Design for Learning

One of the most impactful conversations I remember from my first year of teaching was when was discussing with a student what he enjoyed at school. I asked "What about science? Do you like it?" He replied, "Oh, we don't do real science here." It made me reflect on another conversation where a teacher had told me that rich experiences create rich writing. It led me to champion our learning hub's science during my time at Southern Cross Campus. My goal has been to create those rich experiences that allow students to predict, observe, and analyse. Below you will see a video of students from our three classes engaging with an interactive model of the digestive system. This led to the creation of quality information reports on the topic. Other experiences we have been introduced to include the rock cycle, where students got to experience many different types of rocks, both learning to classify and also developing a large vocabulary on the subject, far removed from early attempts which categorised the rocks as 'normal' or 'bumpy' to much more advanced and rich vocabulary discussing shine, sharpness, colour, weight, hardness, etc.

These rich experiences, created to satisfy student needs like lack of descriptive language, or experience in experiments, are not just feel-good moments for the teacher. They also satisfy our need to create measurable assessment information in the form of experiment hypotheses, and information reports and can be designed to achieve our progression goals for multiple disciplines at the same time. In the example video below, you see the midpoint of a science program that used our reading time to pre-load and our writing time to create evidence of understanding.