Science in the New Zealand Curriculum

Achievement objectives

Level 3: Making Sense of the Nature of Science and Its Relationship to Technology
Students can recognise when simple investigations can be classified as a "fair test" and make decisions about the worth of results.

Science in the New Zealand Curriculum, page 30
http://www.tki.org.nz/r/science/curriculum/p30_31_e.php

Levels 3 and 4: Developing Scientific Skills and Attitudes
Students will further develop their investigative skills and attitudes.

Science in the New Zealand Curriculum, page 42
http://www.tki.org.nz/r/science/curriculum/p42_43_e.php

Note: This is the achievement aim and as such includes all the achievement objectives at level 3.

Level 3: Making Sense of the Living World
Students can:

• investigate special features of common animals and plants and describe how these help them to stay alive
• explain, using information from personal observation and library research, where and how a range of familiar New Zealand plants and animals live.

Science in the New Zealand Curriculum, page 58
http://www.tki.org.nz/r/science/curriculum/p58_59_e.php

The teacher's intended outcomes were for the students to:

• recognise patterns and relationships in the results of an investigation
• use investigation results to answer an investigative question
• use data to support or change an idea.

The intended outcomes were aligned to the following "big ideas":

• Processing and interpreting are important in answering investigative questions.
• Scientists use evidence to justify their ideas.

The students carried out their work as part of a nine-week-long, school-wide, cross-curricular unit involving social studies, technology, health and physical education, and science. Integrating these subjects allowed the school to focus on revamping a native bush area at the school. The key principle of the unit was that the New Zealand bush is an ecosystem with plants, soil, and soil organisms all dependent on each other. Investigating was the key scientific skill, with a focus on processing and interpreting results. The students assessed their ability to process and interpret results after they'd completed the unit.

Each of the three rooms at the school used a slightly different context. In the junior room, the focus was on growing bean seeds (see Bushy Beans, level 1), in the middle room, the focus was on soil animals (specifically, worms, as in this exemplar), and in the senior room, the focus was on growing native seeds (see Cola and Kōwhai, level 4). All the rooms followed the same sequence of topics as they moved through the unit:

• Week 1: living and non-living things, simple characteristics of living things
• Week 2: grouping according to observable characteristics
• Week 3: revamping the native bush area
• Weeks 4-8: individual investigations.

Alice, who was in the middle room, noticed that she couldn't see any ears on the worms she had observed. She decided to investigate whether they could "hear".

Teacher-student conversation

Examining Alice's table of results:

To move Alice towards the next learning step, the teacher could help her to focus on:

• using evidence by using prompts such as "Alice, is there any other evidence that you could use to support your idea that worms don't have ears?" (thinking in scientific ways)
• organising data by using prompts such as "Alice, can you draw me the table that you would use to record data the next time?" (investigating in science).

The teacher could:

• ask Alice to explain what she thinks might happen and to justify her explanation before beginning the next investigation
• ask Alice to construct her own table to record data for the next investigation.

Reference

Ministry of Education (1993). Science in the New Zealand Curriculum. Wellington: Learning Media.

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