About:
Teachers describe the ways that MyScience provides an engaging context for skill development.
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MusicTeacher: I suppose the biggest issue originally was that a lot of the
children have not been exposed to Science at a or high quality Scienceas far as an investigation that they're doing themselvesprior to my coming into the MyScience program.Some kids had in my class had done it already in the previous two yearswhen they were in year three but some have never done anythingreally to do with Science and most of them have all done therecipe based stuff with just 'this is the method' and'this is what I want you to do when it's finished',it was not let's find something for ourselves.So, the biggest problem was probably getting them to actuallywrite a report as well, the structure of a report wasvery difficult for them, they just had no real concept how a lab reportshould be set out and the information that should be included.Another big thing was graphing, graphing and tables are a big, big thingin Science in particular when it comes to a final productand is doing your results and a lot of the kids although they knewwhat they were 'I know what a picture graph is' or'I know what a bar graph is', 'I know how to make one','I know how to read it' but what is it really telling you about your resultand interpreting that information is very difficult.We decided to help that was to do our graphing unit for Maths alongsideour conducting of MyScience and it worked really well,they got much better analysis in the end.Assistant Principal: You can almost teach your measurement and your
data lessons around it because anything that they're doing in Sciencethey have to be able to measure and in some cases they might bemeasuring in grams and so they have to use scales to measure themand they have to be accurate, they have to understandwhether they're measuring in grams or kilograms.Sometimes if it goes over then they might have to be able to convertbetween grams and kilograms or metres and centimetresdepending on what they're measuring.They have to do a lot of thinking, they have to be able to use graphing,to do data on the computer, to enter their data and turn itinto a graph which they actually have a need to do.There's so much that you can do about asking kidswhat colour eyes they have or what's their favourite sport,it's a bit boring but this actually has a purpose and when they cansee their results in the form of a graph and see how much clearer it isthan if they have a table but even what to put in their tableit just makes it become more real, the teaching of Maths is a lot clearer.With writing they have to write up their report so they have tounderstand that they've got an audience and their audiencehas to understand what they're writing.There's a little bit of a problem because the English syllabusdoesn't have a scientific report as being one of its thingswhich I think they probably should have.But they have to understand the idea of paragraphs are important,the order that they put things in, their use of connectives,those sorts of things are very important and it's theirs, they own it,it's their choice what they did and they're writing up their experiment,they have to be able to communicate it and other people can give themfeedback on it which can make it better for them.Notes:
Analysing and reporting on a real science investigation give students something to communicate about.