Science in the New Zealand Curriculum

Achievement objectives

Level 4: Making Sense of the Nature of Science and Its Relationship to Technology
Students can plan and carry out a "fair test" and make decisions about whether the conclusions drawn from an investigation are soundly based.

Science in the New Zealand Curriculum, page 32
http://www.tki.org.nz/r/science/curriculum/p32_33_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 for this strand at this level.

Level 4: Making Sense of the Living World
Students can:

• investigate and classify closely related living things on the basis of easily observable features
• use simple food chains to explain the feeding relationships of familiar animals and plants and investigate effects of human interventions on these relationships.

Science in the New Zealand Curriculum, page 60
http://www.tki.org.nz/r/science/curriculum/p60_61_e.php

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

• recognise patterns and relationships in the results of their investigation
• use the results of their investigation to make sense of their 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 to answer investigative questions.
• Scientists use evidence to justify their ideas.

The students carried out their work as part of a nine-week, school-wide, cross-curricular unit involving social studies, technology, health and physical education, and science. Integration of 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 that are 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 at the completion of the unit.

Each of the three rooms at the school used a slightly different context. In the junior class the focus was on growing beans seeds (see Bushy Beans, level 1). The middle classes focused on soil animals (see Worms that Hear, level 3), and in the senior classes the focus was on growing native seeds.

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: revamp the native bush area
• Weeks 4–8: individual investigations.

Amie, who was in the senior room, had heard about the ability of cola to eat away at hard surfaces. She had learned that kōwhai seeds have very hard coats and that gardeners have to scarify them with hot water or a knife to get them to germinate, and she wondered if she could use cola to achieve the same end.

Teacher-student conversation

During the investigation:

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

• appraising her evidence, for example, by asking "Amie, what other evidence would support your theory that the cola started to kill the seeds?" (thinking like a scientist)
• including her scientific ideas when making testable predictions (investigating in science).

The teacher could:

• encourage Amie to look at the quality of the evidence collected and engage in a class debate as to whether to accept one set of data over another set
• focus Amie on the strengths and weaknesses of her own and others' investigations immediately after processing and interpreting their data.

Reference

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

TKI Science community