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! 

Engaged with Science

I hope you all had a lovely break away from all those children... I remember once having a discussion with my team during a planning meeting in the school holidays, when someone commented that they quite liked this job of teaching when all the children were away -everything seems to go much easier!

Yes, I might have a problem... but Lego's so much fun!

 I managed to take some annual leave so enjoyed a wee bit of a break too although yes, I still thought about science and yes, I also made some lego (a lovely VW Combi van!). A couple of articles popped up on my iPad news apps that reminded me how much science is really out there. After all, it does say in the Essence Statement that science plays a significant role in society (NZC, p. 17).

If science is playing a 'significant role', then we do need to get students (and I guess whaanau and the local community too) involved in science that's happening around them or to them. What might 'engaged' look like? How might we measure it (in terms of student development)? Something I like in the NZC's Science pages (p.28 and 29) is it talks about students developing their understanding through communication. Discussion around science issues can be a great way to developing students understanding how to communicate. The 1080 drops are a good example of this -I'm certainly allowed to disagree with DoC's policy of the drops but that doesn't mean I should be sending death threats or threatening violence against local DoC officers and their families (which is happening). How can we share our different views more... peacefully?

As teachers we might need to do a bit of prompting and encouraging to get students to this point of engaging with science and I think that reading time, as long as it has a healthy dose of discussion served alongside, can be a great opportunity for this. I really like class reading activities and have sometimes simplified articles so all can read, or buddied up students so that we can all look at the article together. We have a ready-made resource out there -the news! You could create your own article with a bit of cut and pasting, particularly if you are concerned about the ads that can appear at the bottom (although NZ Herald is usually one of the better websites) or send the children there with the weblink (bit.ly could work well here).

NZ Herald website

I quite like that the articles even say how long it should take to read the article! This one apparently is eight minutes and even that could start an interesting discussion -how do they know? Did they measure someone? How would someone who struggles with reading feel like if they couldn't read the article in 8 minutes? Here's the link: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?objectid=12224127. It's all about the insects disappearing in what is being called the sixth mass extinction. Students might like to read up on the other five: what caused them? What went extinct?

With this article, we're engaging with students because everyone has an opinion on insects! However, society's thinking aside, what about from a scientific point of view? If all the insects disappeared, how would that affect us? I'm one of those mad people who rushed off for sugar and water when I see a bee on the ground. I also rescue worms! I try to not kill insects but help them to rediscover the great outdoors rather than being in my great indoors -what do the students and their families do? SHould we be killing every insect? As I'm writing this, I'm also thinking about the wasp problem that seems right across NZ. I can't really think of a valid reason for keeping wasps -but what might happen if we did wipe out the biggies: the German wasp or the paper wasp? These guys weren't originally here and seem to be a health risk to humans and creatures alike. Could someone argue for keeping the wasps in NZ?

The second article I love for the citizen science aspect of it. This is a great way to engage with science and we have several projects through the year where students can contribute: the garden bird survey, the bee survey, etc. There are also ones online where children can view data and make contributions by sorting the photos. There's one where people classify deep space objects and from their efforts, new objects have been found called Green Pea Galaxies (the Galaxy Zoo website). There are quite a few of these websites around for you to choose from. Citizen science could even include schools partnering with environmental councils or DoC to gather data about their local stream or river... It's worth getting in touch with some of these organisations to ask.
Here's the link for this article: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?objectid=12224173. I really this type of thinking because so much is happening! Scientists are interacting with regular folk. Regular folk are doing science and actively contributing to science -in a way, they're being scientists!

So, the Engaged with Science capability is a great one! It picks up on all the other capabilities and in a sense puts them into practice in perhaps the best real world contexts. If you can connect to an organisation, this does seem the most effective way. Science Learning Hub can be a great place to start as they encourage schools getting in touch with scientists and will help. It also gets students asking more questions and delving deeper -for example, reading about other extinctions. I find that children enjoy these activities and talk lots about them all through the year!

Keep sciencing! Oh, and have a great term!
Paul

So how did the students go?

Well after a wee hectic week with lots of driving and especially driving down a road that I wasn't even sure was a road, the term is coming to an end!

As a facilitator, I've been thinking about my own work:

• How successful has the PLD been?
• How will I measure this success? Is it by how many lessons the teachers have taken? By their engagement in the sessions?
• Who decides the success? Me? The teachers and principals?
• I don't want to measure my success by the amount of emails received as all the schools are reasonably quiet when it comes to communication!
• What about my blog and Facebook? Are they successful and again, how do I measure that? By number of engagements? Number of comments (on Facebook, this is almost zero!)?

I know that I'm sort of successful because schools aren't turning me away (!) and some even ask for more PLD. Teachers' responses during my visits is usually great so I think I'm not doing bad... But I really don't know how much they carry on with when I'm away. I have a sneaking suspicion that the rest of the school life gets in the way!

The last of the plums... I've been really interested in the amount of bees that get into the plums!

You can probably tell where this is going... How about science for the term? Have you been successful? I'm using 'successful' on purpose as I sort of think it's a loaded word! And rather subjective! We could be doing loads of science that children really enjoy and are engaged in -but does that mean it's been successful? 

The other big question that I've been challenging schools with, and I do sort of feel that I'm harping on about this a bit lately, is How do you know the children have been improving their science abilities? I'm thinking about the capabilities mainly, but the Nature of Science Curriculum Achievement Objectives could come into play here. And there's the rub! The capabilities are more like the Key Competencies and not levelled and Science in the NZC has the same objectives for 5 to 8 year olds and 9 to 12 year olds! 

One of the reasons that Autumn is my favourite season is the lovely fungi!
And of course finding mushrooms to eat!

If we use some indicators within a capability we can at least build an idea of whether children have improved this term. If you have some science observational drawings from the beginning of the term to now, you may be able to look for improvements. The same could be said for diagrams or children writing down, for example, some observations on rocks, insects, an experiment, etc. When I have worked in a classroom, we have pulled together literacy thinking, some maths skills, as well as our own OTJs to reflect on student work. We also compare to other student work within the classroom for more ideas, particularly on 'where to next'... for example, some children may be doing labels -we would like them all to; some children may be starting to write details for the labels but need more practice at with the science writing genre.

Even just using some indicators, I could at least decide where students are. For example, under Gather and Interpret Data is an indicator Notices change. I can decide how students communicate these observations or their gathering data through measurement -the Literacy and Mathematics Progressions can help but a simple assessment could be that the students are not noticing, are starting to (or with teacher support), or noticing 'well' or independently. If I have a large group that need teacher support, I might do some more work with them. 

In terms of more formal assessment, we do have some tools: the Science Thinking with Evidence assessments as well as the Assessment Resource Bank. You can use capabilities as a search term as well as other phrases eg "interpreting tables" or "compare and contrast". The cool thing here is that the arbs are levelled! If we're not certain what level our students are, the arbs may help.

I might even get the children to decide the success criteria alongside me as the teacher -what do they think 'observing like a scientist' might look like?

Finally, as a teacher, I might just grab the essence statement on P. 17 of the NZC: have I given space for students to explore how the natural physical world and science itself work? Are they participating as critical, informed and responsible citizens? And if I was feeling a bit like challenging you, I might ask, have they improved in these too?!

So, have a think about this term. Can you clearly show students have improved? Is there evidence? And what might this thinking do to shape your planning in science for term two? And I'm also happy to receive some reviews of my work this term -I guess you're all my students in a sense!

All that remains is for me to wish you a relaxing and refreshing term break! I'd be curious as to what science people are thinking about doing next term -if there's a big enough group, maybe I can help! Oh, and remember Science Week as well! Although the periodic table seems more secondary focused and a bit knowledge-based, I'm starting to think about how primary teachers can get involved. We need good contexts and this might just do the trick!

Keep sciencing!

Paul

My dog Ollie demonstrating the correct posture for term breaks!

What's it all about again?

I've had a rather busy week travelling through Wairoa and I have a plan for a post that's going to take some time to set up so thought I'd Just do a quick one today with some musings I've been talking about through my visits this week.

Could these be dinosaur footprints at Coronation Reserve, Mahia... 

One thing that I'm really keen on is that science is everywhere! It's why I set up the Facebook page "science happening nz" to show articles, photos, and activities. But the problem is I'm not thinking about Tuesdays and Thursdays after lunch in Terms Two and Three! I'm thinking reading time, writing time, sharing in the morning at roll time, and after lunch when the kids all get back in! I'm also thinking a bit about maths time but generally that's not the subject at the top of my head (maybe I should start thinking a bit more about it). 
We need ideas to engage students and enthuse them. We need local contexts and stuff that's interesting!

Mahia beaches -incredible rock formations

If I can collect a dozen rocks off a beach and have a class focused and excited for 45 minutes, so can you! Use a photo as a warm up for writing to get kids brainstorming vocabulary, or offering predictions and inferences. Take a whole class reading session with a local newspaper's article that's science-based. What do you think about the article generally? What about reading it 'as a scientist'? What vocabulary was difficult? Were there any inferences? What about opinions? Does anyone have a question that we could ask to clarify our thinking? Who could we ask? Grab a picture and get the students thinking about the differences between an observation and an inference -who can come up with the most observations (or which group), write a descriptive paragraph from a science point of view and then from a writer's point of view -they might be quite different!
And here's my last point. Although we're doing science at a literacy time, and we are developing and learning literacy skills for example, can we be developing science skills too. I like my capability indicators and encourage teachers to think about deliberately developing 1 or 2. I know that quite a few may be in evidence but our 'deliberate acts of teaching' need to be focused on an indicator -checking where students are with it and then thinking about where to next. It's vital we do this if we are wanting to develop student ability in science!
Although I post often on Facebook, I have no idea whether they are being used at all but the page is turning into a big resource that I hope will be useful!
So do have a look: https://www.facebook.com/sciencehappeningnz/. Have a try and get back to me how it's all going! 

These might just be my faves at the moment... goosneck barnacles! They look extra-terrestial!

Keep on sciencing!
Paul

Science Fairs

Yes, I am sorry for using such swear words at the beginning of a post! However, I received an email from 'Science Sparks' which got me thinking about science fairs.
I know that there's a lot of bad press on science fairs -that it's an activity that a lot children switch off from, that parents spend hours and hours on them... I meant children not parents..., and that only a few actually enjoy these... and that's not even counting the resurrection of previous siblings' efforts with a few tweaks! However, I have worked with a few schools where our focus has been not so much attaining excellence in the local science fair association but simply to support children exploring how science itself works.
That last bit is out of the science essence statement in the New Zealand Curriculum. We aren't meant to be teaching 'stuff' so much as about science, how it works, how it is communicated, how scientists investigate, and what counts as evidence, etc. If we're serious about inquiry and student agency, the idea of science fairs could be really helpful -and that's not even counting the maths and literacy links as well: reading, writing up procedures, journal writing, and explanation writing. 

Science fairs on their own are a bit unfair on the general populace: pick a topic, go investigate and write up... all on your own! Homework at the best of times is not usually at the top of the list of 'what I like to do when I get home' and science fairs are no exception. And I haven't even got into the confusion for some students who've never really done one right in the first place!
So why not use Term Two as an opportunity for children to inquire in small groups, perhaps on class-set questions, investigate in a scaffolded environment and then present their ideas to the class, perhaps via video, google docs, or a poster. I certainly wouldn't go the whole way with publishing a la science fairs for the first efforts. Because my goal is always the development of the capabilities, that's my learning intention for the students -we're learning how to gather and interpret data and then use evidence to explain. We might need to be interpreting representations too. Later down the track, especially with the older students, we could critique the evidence of each others' projects. 

If the first half of the term was set up like this, with students learning how science works, making mistakes with investigative procedures and correcting, repeat testing, making sure results are reliable and valid as well as communicating as scientists, perhaps students would be inspired to carry out investigations on their own or in pairs (I'd have students in groups of 3 or 4 for the first half of the term). I might jot down questions and encourage students to do so as we investigate in the first part of the term and stick these questions on a wonder wall as it could encourage children with their own science fairs. 
From this, you might find quite a group that would like to go on to science fairs. It would be great if it was the whole school with juniors doing larger group investigations that may be whole class based whilst Y5-8 students are working more individually or in pairs. I think they could be more confident because of their prior work at the beginning of the term. 

I think I would begin the first week with all investigating the same question, perhaps set by the teacher (and yes, I know that isn't real inquiry or student agency but we need to start somewhere!) and then have a selection of questions for them to investigate for the following weeks. Doing this means we have results that we can compare... it would make a great reading task: read through group x's report on their experiment... what do you think of their procedure? Do you think their results are valid? Are they similar to yours? If not, why do you think that is? Write up to 3 questions that you'd like to pose to this group challenging their evidence.

So where do I find these delightful experiments? Well, the place that started my thinking is here: https://www.science-sparks.com/science-fair-project-ideas/. Find a few of my experiments and pose a question that would cause the children to carry out the first experiment and then pursue further answers. If you were part of my term four mailing list, there's a pile there that children could use. I might start with a simply one week investigation and then perhaps a two or three weeks investigation with some options before embarking on something bigger for science fair judging. 

In the Waikato, science fairs seem to be for Year 7 and 8 students only but that doesn't prevent schools having their own science fairs set up with the best four or five from each classroom in the hall. I guess smaller schools could have them all set up in one room whilst larger schools might have the classrooms all set up for the day because, and this is the important bit, others need to see the investigations. At the least, children from that classroom, but why not other students too? Perhaps it could be a parent evening. 

Last bit... the judging... more and more, I've noticed that science fair organisations are using the nature of science or capabilities to judge and this is fantastic! By the time we reach Level 4 of the curriculum, we should be beginning to see the importance of the content or knowledge but we can still score based on the capabilities: How well did they gather data? How well did they infer from the data -was it reliable and valid? In communicating with the reader, do they write tentatively and in that science-style genre? You may want a visitor to judge (and yes, I've been called in!) but be certain to share the school's criteria. 

Science Fair in the Waikato is in early August making Term Two perfect for this kind of science. Wrap your literacy programme around this too, critiquing pieces of writing and websites (tree octopus anyone?) as well as learning how to write journal or diary entries (lots of examples online) and experiments.

And that's next term planned for! I do hope some of you have a go, even if it's not to enter 'officially'. I think investigations for students can be really engaged ensuring that you as the teacher ask good questions to get the investigation going and continuing on. 

Keep on sciencing
Paul