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We all met in Wellington at Te Aparangi this week for workshop two with Brigitte Glasson and Dayle Anderson. This week the focus was on developing science capabilities 3 and 4.
Critiquing Evidence
Interpreting Representations
We had an opportunity on the to revisit the lessons that we created at workshop one, making sure we were actively aware of the questioning strategies we were using and what responses those would elicit. It was interesting revisiting a lesson that you created 6 or 7 weeks ago. There were moments of 'what did we write that in for...' and contemplating our reasonings at the time. We were given feedback as well to contemplate in order to deliver a really solid lesson.
I enjoyed my lesson, it was interesting to reflect on the impact that videoing would have on my teaching. It was powerful to watch my lesson later in the day. I was amazed at how often I repeated the kids. I have taken from that opportunity a few things that I do well, and a couple of goals for future improvement. I like the idea of a capability focused lesson as it takes the pressure off the need for explicit content (although the learning intention is clear). I would like to do a similar activity with my colleagues when I return to school.
In the middle of my balloon and baking powder lesson with year 7 students.
Wonderful talk prompts from Brigittes presentation on Critiquing Evidence.
When we were exploring 'Critiquing Evidence' we were introduced to the idea of respectfully disagreeing. This struck a chord with me as something we could develop in our students that would resonate within the whole school and into the playground. If implemented well and fostered by all teachers, it could solve many playground issues.
From here we did an activity that asked us to create a balloon racer. We had many great wonderings and trial and error moments which were discussed at length and gave us all the opportunity to use these questioning prompts.
We explored sound through several different activities. This allowed us to look at Interpreting representations and discuss what this could mean in the classroom. This is probably the more difficult one for me to get my head around how I can approach this capability with my students in a meaningful way which will be remembered.
Exploring sound using tuning forks, this was great fun and a lead into looking at different ways of representing sound.
Our gingerbread man that showed how one section of science teaching and learning is connected to the rest.
The last activity that has stuck with me is the gingerbread man activity. This activity had us connect up our ideas of what values the ideal science student would have and connected them to the capabilities and the science strands. It made me think just how interwoven they all are, and how we can't teach any of it as a single cell idea.
Lots to take away from this week, Personal and professional. Most importantly is how important it is that we engage our students in critiquing evidence. This could be taken into all areas of their learning and their personal lives (namely, the mine field that is social media). We all need to learn how to gather our information from different resources, compile the ideas and then decide what is correct or incorrect based on the evidence found.
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