinking... is the above example more of an inference? I know it is sort of an explanation but if I'm thinking about the science capabilities, the student has gathered data by noticing the raisins, the bubbles ,and the movement, and then interpreted the data by inferring that the bubbles are making the raisins float. I wonder if we teachers are often happy with this inference come explanation without realising that, for an actual explanation, we might need to go deeper.
I might need to scaffold with the students and use my wonderful questioning skills to help develop these explanations: How do we know it's the bubbles? Could it be because of the type of fizzy liquid? Could it be the temperature of the raisins or the liquid? Could it be the raisins? Or their sugar level? Would other objects go up and down? Of course, I'm not going to bombard the student with all of these questions, but I might get the whole class investigating different ideas.
At the end, we might have this as an explanation: I believe that because of the wrinkles on the raisins, they get more bubbles to form from the fizzy liquid and this causes the raisins to float up (yes it might be buoyancy but that's okay for now!). I checked different objects and smoother ones didn't float up and down as well as the raisins did even though they were the same weight. I also tried different liquids with raisins and they needed to have fizz in them so that the bubbles could form around the raisins. For me, I'm thinking that this is more of an explanation as it's the result of further investigation, gathering more data and information to build that thinking... I can prove this is happening because I tried out this and that... Now I wrote "at the end" but this may not be the case. With our older students, we might like to critique evidence, challenge each other's findings... how many different textured objects did you try? What liquids did you try that might have gas? Only fizzies, or vinegar and baking soda too? How many times did you try each experiment?

https://littlebinsforlittlehands.com/dancing-corn-thanksgiving-science-activity/dancing-corn-thanksgiving-science-fall-activity-for-kids/

Inferences or interpreting data are still really important. We can use student thinking to delve deeper, investigate further and to prove that what they are thinking might actually be the explanation. They might even use some prior knowledge too. It's what we do with all this that is important -are we happy to stop with an inference and call it an explanation, or do we want the students to pursue a little more?

Keep sciencing on!
Paul

School's for learning stuff!

We're slowly inching closer to the term break and I know a lot of classes have been busy doing science. In the past we have focused on assessing literacy and mathematics but science is usually left to participating in a 'topic' comment!

NZCER assessment tool. The Y7-10 one is a printed test whilst the Y4-6 is online

I guess the big question is "Why assess in science?" and one that you could pursue further with your syndicate or school... What is the point of assessing what students have been doing in science? There must be some very good reasons, otherwise we wouldn't have the NZCER Science Thinking With Evidence assessment tool for Y4s and up...
 If we're thinking about improving student achievement, and our focus is on the Nature of Science or the science capabilities,  there's plenty to assess! How well do students notice? Or build explanations? Or critique one another's experiments and results? Or how do they read diagrams and charts or create graphs showing their experiment's results?
It may be that you set up a rubric or assessment tool, or the students co-construct it with you. If several teams are taking science, perhaps you could all get together and think about what you would like to see at each level. By assessing across the different levels, the school can start building a picture of what's happening in the school, perhaps supporting some teachers in teaching science more specifically or encouraging more focused science... We notice the children aren't sure about some of the verbs like 'analyse', 'critique' or 'explain' so we're going to give students opportunities in reading to explore science articles as well as give them experiments and other opportunities to develop their understanding of these verbs... When the children draw diagrams, they're pretty haphazard about it. I've got together with the Y3/4 teacher and the Y7/8 teacher and we've sort of mapped out what we could expect at each level. We're aware it's in the English curriculum too so we're looking at Visual Language at the same time. We're going to also spend some time analysing diagrams to look at the features and purposes behind diagrams as well as their strengths and weaknesses, critiquing more at the senior levels. 
I spent a few minutes googling, and there are plenty of websites highlighting poor diagrams, like https://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-27-worst-charts-of-all-time-2013-6?r=US&IR=T#did-anyone-learn-anything-by-looking-at-this-pseudo-pie-chart-what-do-these-colors-even-mean-why-is-it-divided-into-quadrants-well-never-know-1.

broadsheet.ie... Don't really to listen to Eminem but I like these words.

From Pinterest... and I like the Beatles!

If you can work with other levels, we can share out the learning -it's not up to the Year 3 teacher to teach all there is to know about diagrams! If it's a particular topic, for example gardening, what would we like juniors to learn as opposed to those in the middle school or the seniors? Do we just want to repeat the same information? Could we look at gardening in different scenarios or environments? Could we build on what children are learning at each level, becoming more specific in vocabulary, more definite in what students are learning?
You can see I'm not really thinking about nuts and bolts assessments specifically... Paul can identify in three ways. Paul critiques using ... words. Paul can write up an experiment. I'm thinking about ways that can enhance my teaching, perhaps even develop my pedagogy more, than thinking about what the children may or may not know! And I'm nowhere near Paul knows what annular momentum is (actually that should probably say Paul is slowly getting the idea of what annular momentum is!) or Paul can identify five molluscs, knows the phylus and genus, and makes a fantastic shrimp cocktail. If I'm thinking about these deeper thinking skills, and I'm assessing more for me as a teacher (although I'd like a comment for student reports) I might be thinking about those skills that I use as an adult too... which is what the nature of science and the science capabilities are all about!
If the students have carried out more of a literacy research project for science, what ideas from this can I assess or evaluate for the science units next term? The Y7/8 children wrote lots of expressive words like 'cute' or 'ugly as'. With our next science unit, I want to focus on students using scientific language as well as thinking about what science may look like as a writing genre. This will mean reading some articles and highlighting the language used (and the language articles don't use!). They also got a lot of information from wikipedia and I want them to learn that we need to use New Zealand websites amd why as well. If students have been busy learning about beach animals or sea creatures, what did I notice they had trouble with? My Year 2s learnt some of the names of creatures but didn't really get the te reo names. I also want to build a wider and deeper word bank with them as their descriptions were very simple and didn't get past 'a nice shell' or 'orange starfish'. Next term I'm going to work on size, shape and colour as well as using all the senses in a structured way. I'll also give them more words to work with.
I have talked about assessment before, check out http://sciencehappeningnz.blogspot.co.nz/2017/06/gathering-evidence-or-prove-it-then.html (June, 2017) for some ideas. As always, happy to chat with anyone!

Keep sciencing on...

Oh and a new feature!
Cool Websites
A teacher from Opotiki showed me this website: https://what-if.xkcd.com/ It has some interesting ideas plus some humour that particularly the older students will enjoy AND could be neat for a shared reading lesson (or perhaps trying out the experiment, depending on what it is!) .

So what is science?

A quick note at the top! I think this blog subject could be an interesting one for a staff or syndicate meeting, one for teachers to discuss and grow their own understanding of what science might mean.

Last week, as I went for my evening walk I came across a couple of people putting out a net. They were quite focused about it and the net was held up by blown up milk bottles. They were busy untangling the net and checking for holes:

Photo by me!

The question I found myself asking was Is this science? I asked a few teachers as well through the week to see what they thought. It reminded me of a conversation I had with a teacher a while ago where they were adamant that turning on a light was "science". It challenged me to think a bit more about what I thought!

This is just my opinion and I really welcome your thinking and questions being shared too. To me, I like to think about how there are many different disciplines in science, for example, marine biology, astronomy, medicine, horticulture, zoology, etc but why are they all called "sciences"? What ties them all together to be science and not art or history? For me, it's what's behind each discipline. Scientists, regardless of the subject, could be observing, asking questions, posing hypotheses, discussing results, critiquing one another, etc. I don't want to add too many as I think it could be an interesting question to ask fellow teachers or even the children.

For me, this is what science is all about! Of course it's about the big issues and sustainability, etc but behind these are the attitudes, processes and skills, or 'the Nature of Science'. I tend to work with schools around the science capabilities and they reflect this nature of science too. This is the stuff we can support students to develop regardless of the context, the bits we could assess to see how students are growing. The NZCER Science Thinking with Evidence explore student understanding of these, rather than how well they know the solar system or the biology of the daisy. 

We do need these rich contexts, issues that affect students and their communities, questions we would like to answer (which may not be big issues but as simple as how come magnets stick to some things but not others? which as I write, I think this could be quite deep!) or simply a that's strange... There's a neat Dr Suess quote I saw on twitter the other day: It's better to know how than to know which I think could reflect my thinking here... Better to know the how to do science than the science itself...

Yes, the above picture could have used science in terms of where the net is places, the material of the net, how many milk bottles, etc but to my thinking, simply going fishing isn't science! And yes, you can disagree with me!

Goose-neck barnacles

I saw these on the same walk earlier and later thought about the difference with the way I was acting to the fisherfolk... I observed closely, noted that the shellfish were all in the same horizontal areas of the log which caused me to wonder if the log had been floating a particular way. All the barnacles were very dried up and dead so I thought about how long it had been out of the beach as well as how long it might have been at sea for this many barnacles to be living on the log. I noticed there were many different sizes of shell, the way the shell was designed (in five parts!) how it connected, etc. I had lots of questions so when I got back, I looked them up on the internet to see if I could find some answers. In my thinking, this is science! 

So what do you think? What do your children think? Of course, we could go deeper... did Monet use 'science' to paint?, or a person designing a guitar?, or Roald Dahl in writing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?

Keep sciencing on!

Some ideas for science and camping

"'Tis the season to go camping falalalalaaa lalalala"

On the Coromandel

 And yes, I now have this tune stuck in my head. And yes, I had to work out how many 'la's to write!
As many schools head out on overnight stays for the juniors and a bit longer for the seniors, there are plenty of opportunities for our students to do a bit of science. With the use of a device, you may be able to take photos and videos (or get the children to instead, which is even better!) of creatures and plants to then investigate further back at school.
I like using the first term as a chance for lots of "Gather and Interpret Data" capability building -the observations and inferences skills that will also develop language, specialist vocabulary, some te reo and perhaps even maths.
I thought I'd list some activity ideas, all shamelessly lifted from the old Building Science Concept Resource "Life Between the Tides" which I think would work in other contexts too, like the bush.

Waiotahe Beach, Opotiki

• Invite children to find as many different types of living creatures as possible... this could mean actively exploring, for example, turning over rocks or digging under the sand or leaf litter or soil. An important part to remember is to discuss about whether or not we should take the creatures or plants away from their environment. I like the marine metre squared project way of observing and this could be transferred to the bush just as well as the beach.
• Children can take photos and videos as well as sketches. I particularly like the last -if you think about the past explorers, sketches had to be very accurate... can the students identify the species from their sketches?
• What areas of the beach or bush are particular species found -could we draw a map of the environment and then label where species are found? Why could certain species be found in particular areas?
• Can children describe the behaviours of some of the species -I'm thinking about the birds in particular (mainly because I like birds!). Often children think the best show at the beach is running along and chasing all the birds. What if we sat and simply watched... what are we observing? What do you think they are doing (inferences)? Can you see any differences and similarities between the birds eg oyster catchers and pied stilts or seagulls? Of course, they may just be known as black birds until we know the name! 

Waihou River

Once back at base, students could unpack further, researching information, heading to websites to identify birds and insects as well as the plants, and looking in books as well. We could look up whether any of our inferences and ideas were right about what the birds were doing. And that may be enough! To  go further, you might explore the data itself: where did we find most turret shells? What about pipi? Where did the oyster catchers mainly stay (and did that change when we all turned up)? What about evidence of people? As you discuss, students may start to generate questions -write them up on the whiteboard to review later...

So a quick idea for you all -enjoy camp!

Paul

A New Year!

Well the term is underway for everyone! I hope you all had a refreshing break and are rearing to go! Term One is always a fantastic term for science trips out to the beach, lake, river, streams, forests, the bush, and just outside the classroom! Get the children out observing, wondering and learning about our fantastic environment.
For me, I am again working in the science PLD world (along with Anne Barker), and looking forward to what the year brings. I have some PLD continuing on and some new schools too. I do love the new approach to PLD -rather than the old system of "you will do science", it's really up to the school! Whether it's just a small group of teachers within one school, or groups of teachers across schools within a kahui ako (or Community of Learning) or even an eclectic bunch of individual teachers wanting to focus on science, the PLD world's your oyster! I've been excited with schools and kahui ako that have looked at engaging in science and literacy together or science and maths, enabling science to be an authentic context for students. If you are interested in some support, do get in touch with Anne and I.
For the blog, I have a question for you all. What would you like to see in the blog this year? Has it been helpful in the past and worth continuing with? Oh, that's two questions... Well, regardless, I'm keen to hear what you would like me to share through the blog this year!

And a quick sciency thing to finish with. I've just gone for a walk along the beach here in Napier, before heading off to Wairoa tomorrow. Anyway, I thought I saw something in the sea but wrote it off as a rock. I stopped to watch the shags sitting on a tree and thought I wonder if there are fish in the sea -why else would the shags be here? On my return, I saw the dark shape again and realised it was a seal swimming around. I did try to take a photo (for a change, I thought of it early on, rather than too late!) and you can sort of see its head...

Taken at Ahuriri Beach by me!

It got me thinking again about the inference of there are fish here! The seal was swimming and also diving a bit too. I started thinking about the direct observations I can make -the pied shags and little black shags, the seal, the surf, the rocky shore, the temperature, wind speed, weather, other animals and humans taking advantage of the beach too. From all this, I could make a pile of inferences -I wonder how many children could make... and then how could we investigate those? Are the shags there because it's just their favourite perch? Is it because it's a good harvest ground? Do they fish at certain times? Science is of course about the observations but perhaps more importantly, it's about what we do with those observations too!
Well that's all for now! Do get in touch and share any ideas about the blog for this year, and of course, any PLD!
Paul

Merry Christmas y'all!

Well as the year slowly finishes up, and I must admit the high temperature records and odd very muggy day are certainly making it a memorable finish, I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a refreshing break.

http://gurumagazine.org/science/festive/santas-scientificially-accurate-sleigh/

Thanks to those of you who have had me invading your classrooms, taking your afternoons and revving up the students -all in the name of science! It's been a privilege working with you all and seeing the excitement and enthusiasm for teaching science. This year has been my most travelled with lots of time in beautiful Opotiki as well as in the hinterlands of Wairoa, which are just magnificent. Wherever I've headed, I've been made to feel very welcome, worked with amazing children who have become even more keen for science, been hassled (lots!) and asked the hard questions which I sometimes have no idea what the answer is!

It's been a very different year for PLD and I think the changes have been a positive move and it has been encouraging to see schools running with the new format. Next year, I already have some schools and CoLs lined up for more science and I'm grateful for the votes of confidence! It's nice to have new schools and also lovely to continue working with schools that I've had some time with. I'd also be keen to revisit schools I've worked with in the past to see how things are going -it'd be nice to have some time to see what you're all doing in science.

So have a lovely break, a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year. Enjoy time away from the classroom and get energised for 2018!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2521973/The-science-Santa-Mr-Claus-eat-150-BILLION-calories-visit-5-556-houses-SECOND-Christmas-Eve.html

Oh, and there's lots of science with Santa's visits... and some quite technical ones too! I think this one has to be my favourite, even explaining Rudolph's shiny red nose! It's http://www.chemistryviews.org/details/ezine/3720721/The_Science_of_Santa.html. Who said it was all magic?!?

Merry Christmas
Paul