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By robert, April 5, 2010 8:14 pm

Some time ago I set up a science blog to use with my students.  We decided just to post up examples of good work and photographs from experiments (as a school wary of the internet we wouldn’t be including any media with students faces).

With only one blog (with access controlled by the teacher), articles were written as a group effort, or simply in the last few minutes of the lesson as the plenary drew to a close.  More often than not this ended up being a photograph with a couple of lines of explanation.

The novelty of seeing their own work on the internet soon wore off and the blog stopped having a motivating effect on students.  As students lost interest in the blog, postings dried up and it became little more than a list of links sharing a space with stale content.

With less than 2 hits per day the effort of maintaining the blog didn’t seem worth the effort.  Content was transferred to my science blog several weeks ago (which seems like a more natural place to host the type of content we were generating) and search engines barred from indexing the site.  My school science blog has now been deleted and traffic redirected to point to this blog (at least until the domain name expires later this year).

So what did I learn from this foray into the world of student blogging?

• Students have to have ownership of the material to keep them motivated – this means students generating content.
• Think about purpose of the blog. Is it another writing medium? to showcase student work? to act as a newsletter or information to parents?
• There has to be an audience or purpose to the blogging – commenting on each others blogs, and feedback from the teacher meets this purpose.
• Embed using the blog into routines.  Completing a blog entry could be a homework or a regular plenary slot in lessons.
• Think about access to the blog.  Having one single blog limits interactivity and makes needs a teacher to manage the password.
• If you only want to host links then a Wiki is more appropriate (a wiki can also be a better tool for distilling and developing ideas as a group)
• A managed blog (or multiple blogs built on a single hosting installation) will save admin time in keeping the software up to date.

Have you tried blogging with students? I’d be interested to hear if you have any advice to add to mine for teachers wanting to try blogging in the classroom.

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By robert, March 27, 2010 4:04 pm

I know a big worry for schools trying to get to grips with APP is that it will turn into a huge paper chase, and not actually be of any real use.  Primary schools are now starting to think about how to adopt science APP and I get different messages from different schools and different local authorities about how they are going about this.

Just to add some more fuel to this fire, National Strategies have released some resources to support the use of APP for assessment for learning (AfL) across primary and secondary phases.

National strategies say the purpose of these materials is to:

• define what is meant by Learning targets
• explain the principles of setting Learning targets
• outline the process of setting Learning targets and how this can be linked explicitly to opportunities for periodic assessment through Assessing Pupils’ Progress (APP)
• identify strategies which enable pupils to take responsibility for their own progress and become more independent learners.

As with all National Strategy materials you have to read through it and take the bits out to use that are useful and manageable (whilst National Strategy material is well intentioned, I don’t think they have any appreciation of the workload of the average teacher and if you followed their advice to the letter you’d never have time to teach anything!).  

What this document is useful for is looking at how you can construct some meaningful targets for students to improve from APP materials. It is downloadable from the National Strategies site and is worth a flick through, providing you remember that you won’t be able to follow their advice to the letter.

Remember that Ofsted under the current inspection framework are looking for progress.  I attended a briefing this week at which an experienced Ofsted inspector was talking about the importance of linking targets to grades/levels (in secondary schools).  APP provides a quick and easy way to do this in your lessons, and to build in some meaningful assessment for learning which is one of the cornerstones of good (science) teaching.

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By robert, March 23, 2010 10:10 pm

For several years I’ve used level assessed tasks as one of my peer assessment tools in science lessons. I’ve used them with a range of students of different abilities from foundation tier GCSE to Entry level and below. Usually I’ve used them part way through a topic to check understanding and highlight opportunities to develop through the rest of the topic.

I was recently contacted by Dr Mark Evans (co-author of Badger APP materials) regarding a post on my blog I had made about APP in science (and why teachers don’t get it). Mark kindly gave me access to his Webquest APP tasks and I decided to try them out with one of my groups as an AfL activity.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with these Webquests, you are given a structured task supported by online reference materials (including updated links to other sites). These materials do not rely on text books, and the materials can be uploaded onto your VLE, making them suitable for homework and cover lessons as well as for use in class.

The lesson I had chosen wasn’t ideal because I had to leave half way through, but that still gave me 40 minutes to start my students off. I had chosen a task titled “Invisibility cloaks” in which students accessed reference materials about how light travels and reflection/refraction of light. Students were then asked to apply this knowledge to describe a model and see if it could be used to explain how to make an invisibility cloak (Harry Potter style).

My students struggled with this task, not because of the task itself, but because of their low literacy and independence levels. Less able students struggled with reading information off of the web sites, and text-to-speech tools aren’t very popular with our students. This is the first barrier to success for my students.

Some students who could access the information struggled with its application to a near identical diagram, and were unable to take in the short presentations on reflection/refraction. Even when an adult sat down with them and explained the content, many students were unable to apply this knowledge and identify which scientific evidence would support their ideas.

All students needed lots of guidance as they worked through the task and none were able to access it independently. This is not a criticism of the Webquests, in fact as I marked the tasks I was impressed by the structured way in which the student worksheet led the students to gather the required information and apply it to a given situation that could be assessed. I would have no hesitation in recommending these activities for use with more able and more literate students than my own (as part of a balanced and varied diet of AfL and APP activities).

An example of a completed activity is given here (page 1, page 2) complete with annotations to help me make sense of the levels before we follow up with a peer assessment/target setting lesson.  Unfotunately it wasn’t possible to capture  the good quality science discussion that also took place in this lesson.

So how could I make this task work better for my students?

• Reduce the literacy requirements of the task still further by using more narrated animations or video so that students could use the web materials as a reference material independently.
• Provide a little more structure to the writing frame to support students with lower literacy, maybe as sub-headings or more diagrammatical work.
• Add level information to each step of the writing frame so that students can more easily check their levels as most were unable to access the level ladder, even when it was presented in pupil speak.
• Use tasks like this more regularly so that students become used to finding things out for themselves and less reliant on an adult feeding them instructions or information (training)
• Refer to APP criteria and next steps more frequently so that students become better at identifying ways forward. Not all APP activities need to be written or recorded, it is possible to use APP criteria in ordinary AfL activities (rather than slotting in off-the-shelf tasks in the way you would do a test).
• Use a task better suited to the topic/material my students were most familiar with rather than use an off the shelf task.

Remember that there isn’t a proper way to use APP.  Tasks like the one above are only one example from a number of ways that APP can be used in schools.  Good AfL is key to good quality science teaching and in turn to embedding APP and making it work.

Have you used APP tasks with students of low ability or with low literacy levels?  What obstacles did you come across and how did you overcome them?

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By robert, March 16, 2010 8:43 pm

I bought these last year – handy for seeing magnetic field lines without messy iron filings.

And while you are on the topic of magnetism,  the floating paperclip never fails to engage students of all ability.