Reflection - Goodbye

Ahhh my final post. I'll be sad to say goodbye to this blog. It's like a little time capsule of my teaching career!

I'm sad to leave this lot (my middle-sized babies above and my biggest babies below) #biobabes 

And this bunch! 

They're a kind lot, with strong pakihiwi to support one another.

I hope you enjoyed my science songs over the years :)

You can see a visual diary of 32 science adventures at #tamakiscience on insta. 

Making science look good since 2014! 

So this is where I sign off, I suppose. 

Into the sunset over the Waitakere Ranges.

Stay in touch with me over on twitter @newsfromnic

Connect with me on Linkedin.

Wow! Human Evolution

Tamaki Productions presents... Wow! Human Evolution

ft. the best Year 13 Biology class ever.

Miraculously filmed on a state-of-the-art Upper Paleolithic iRock.

Performed by archaic bipedal Homo sapiens from 12,000-10,000 years ago:

Danielle (aka Dani, aka Mitochondrial Eve), 

Priscilla, 

Jeff (aka Tarzan aka Mitochondrial Adam), 

Jennyfer, 

Elisha,

Atelaite, 

Latanoa,

Lisia

Gloria (aka Grandma) and

(there in spirit while off representing Auckland in rugby) Maia.

Reflection and Sharing - ASL Report

Here is the final report from my time as an Across-Schools CoL Leader.. I had a great time learning about teaching reading comprehension and trying out the strategies on 9PKr.

Another highlight was getting my Mum to come in on Thursdays (our reading day) to help out and act as another reading buddy.

For 11 weeks from the start of Term 2 to the middle of Term 3, I just tried my best to increase reading mileage, vocabulary, confidence, enjoyment, and either 'learning to read' or 'reading to learn.' I had read a little literature about reading comprehension at that point, but hadn't started to synthesise what I'd learnt. Then for 4 weeks in Term 3 I actively tried to teach strategies given in the literature, in a way that was recommended by the literature.

Here are some of the good results - let me translate them for you:

In the chart above, it shows that every one of 9PKr's members improved their average Read Theory Grade scores at least a little bit (some definitely more than others) from the start of Term 2 to the end of Term 3. 

This data analysis table shows that 7 students increased their average score by more than 1 grade during the 11 weeks of me just trying my best. 5 increased by more than half a grade (0.5) in that time. 

When comparing the 4 week intervention to the 11 weeks of me just giving it a go, it's hard to make comparisons. The time is not a controlled variable, so I'm not comparing like with like! However, 6 students made a greater average grade increase in the 4 weeks than they did during the 11 weeks! In saying that, those 6 students also all shared a big shift in attitude towards science class, me, school and reading in that time as well - it was like they grew up a bit in those 4 weeks!

These next two graphs are pretty cool: 

This one shows that by the end of the whole reading programme (11 weeks of trying + 4 weeks planned intervention) 11 students had increased by more than 1 whole grade. Another 1 had increased by more than half a grade. 

And finally, this graph shows the pretest scores of the whole class on the left, and it shows the highest grade they reached at any point during the year. This data is less reliable because they maaaay have fluked it up there, but it does also show their potential! P even managed to reach the same reading grade (10) that I scored at! 

Reflections - Year 9

I had a very large, very enthusiastic Y9 class this year. They liked immediate feedback, praise, practicals, creating animations, working with others and asking questions. They are very sensitive as to whether teachers 'like' them or not and respond accordingly. 

I tried to achieve two things with this class: help them to read better, and get them to enjoy science. Those were my two goals. 

Activities they appeared to really enjoy throughout the year included: 

ReadTheory.

Meeting my Mum.

Programming robots. 

Learning about Chernobyl.

The cow eye dissections - photos all here.

ANY practical that I felt confident enough to give them.

Creating an animation on Hyperstudio about how soundwaves are heard, and how hearing damage occurs. 

On the last day of Term I set them two practicals, and the one I think they enjoyed best was where they had to genuinely inquire, themselves. I told them I didn't know the answer. I told them they would make a few mistakes and to just learn from it, wash it out and try again. I told them the goal was to create the most beautiful 'density tower' by floating less-dense liquids on top of more-dense liquids.

Everyone enjoyed themselves.

Then we went outside and made ice-cream, which unfortunately I didn't take any photos of. You can find ice-cream photos taken in the exact same location on the exact same day of term from 2014 on this blog if you go back far enough though!

Robotics with Russell was great fun.

We also did some dry ice practicals (shooting steam at paper cups, making coins squeal, those sorts of things) at the same time as elephants toothpaste: 

Keep being curious 9PKr!

Reflections - Class Time

Each year I try to make at least one lesson a week per class a little special in some way. Sometimes the timeline is so intense that it's not possible, but these were a few of my favourites this year:

I murdered Perry the Pear for the third time. Sorry bud. Your splatter looked GREAT this time around though.

Who Killed Perry? activity by my (quite amazing) friend Rachel Allwood, 2016

I tried something new with Y12 to teach them about genotypes, phenotypes, inheritance and meiosis. We made these little marshmallow critters, called Reebops (totally nicked THIS idea off the internet!) It was great fun.

Reebop activity

Y12 did a practical with eggs to learn how proteins denature. 

I told Sarah to hold still for this pic, because "it looks like an add for Science and Tamaki!" 

I had a wonnnderful student teacher who had a great way about her with the kids. She only revealed her secret singing talent to us on the last day when she hit us with a rendition of Mariah Carey's "We Belong Together," remixed as "We are learning CRISPR" - maybe someone could make a film festival movie out of it next year.

I had lots of help to run Period Zero on a Monday morning at 7.30, to help prepare HSA students for a successful career in the Health Science world. Thanks to the teachers who gave their time!

Reflections - Friday Fun

I started Friday Fun this year to try and do something positive for the staff. I wanted to remind everyone it's ok not to give-give-give all the time, and to take a moment to enjoy time with their colleagues, doing something they may not have tried before. 

Backyard cricket was by far my favourite Friday Fun activity. 

A few staff stepped up to offer a session; DJ wanted to run a Cook Island head garland session, Alex Brown returned to his pub-quiz-running roots, and the PE staff ran badminton for us.

Here's everybody at one of the top favourites which Makerita won faaaar too often - BINGO!

I enjoyed sharing my secret scone recipe. 

I also enjoyed my own personal Friday Fun mornings with Kata, whenever we went out for brekkie to start the day off right :)

Reflections of my last year - Trips!

Each year I take Y12 out to the Waitakere Ranges to learn about stratification and collect data for their first (and easiest) internal. 

This year was the last year that Peter and Jean King will be our guides, as they are retiring. 

What students don't know is that these two also go out of their way to be my moderators for this standard, as I've always been the lone biology wolf of Tamaki College. 

Whenever I arrive at their house in the bush the kettle is on, Poppy greets me by wagging her whole body, and there's always some fresh baking to nibble on as we mark. 

I've been very lucky to be surrounded by supportive people in so many areas outside the school in the last 6 years. Thanks for the great trips Peter and Jean! xx

At least Isabella has been consistent in having her eyes closed in photos year XD

This year I enrolled both Y12 and Y13 into the L3 Trends in Human Evolution exam. This of course required a trip to the zoo, where students got to handle skeletons and bone tools before exploring the zoo. 

Part of the purpose is to make notes on the differences between current ape bodies and movements, and humans. Unfortunately the zoo was under construction this year, but it looks to be open and will be completely fabulous around December this year.

You always know it was a great day when 80% fall asleep on the bus back. 

KPop Sound and Light Literacy Data!

Presenting the Year 9 Sound and Light unit data!

Please peruse at your own leisure. I'm really happy with the shift students made.

Check out the entire unit (adjusted to suit the Eastern culture interests of my 2018 class) here

Science and Mātauranga Māori

This week my new Year 11 class are starting the Physics 1.1 internal, worth 4 credits.

About 50% of my class is Māori, so I thought it was really important to spend some time showing students that:

a) Science can be fascinating and helps to answer all kinds of interesting questions and
b) Science and Mātauranga Māori are linked, and can support one another.

Here is the link to the presentation about some of the scientific studies throughout history I found the most interesting to learn about at university and beyond! They include how far authority can push the average human (to murder?), how the bystander effect impacts when people help one another, whether humans can survive on Mars (or trapped in a Biosphere for 2 years!) and the current investigation into what my class named "poo pills" can help overweight people have increased gut flora diversity and health, and whether that will help them to lose weight.

And here is the link to this presentation about some recent Māori research that follow the basic scientific method of: ask a question that interests you, work out the best way to find the answer, and then go and research it! It also touches on what Mātauranga Māori is and how indigenous knowledge and collaborative learning is vital to both learning and research.

Science Rap - Acid, Do You Love Me?

Tamaki Productions returns with another science rap! The main character is a base (not an acid), and he is wearing a blue shirt and singing from his perspective as a base.

Lyrics and images cover lots of different concepts from the Year 11 NCEA Exam Acids and Bases!

One example is when the base sings "acid, do you love me, are we colliding, say you'll never neutralize here without me." 

When an acid and a base react, that chemical reaction is called a neutralization reaction. 

They react to form a salt, and water. 

There is lots of analysis you could do on this video with students, such as why particles in the drone shot move faster when red and orange 'flames' are being shaken in the shot? 

Why does the litmus character throw blue paper up in the air while the base sings about her, and the phenolphthalein character throw pink?!

What does the umbrella in the drone shot represent? Why does everyone link arms when the umbrella passes over them? What is that meant to show?

We hope you like it :)

Sentence Types and Student Assessment Task Overhaul

During the holidays - on my birthday - I went to the WTE National Writing Conference and the keynote in the morning alone was worth getting up early for.

I took all my notes on a Presentation, which is here for you to view below or view at this link.

I absolutely have used these sentence-types in class. With the juniors I ran whole lessons around casting sentence types, to try and improve their writing.

Here's one lesson I ran on precision writing in science - this presentation linked to this set of activities for students.



The other thing I was absolutely blown away by was the way that we present students their assessment tasks. We've been giving them THOUSANDS of words to decipher and try to work out what to do before they even begin writing the assessment.

At the writing conference we sat down in groups with a real 1800-word, Level 3 PE task and all tried to work out what it was asking us to do, and how to get Excellence, and which parts were important.

Then Ian presented us with a single A4-sized task. It had exact word limits and included clear instructions on what students must include to gain top grades. We didn't have to guess what was meant! Why does it have to be a mystery what we want students to do? When he took his single A4 sheet to an NZQA moderators meeting (there were 40 of them there) they were bamboozled - they thought that's what everyone was giving students! The TKI tasks are not meant for kids' eyes!

Ian said the best way to make these amazing tasks is to write your own Excellence exemplar, and then see how many words you have apportioned to each section of the task. Set students a word count (as they would have in University, anyway!), and provide headings for each section. Provide clearly worded prompts about what to include. You can see two examples of this that he provided, in the presentation above.

Here is one that I wrote myself for Year 13

Guiding Literacy with Year 11

I have a lovely, lovely Year 11 class this year. They're an absolute mix of abilities but most of them seem really driven to achieve. At the start of the year I asked them which standards they would like to do, and which topics from the junior years they felt they were the best at. Almost unanimously the class said "volcanos." 

So at the start of Term 2 we began the Surface Features of New Zealand assessment. I did only one week of teaching about hotspots and subduction, relying heavily on what they could recall from their junior years and hoping to give them enough of a reminder to cope with any online readings they came across. 

My focus for the internal was to build confidence and abilities in online research and report writing. To do so I decided to model the process from start to finish, and show students the skills required for report-writing in a way that they could return to and rewind whenever they needed. 

We spent a full two weeks doing a half-sized practice on Surface Features in America (Mt Rushmore, Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Canyon). 

Students had access to a series of screencast and narrated videos where I tried to speak my thoughts out loud as I researched and wrote:

Video 2

Video 3 - Searching Online

Video 4 - Skimming, Scanning and Selecting

Video 5 - Summarising

Video 6 - Chasing Understanding

I used the idea of checkpoints, rewards and punishments from my earlier PD on writing with Joseph, and while it was in place for all students my particular focus was on the boys in the class. I gave them some choices in rewards, and also let them honestly choose consequences that they wanted to avoid. For some it was chocolate or a phone call home, others wanted lollies and to (avoid) being sent to their Dean. 

Every single day I left feedback on every single practice essay, and I updated every single one of their checklists so they could see what they had done and where their next step was. Some students started to do this on their own towards the end of the practice time. 

For a few students who were really struggling, I made personalised screencasts of how I would go about continuing to craft their essay from where they currently sat. Here is an example below: 

Click here to view the full screencast made for one student as they composed their practice essay.

I don't really have a measure that I can use to show that every student in the class grew in confidence. I can't really compare this year's results to previous years' because the class itself is different. They're quite a motivated bunch. 

However, 13 out of 17 students who sat the internal did pass, 1 with excellence and 2 with merit. 2 students failed for plagiarism and 2 were incomplete in the time-frame given. 

One thing I can share is anecdotal evidence. At the end of Term 2 I presented students with this list of possible internals they could choose from, to do as our final internal of the year at the start of Term 3. 

They didn't choose the one with a field trip.

They didn't choose either of the ones with practicals and chemistry experiments.

They didn't choose the one that would help them with their exam.

They chose the one that was most similar in assessment FORMAT to their volcanos standard. They chose to research online and create a report (and evaluate their sources) about an Earth and Space science event. They told me they chose that one because it would be the "easiest." Even though I don't approve of the laziness underlying the word 'easy' - I was so happy that my students were confident enough to engage in a LOT of reading and writing BY CHOICE! 

Hangi In Science

We've had Mike Stone come to visit and provide professional development for us around Culturally Responsive Pedagogy recently. Last week she put up a slide that said "Beyond the Hangi unit." 

I thought, "uh-oh." I planned a hangi lesson with 9TGn two weeks ago. It had taken a bit of planning, and then I went and got sick on the day of the hangi and had to leave it to relievers to run! 

Quite special relievers, I will note: 9TGn were treated to a science lesson with their Principal Mrs Pamaka and Deputy Principal Mr Dunn, along with our lovely Nanny Barb and Tamaki's kaumātua Wally who were always going to lead different parts of the hangi as experts!

Wally thought it wouldn't be worth doing a small hangi and he's used to making them for over 50 people, so we sold meal tickets for $10 to teachers and prepared to make 60. The money collected covered the costs for the student's food and the hangi materials. The extra we made went back to Nanny Barb and the Whare Kai, because she feeds students in there all the time!

Nanny Barb knew what to do in the Whare Kai, and it looked like everyone enjoyed preparing the food and having a natter!

Here are some of the 9TGn boys heating stones for the pit.

This is Roimata's Presentation from the science lesson after, where I asked them to recount: 

Here are the instructions for their blog posts, which included a requirement to include all three of the sentences we've learnt about recently. I've been trying to consciously teach writing skills this term, and I think it's been going fairly well? The Presentation below is one I created for a double lesson, where students creatively wrote on paper for 5 minutes and then "cast" their later sentences anonymously onto a Padlet we could all see.

Here are some of the blog posts writen by students:

Roimata

Sene

Havea

Journey

Michael

Teremoana

When I saw Mike's slide I was worried that she would say the hangi lesson was not culturally responsive, or that linking energy or heat conduction/convection etc to hangi is done too often and is too cliche or token.

However, (luckily) she thought providing students the time and opportunity to participate completely in the cultural experience of preparing a hangi (something I am STILL yet to do - stupid sickness) with kaumātua to guide them - and without trying to do science at the SAME time - was really valuable to the kids.

I could still relate the hangi back to science/energy/heat later on, but the actual skills and knowledge of how to cook hangi was something entirely separate.

I hope the students have taken learning away :)

Year 9 KPop and Literacy in Science

My Year 9 class has been learning about energy, sound, light and sight in the context of KPop this term because of their fascination with it (and Japan, and anime)..

This activity took three days but I believe it was completely worth it!

First, we spent an entire period playing with these energy cards. 

Students raced against other to complete a full set, and then I gave them a few minutes to look at their completed sets as "answers." Then the real fun began. Desks were set in a circle, and students battled each other in a game of memory by setting the cards in a grid and taking turns flipping over three. 

Two rules must be enforced for this: 

1. Cards must be flipped over in the spot that they lived, and stay in that spot when they're flipped back over.

2. Both students must see all flipped cards, not just their own. 

The next day we had a double period. 

I moved around the room and let students randomly draw out pictures from this set, which was created based on what I knew about their interests (rugby, netball, Fortnight, Ru Paul's Drag Race, Dragon Ball - and some weird and wonderful photos to get creative juices flowing).

Then they had to identify two different types of energy in the picture, before swapping and having another go. Finally, in their small groups I gave them 1 picture between them and they set about writing a paragraph onto a big whiteboard between them. If they got stuck they could use this template. 

For the rest of the lesson (once they had a complete paragraph with full stops and capital letters in the right places) they individually split their paragraph as "Evil Wizards." Many students found this difficult and I had to spend time with lots of students 1-on-1 to teach them. This activity only works if each sentence is split in HALF (not more than that). Having different energy scenarios (from the different images) ensured that each paragraph was different - necessary for the next activity.

As an added bonus I included the word "wizard" in korean at the top and a link to it being pronounced out loud, because this class (largely) are quite interested in Eastern cultures, hence the KPop context for this term as well.

This activity engaged some students who had previously not been engaged. Student 2 LOVED it. 

Another student who hasn't been overly keen on writing this year also really engaged with this, she experienced lots of pride in completing her paragraph split before others in the group and led the charge as a "Good Wizard" in our final lesson.  Here is the link to her finished work. 

The final lesson was perhaps the most simple, but the most effective. 

I had copied and pasted 6 finished "Evil Wizard" split paragraphs from the 6 groups in class into a document and printed one copy. Then, I cut them out and sellotaped them around the room. 

"Could this have been done digitally?" asked one of our DP's who had wandering into my room during the lesson. It probably could have, but that day I wanted students to get up out of their seats and move around the room rather than be in their usual static position. I could perhaps have included the paragraphs as a QR code to be scanned, but they were honestly just as excited to see their own paragraphs on the walls.

Students recognised their own paragraphs and most "healed" them first.  This also gave them ownership of their learning - they had created the activity themselves!  They were eager to move around the room and solve the rest. 

Here is the link to a blank "Good Wizard" activity - you'll have to complete the lesson sequence to have 6 split paragraphs to solve!

Year 11 Microbes Internal

Today I had my Y11 for an internal intensive (rather than a mid-year exam). We've been learning about bacteria and fungi for two weeks now using a mixture of Education Perfect, literacy activities designed by our literacy specialist Marc Milford and class activities. 

Today was a bread and yoghurt-making practical that they will have to discuss for their 4-credit write-up next week. 

Hopoate and Hala sieving their flour as they begin to make bread.

Each group started off the lesson by making a slightly different type of bread using a variation of a basic recipe. After all the steps were followed and the dough was left to rise (aka the yeast were left alone with the flour to conduct anaerobic respiration) we baked the bread for 25 minutes.

Then we made observations of the appearance of the bread, and also did a taste-test. 

Chelsea with the different variations of bread (her wholemeal bread is second from the right).

After we had made bread using yeast we interacted with a different microorganism - bacteria! 

Students first heated milk to destroy any pathogenic (harmful) bacteria, and then cooled it to the optimum temperature for our helpful species. Then the bacteria were added and left to do their work for the next five hours. We'll eat the yoghurt tomorrow!

Makaydyn making yoghurt - the live bacteria cultures are in the yellow packet Desiree is holding on the left of the picture, and are about to added now the milk has dropped to the optimum 40 degrees celsius. 

The students were great and the lesson went really well. I would definitely do this with a class again - perhaps earlier in the topic, so when we discuss respiration in greater depth they would have something tangible to hook the abstract concept on.

We couldn't have run this lesson without Ms Heka helping us out in her kitchen! Hopefully we left it as we found it Ms Heka! Thanks for hosting us :) 

Y13's Animate CRISPR Delivery to Cells

Year 13 has been learning about how humans manipulate genetic transfer in other organisms. In other words - how have humans managed to change the genes of species that they have found most useful? These genetic manipulations started thousands of years ago with the selective breeding of farm and domesticated animals such as goats and dogs and has continued to advance.

Now we're at a stage of technological capability that scientists can 'knock out' or 'switch off' a SINGLE gene they're interested in with massive precision, OR even insert or 'knock in' a new / healthy copy of a gene! This is particularly interesting in terms of healthcare - fixing a disease caused by a single gene by replacing the altered copy with a healthy version!

Year 13 first learnt about how CRISPR (a recent gene editing technology) works before they attended a workshop about CRISPR's potential for use in New Zealand's healthcare system.

Gene editing in Healthcare by The Royal Society Te Aparangi

The Y13's before going into the workshop.

Lonise, Clearissa and Sharon.

A few days after the workshop we had a chat about things we had understood, didn't quite understand, and questions we (myself included!) were a bit shy to ask. We fired off a quick email to one of the scientists who were at the workshop, and were pleasantly surprised when he replied! 

Here's the link to his responses to our questions.

The first two questions we had were about how scientists actually deliver CRISPR into cells so that it could manipulate the genome in cells, such as embryos - or whole organisms. 

The scientist explained that DNA that contains the instructions to build CRISPR's Cas9 enzyme and gRNA and possibly a template can be packaged up and delivered into a cell via a virus or nanoliposomes. Embryos can have the DNA for CRISPR injected directly into them along with sperm, before fertilisation. 

Year 13 spent their double period today animating one of the three delivery methods with play-doh. 

The followup activity for this is to have students present their animation verbally to the class, or for me to combine all of these FANTASTIC animations into a short video and then have students practice writing descriptions of what they observe. 
Our school and cluster goal is to improve the literacy of our students. I'm hoping that this activity scaffolds confidence in writing scientific explanations.