Science BT Course

How? When? How often?
Nature of science is the only compulsory strand, the rest are expected to be taught at least once in the time between year 0-8.

Why is science part of the school curriculum?
- participate as critical, informed and responsible citizens in a society in which science plays a significant role.

Experiment
- Ice ball (frozen balloon)
- Salt
- Food colouring
Make inferences first.
What did you notice? Making scientific observations.
Wonderings - what are you curious about? what questions do you want to know?

Things to think about:
- Hands on, minds on
- Nature of science/capabilities
- I notice, I think, I wonder

Making scientific observations
- Using senses to make observations of what is in front of you. How do we help our kids not just to access prior knowledge, but just to notice what is in front of you.
- Reframing the language to make it scientifically accurate during their observations.
- The data that they can collect is right in front of you, what are the observations you can make from just looking at it.
- Draw on the whiteboard what they are telling you to highlight what they have told you, and what they havent. This encourages them to drop in more descriptive language to make their noticings more accurate.

Science Learning Hub
- Developing an eagle eye https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/search?term=developing%20an%20eagle%20eye 
- Using Science to teach other curriculum areas for example, measurement.

Mystery Box
- Only using your eyes to make observations.
- Scrambled Sentences - Set of cards, place all the cards face down so you cant read the words, and mix them up (Science Learning Hub activity).

Capabilities
- What am I getting better at doing?
- Functions students engage with (Key competencies for science).
- Gather and interpret data, use evidence, critique evidence, interpret representations, engage with science.

Running Records

Informal – Regular basis, checking skills for guided reading, seen texts (Formative)

Formal – Benchmarks, unseen texts (summative)

Teacher Told – 3 seconds, this is so their comp does not get mixed up.

Proper names – Only mark the first error, then only marking the behaviour from then on. (Only marked once as an error).

Meaning:

-       Do I understand what they mean by this? Is the child making sense of the story?

-       Does it make sense in the context of the story?

Structure:

-       Is it grammatically correct?

Visual Information:

-       Does it have a similarity? letter in common?

Marking/Analysing

-       Read up to the error and stop. Analyse up to the error.

-       Double error, does it make sense up to the error?

-       1: MSV – What they did to make the error.

-       2: MSV – What they did to correct it (if they did). What is the strategy they are using to make the self-correction?

Re Run

-       Going back and re reading the sentence. Arrow with an R.

Self-correct

-       Self-correct immediately write above.

Behaviours

-       ATT appeal to teacher. (Want them to be independent, but gives good information).

Supporting students to edit their writing

Sheena Cameron/Louise Dempsey

What do we want our students to know about reviewing writing?

1: Target students

-       I know what I am learning and why. (Would your kids know why you are learning something?).

-       Why is it better to use this verb instead of this verb (Better verbs)?

2: I can find examples in my writing

-       Can you find an example in your writing of descriptive verbs?

3: I can improve my writing

-       Make the appropriate changes.

4: I can talk about my successes and next steps

-       Talk about what they have done and why.

5: I write carefully – checking as I go.

-       Can’t think of a better word for

-       Quality over quality.

6: I can self-check my writing and fix up some mistakes

7: I feel like an author and want to share my writing

-       Make time for reviewing writing, celebrate writing.

-       Sharing writing is an essential part of writing and motivates students to write their best writing because someone is going to read it.

-       At least share a super sentence or something from their writing at least with someone or the class.

-       Kids are authors, we are readers.

Reviewing, editing and celebrating writing.

Respond as a reader:

Before we respond to their criteria, say something about what they have written, their content. We respond as a reader before we focus on the criteria.

Identify positives:

Link to criteria, pay attention to positive, identify successes.

Agree on one improvement – Link to criteria

Choose one thing to work on and celebrate when they do succeed.

Model and refresh on editing

-       One line straight through the incorrect word. Explain why we do this etc.

-       Google Roald Dahl draft editing and show children what writing before publishing looks like.

Mini Lessons

-       Learn skills for writing and editing skills for writing.

-       Starting the lesson off with a mini lesson, warming them up on the type of writing they are going to be doing.

-       Super Sentences – Crafting a really good sentence that sounds really good.

Give them a sentence, is it a super sentence. Is there an adverb, more detail (adjectives etc.)

Quick Writes

-       Adding variety into writing, shorter blocks to keep things interesting.

-       Juggle text types fluently, doing other things in our programme rather than just focusing on one text type for a few weeks etc.

Recrafting

-       Adding (Add something the sentence or writing).

-       Deleting (See us deleting, modelling).

-       Changing (Change words, sentence starters, improve a verb).

-       Moving (Move words or sentences around to make it better).

Clear criteria (focus) and challenge

Visual! – Keep it as visual as you can. For example, choose 4 descriptive verbs they have to use in their writing. Know what they are doing a why.

Memorable – 3 criteria and a challenge. Keep the same criteria for the week and change the topic or stimuli.

Measureable.

Self-Check

-       Highlighting the success.

-       Teaching children to self-check, let them know we are teaching them to be independent, they need to know how to do this.

-       PR = Proofread = 4 (They found 4 mistakes in this line).

-       Spot the difference (Spot the difference between two pieces of writing their writing and the published or edited version/edited or unedited).

-       Get children to come up and edit the modelled writing – put a photo on the white board for them to come up and edit – Make it fun and interactive.

Guided Writing

-       Guide, prompt, and support.

-       Roving and quick stop – Check your writing, do you have a capital at the beginning of your writing and spaces between your words just like Blake? Ripple effect throughout the group from celebrating one child’s success.

-       Make useful comments, highlight what they may need to fix or focus on and ask them why you highlighted. Have them tell you. Then they may be able to help a buddy fix the same problem.

-    Guide a group a day. Be smarter about how we use kids, how do we get them doing more.

-    Students do not learn when teachers or other students correct their mistakes for them.

-    Do not expect students to find and correct all mistakes.

-    Give them reminders rather than corrections, keep it positive.

Lesson Ideas

-       Begin the week with a mini lesson and working on a skill, criteria (topic).

-       Next day plan and begin writing.

-       Work on writing, proofread, edit.

-       Recrafting, publish to sharing doc.

-       Work with groups between, check ins, see focus group within the rotation.

-       Make sure students know what their criteria (focus) is.