Dissemination and Innovation Workshop Day Two

Day two was equally brilliant! We started the day with some teacher input, summarised in the last post and then had 3 further presentations about various areas of development in science education. It was lovely to meet people I'd spoken to on Twitter too!

SOLO Taxonomy Linda Needham @needhamL56

Linda talked about SOLO, originally developed by John Biggs (1982). Pam Hook has worked with it to make it more user friendly for teachers and students alike. You can see her website here which also has the full Biggs references. I'm really excited about introducing this to my classroom. I currently have a Bloom's poster arrow that I refer to during lessons or sequences of lessons but I feel this offers more.
It's important not to attach grades to particular SOLO levels because different topics promote different levels of learning for different students. Some topics would expect extended abstract learning for every student, others would not. It is about helping students understand how to extend their own learning on a topic and to become familiar with the verbs that are linked to the different levels. I realise, that in many ways, it is similar to differentiated pedagogical methods currently used, but I just think the graphics and symbols, and the terminology are better suited to how I teach.


The York Science Project.   Robin Millar and Mary Whitehouse @MaryUYSEG

The York Science project aims to focus on what it is we want students to be able to do after a series of lessons. Often we consider assessment only after we have written a scheme of work. This project aims to reverse that and is currently developing resources linked to the KS3 programmes of study. It also focusses on checking student understanding frequently and eliminating misconceptions as soon as they arise. More information is given on the website and the project still requires teachers to trial resources in their classrooms. I have done this already and have been really impressed with what I've seen so far. Many of the questions have had me thinking 'I know that is the correct answer but can I explain why the others are wrong!?'

Computer Gaming in Science.  Bryan Berry

Bryan described the Unbox21 project where teachers have investigated using computer games to teach science and problem solving skills. Two teachers shared their research which showed promising results.
We looked at several examples of how this could be achieved. Machinarium - to which I am now addicted - requires various problems to be solved that often involve science. Aspects of circuits, magnets, levers etc can be identified in the levels. From this students were asked to design their only level and set up a physics based problem to solve in the lab. I loved it and will definitely be looking to include this in my teaching of physics to year 8 next term.
Racing games had also been investigated. This seemed an obvious choice for speed and acceleration but also for analysing real data. Other games included botanicula.com, Shaun the sheep.com, Drive Green, Tap the Frog, Angry Birds, Spore, Aardmans world of inventions,
Home sheep home and F1 racing game.


So that's my summary of 2 days in London. Thank you everyone for all the fantastic presentations. Now off to invent the 8 day week so I can find time to try all the new ideas :)

 

Dissemination and Innovation Workshop - Teachers' best practice

Over the 2 days several teachers shared their ideas from the classroom. Some described projects that had developed over long periods of time, others described short activities that could be implemented on Monday! Here's a summary.....

1. Engaging girls in science, especially Physics, by making big changes to a department. Assessing staff knowledge and developing it - making great use of the SLC and IOP to do so. Identifying funding opportunities. Having exciting guest speakers. Replacing outdated equipment. The list was long but the results were incredible with a huge increase in students taking triple science and continuing in science at KS5.
2. The benefits of makings strong links with Primary schools. Teaching to KS1 and KS2 was promoted enthusiastically as extremely useful and rewarding for secondary school teachers. It was highlighted that the changes to the programmes of study mean primary teachers will welcome secondary support and as secondary teachers we benefit from the knowledge we gain of primary education.
3. Use of Edmodo for setting and assessing student work 
4. The use of Kagan strategies kaganonline.com
5. The use of SAPS practical resources. In particular - microscope work using the African Violet
6. QR codes to link to Individual Dropbox folders containing verbal feedback on students work. This was brilliant and I hope to try it - needs time to set up which I don't think I'll have til Easter (!) but once set-up, huge time saver and good quality feedback for students. Many thanks to Steve Burdon from St Bedes in Lanchester.
7. Using the characters of science in full! Bringing Mendel, Brian Cox, Attenborough, Hershel etc alive with props and costumes. Even if I'm not brave enough - I feel sure some of my students will be :)

Dissemination and Innovation Workshop Day One

Day One

Enhanced Teaching and Learning in the classroom

Yesterday began with an SLC project to enhance teaching and learning in the classroom. It involves 3-4 teachers from one department working collaboratively to plan a lesson. Whilst there were reservations about releasing teachers in one department at the same time, there was huge scope for not only improving teaching and learning but breaking the age-old fear of lesson observations being judgemental. This uses them properly. The group plan a lesson together but don't know who will teach it until a couple of days before so everyone has to be comfortable with the content. We tried the preliminary stage very quickly......chose a topic, wrote down how we would teach it, distilled all the best bits....... Hey presto - great lesson. In reality it takes a lot longer! But the potential for encouraging departments to collaborate is huge. When the lesson is taught, the rest of the group observe. They are reviewing the lesson - not the teacher - and looking specifically about the pedagogy of how science teachers can best help students to learn.


The Myelin Basic Protein Project

This example of Authentic Biology at school was truly amazing. Presented by Dr Dave Colthurst from The Simon Langton Grammar School, along with 2 year 13 students. To say that the students presented well would be a huge understatement. We were stunned at what they had achieved, how it was presented and at how Dr Dave Colthurst had made it happen. Find out about it here www.mbp-squared.com.


Nuffield Foundation

I was reminded of the many resources available from the Nuffield Foundation, but also introduced to some that are newly available. If you haven't visited http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/teachers recently - have a look. Practical work for Learning is new....... looks really useful


Genomics on the curriculum?

Bella Starling from NowGen summarised the work they have done to update curriculum content with respect to genetics and genomics. Again, useful and interesting with resources available for school here.   http://nowgen.org.uk/education/

Dissemination and Innovation Workshop

Some may think I'm mad spending 2 days of half term at a workshop discussing CPD. Indeed, as I caught the train on Wednesday, I was questioning the decision myself! However, it took less than an hour to know it would be time well spent.
 I've met many amazing and enthusiastic teachers and many people working hard to improve science education in the UK. Several large projects have been highlighted as well as invaluable input from teachers running smaller projects within their schools.
It was a mix of Science Learning Centre staff and teachers who had been involved in their previous or ongoing projects. The aim was to review what was new in science education and look at how the Science Learning Centres could incorporate these ideas into their existing or new programmes of CPD.
The following posts are a summary of the learning I took away from the workshop. Some I hope to implement immediately - SOLO taxonomy, York Science Project resources and QR coded student feedback. Others are bigger projects to consider over the coming months.

iPads, Workflow and Happy Days!

This half term has seen me embrace iPads in the classroom after dabbling last term! I have written briefly about the small projects I've looked at, but by far the biggest change has come about by using Edmodo to manage the workflow.

Edmodo is currently free to use and allows students to upload work directly to a group that is coded for their class. I can respond to work very quickly by previewing it and writing a note rather like commenting on a blog post. Most files can now be uploaded, rather than just images, after the December update. We have an 'institution' Edmodo account for the school which improves the security of the site. All teachers have to be verified before they can access.

Students' classwork is generally of a good standard but I have definitely noticed a marked improvement from some students whose book work was previously a little haphazard! Although we've not used Skitch to create a collage of practical work as discussed, students have photographed practicals and annotated them and added this to their work. They have been using Penultimate to draw diagrams and also for writing chemical equations, which is always so long winded to type on the ipad keyboard.
Students are able to post the work directly to me, so that other students cannot read it, and I have given them this option. However, most have continued to post it so that other members of the class can see their work. This has the added bonus of providing a record for those students who miss lessons for music lessons, sporting events or illness.

I am keeping track of work by asking students to maintain a log of Edmodo work in their exercise book. Each lesson, I ask them to write the date and title in their books and 'work on Edmodo' underneath. The Edmodo file is uploaded with the file named with the lesson title and I am able to check them against each other if necessary. They also have guidelines about how to organise their work on their iPad so that it is easy to find again!

The iPad does come with inevitable distractions that need to be highlighted and managed from the start. Students need to ensure notifications are switched off for example, and not just the sound! The myriad of addictive games available are very hard for some students to resist and again, this needs to have a clear policy from the outset. Content of the camera roll should also be considered. The iPad belongs to the student, but this can mean camera roll pictures that could be another distraction.

On the whole, iPads are brilliant. Students are very engaged and keen to find work solutions with them.  Those without iPads are still using the Edmodo interface from home, and in school when the school iPads are available.

Science in the News

Science in the News for my Lab Wall this week
Usually compiled by @snapshotscience

iPads and Skitch

After #ASEchat this week I picked up several new ideas again - one was to use Skitch to produce a scrapbook of practical work. I haven't looked at doing that yet but I have started to use the app with a class.
The app allows students to annotate pictures on their camera roll or from the web. The annotated picture can then be saved back to the camera roll and added to a piece of work. It's part of Evernote.
This week we tested it with inherited and environmental characteristics. Students either used/took a picture of themselves, or used a famous person and added inherited/environmental labels to to it. They added pictures to their work in Pages and then uploaded to Edmodo for me to mark. All worked well.

I can see how it will be really good for labelling photos of experiments and will dabble with this next week.....