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AIMS OF SCIENCE EDUCATION
The Science Learning team caters for the educational needs of the school community. It does so by offering a wide variety of programmes to Year 9 - Year 13.
These programmes are designed to teach essential skills in a structured, caring environment with the ultimate objective of promoting self-esteem through individual achievement and collaborative learning.
In particular, Science Education aims to:
● provide opportunities for authentic, independent and collaborative learning
● provide access to a wide range of changing and developing information sources
●enable active participation and the application of knowledge in scientific and everyday contexts
●enable learners to be more focused on scientific method of inquiry, problem solving, planning, following instructions, presenting information synthesis and other higher order thinking skills
●provide activities for students to gain investigative, laboratory techniques, statistical, graphing, computational thinking, and decision making skills
● provide opportunities to enable students to learn about and use scientific method through Fair Testing
●provide opportunities to enable students to follow pathways from school to tertiary learning institutions
● foster a lifelong interest in science
NATIONAL CURRICULUM REQUIREMENTS: SCIENCE (YEARS 9-11)
All Science students in Years 9-11 at Mairehau High School follow programmes that align directly with the New Zealand Curriculum 2007.
Achievement Objectives for Science at National Curriculum levels 1-6 integrate concepts from five conceptual strands:
● Nature of Science
● Living World
● Planet Earth & Beyond
● Physical World
● Material World
It is expected that most of the Achievement Objectives used to form Science units of work at Mairehau High School will come from Level 4 and 5 of the curriculum for Years 9 & 10 and Level 6 of the curriculum for Year 11. However, in order to meet the needs of the diverse range of learners we have at Mairehau High School, teachers are expected to use their professional judgement and differentiation strategies to pull from other levels of the Science curriculum to form units of teaching that will meet the needs of all learners.
Through the teaching of Level 1-6 Achievement Objectives, students will have a good foundation to enter senior Science programmes (NC Levels 7 & 8) at Mairehau High School and achieve success in NCEA Levels 2 & 3 Biology, Chemistry & Physics.
The science learning area in the New Zealand Curriculum promotes the idea of developing citizenship capabilities. Students (citizens) need to be ready, willing and able to use their science knowledge. This means dispositions are important. What does this mean for teaching and learning?
Engaging critically with science is a bit like being a book or theatre critic. To do this well, learners need a functional knowledge of science in order to be able to:
● say what science is
● say what its strengths and weaknesses are
● ask informed questions about science issues.
Building knowledge of science content and the processes of science is important, and so is building knowledge of the nature of science. Five science capabilities have been defined to combine learning in these three areas.
The science capabilities help students practice the types of thinking, questioning, and actions needed to become informed citizens. This helps build their knowledge and confidence to use their growing capabilities.
For more information about the Science Curriculum visit:
For more information about the Science Curriculum visit:
https://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/The-New-Zealand-Curriculum/Science
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