Making the Junior curriculum concept driven and student-led

LEM and I have been chatting about how we could make the junior curriculum more relevant to the students and the world they live in. We started thinking about all the ways climate change could be used to hook into the science junior curriculum. How it could be used as a context for multiple content needs in science.

We threw around some ideas at morning tea time, then while my class were doing an assessment I started to pull them into a mindmap using Coggle to link the ideas of climate change, to the Science content, and on to the type of assessments or investigations that could be done.

The goal would be for students to investigate their own interests within a larger framework. When I started to link the content that is essential to Year 9 and 10 it turned out the whole two years could be investigated within the context of Climate Change in Year 9 or Sustainability in Year 10.

The intention is to allow teachers some fluidity in what and how they teach allowing them to follow the students interests. The assessments can be chosen by the teacher to be either a research investigation, using secondary sources; or a practical investigation collating primary data.
Each class would be constrained by having to do at least 6 assessments to report back on, at least 3 research and 3 practical investigations, and for each content strand in the Science curriculum to be assessed at least once. Students who are really into biology can do 3 Living World  themed projects, as long as they still do once each for Physical World, Material World, and Planet Earth and Beyond.

The teacher can follow the students enthusiasms anywhere on the mind map, or beyond if the students are so inclined. As the assessments are Nature of Science based they are comparable.

SNC has developed some good assessment tools, assessing skills not content, so they can be used across different assessment contexts, but still be comparable. The repeated use of these assessment rubrics, coupled with their explicit teaching in class will allow students to both identify what they need to do within an assessment, and identify what their next goals will be to attain the next level in their progression.

Ongoing Inquiry into the Geology assessment for Year 10's

The last couple of days I have been watching and marking presentations from my year 10 class on a Natural Disaster. 

The quality of presentation is much higher than last year. This is a combination effect from having a more literate and engaged class than I had last year, but also having provided greater scaffolding for the students. From the scaffolding they have a better understanding of what is expected of them, and the detail to which they need to go.

Some students are, as expected, only doing enough for the minimum. Others have really been focussed on the higher levels, and been motivated by the clear outlines. The hardest part for many has been presenting to the class, however as scary as it may be, presenting is a valuable skill for them to practise.

In addition I think I will give them a modified re-submission opportunity, modelled on how they will be assessed at Year 11 in NCEA Level 1. Modified, in that I will be showing each student what on the rubric that they missed, and perhaps helping them to research their way to a better grade. In this way they will hopefully develop a better understanding of how they may use rubric's to check their assessments for sufficiency.
The aim would be to have them better craft their assessments to meet the criteria at every level .

Year 10 Geology Assessment

I have been reevaluating the assessment for the Year 10 Geology Unit. Although the assessment task itself is a good one, it needed more scaffolding to help the students to understand what is required.

I have spent some time putting together scaffolding resources to support students in this process.

I decided to give the students an exemplar of what was required to get to excellence standard, and along the way I also made a resource showing how I thought through the requirements, and another on how I recorded my information prior to putting my final document together.

When introducing the assessment task I showed the students all of these things, and talked through them with the students, before giving them access to them on Google Classroom.

The exemplar was also highlighted to identify which parts satisfied Level 4, and which Level 5. The student were informed that the expectation is that at Year 10, they need to be working at Level 5 or "Merit", but many students are aiming for the Level 6 assessment grade.

This is a continuation of the revised assessment task I created in 2016 in response to the absence of a reliable assessment task.