Alongside the bottle ecosystems we introduce our students to the various concepts associated with ecology. This allows them to discuss biotic and abiotic, food webs, other relationships such as mutualism and terms such as producers and consumers. They have time to practice and apply this learning and then apply it to an ecosystem of choice (they chose and animal from our local zoo). They apply their learning by creating an ecosystem interactive poster. We trialled this last year and it worked quite well both as a way for students to communicate their learning and as a motivator. This year we’re doing it with all the year 9 classes at once. This is to fit in with the HASS classes as we run the unit in a small cross curricula manner.
This was quite a problem with resources which we barely coped with and will lead to some changes both to our organisation but also towards creating a maker space in our learning hub as checking the return of equipment proved near impossible for all of us involved.
However the posters produced by my two classes this year are on the whole better than last years and I’ll post some examples below.
Things to remember
Have equipment in a manner that is easy to check turn – might be better to allocate certain sets to certain tables and the table is responsible for the return. That works in Science labs but I have more control over students exiting than in the open spaces of the hub so we’ll have to develop responsibility – give them the same equipment each time, if it’s not returned correctly they lose access to it.
showing examples worked well. I should probably go through images of previous years in more detail and repeat it a couple of times.
Being explicit about what goes on the poster each session worked well at the start and kept most of the class up to date but as soon as students start to miss lessons compromises spread.
Make a bigger emphasis that the poster isn’ t about the animal but about the animal’s ecosystem.

The above photos are from one class the other is still to be assessed.

For the last two years my year 9 Science classes have constructed and observed bottle ecosystems. We cut up 2 2 litre bottles and had the top part as a terrestrial system and the bottom half as an aquatic system. We keep some small fish in the aquatic system. Last year they all survived. This year about half died. This happened quickly and also occurs in the big communal tank I had for the fish, so this was probably due to factors beyond my control. It’s a really motivating activity for the students, which is why the loss of fish was disappointing. Students identified ecological factor, made predictions and follows them through.

+he Hallett Cove excursions (3 groups, 7 classes, 3 days, 1 postponement due to weather) happened. I’ve got lots of the small pieces of art about ecosystems up in my room and am looking for a space to display the timelines. 9C, my Science class went on the last of the trips as we cancelled the first one due to the weather forecast being very hot. We had fun, I think. For most of the day. That was part of the plan. I also got the group I was with to talk to me about the geology and have used several references to the day in class as we learn about plate tectonics. We’ve done a range of different short tasks around this topic – an earthquake drill, a series of volcano demonstrations (I think the sparkler one was the favourite), mapped where earthquakes and volcanic activity took place, use that as an aha moment for plate boundaries, looked at sea floor spreading (paper pulled along a bench while team members coloured furiously with crayons), a small resource based investigation task – which I assessed looking particularly for acknowledging sources appropriately, and finally the production of some stop motion animations. Here are a couple of them.

IMG_0791 IMG_0957

We’ve also seen Richard Hammond’s Journey to the Centre of the Planet and lots of smaller videos to show particular types of volcanoes and plate movements. I use iPods to deliver the information for the students. It worked really well for some of the groups and all groups used it to make some recordings of soundscapes and short videos that explained how some of the features at Hallett Cove occurred.  I have one of the students coming to speak about it at a staff meeting tomorrow. He hasn’t said anything positive yet – hard to see screen, went a little fast, had to keep pausing – I don’t want to suggest anything he might say. I will see if I can get some video of others speaking about the use of iPods before hand.

Unfortunately, despite my year 10 students enjoying the forensics and managing to use the techniques successfully they didn’t do so well in their exam. I think they thought it was a race to see who could finish first. 

Finally got most of my Year 8s to write their essay about rocks – the one they write after their learning to show how much they’ve learned about the rock cycle etc from all the activities and investigations we’d done. Big cheer that all of them discussed the recyclability of rocks – main point. A bit sad about how few went into any depth about the value of rocks.

Week 2 of the term went very smoothly. On Friday the year 8s made volcanic toffees in the demo kitchen and apart from a few hot plates not working the toffees worked well. They connected to obsidian and pumice. This class are making a rock collection although I have only had them tell me how it is going so far.
I did a double lesson on Magnetic fields and electromagnetism. Because of all the lessons missed with this class it’s all I could manage. I used lots of demonstrations of various phenomena to tell the story from magnetic fields to electromotive force. The class have started nuclear and atomic physics with an investigation based on size approximation and a history of the model of the atom (well as far as Heisenberg anyway.
10 Science used piktochart to create a visual presentation about the evolution of an animal. The task asked them to show evidence and any alternative explanations along with their reasons for supporting one of the other.
9 Science Combustion reactions. Burning fuels and designing investigations to measure energy released. The key part was to think of ways to improve on the investigations as we went.
Stage 2 Physics revision of derivations and some of the applications. I think they’re all coming back next week.
Stage 2 Chemistry quizzing on the memory based parts of the course.

Lots of walking around the Hallett Cove Conservation Park. There is a great record of the Adelaide area ancient geological history from around six hundred million years ago. Unfortunately only a tiny fossiliferous layer. So I am organising an excursion for the year nines. I am planning to do the excursion without paper or pen where students get instructions from iPods – so I have to create the videos to do this. Students will do large scale group type tasks at different points on the trail. Putting lots of my imagination into those because they will have to be engaging and organised around small groups. I plan the first groups will go in week 4 next term so I have a few weeks to go.

First session a review of unpacking the Australian Curriculum. We looked at how to organise tasks although lots of unanswered questions in my head and the assessing of a standard/criteria but then doing this at different levels seemed to be a strange fit. However, I need to move on from this we’ve already created tasks and part created our own rubrics. Probably the biggest issue is that tasks need to be necessarily deeper and fewer, this is not a good fit with the quite large proportion of our clientele and their particular attendance patterns. So in actuality need more and smaller tasks….

Literacy / Strategies. Antony Yeats.
Emphasis of time with the student.
Film in the background (not sure about this in a science lab) the idea is to provide a slight distraction. Limits students own distractions.
Guide lines for working through a task.
Suggestion of music as another way … I’ve used on and off, depends on how teacher directed the learning method is at the time.
Grouping strategically – which we do around the task. Provides someone else to give attention.
Streamlining feedback. Generic feedback sheets and rubrics. Highlight comments that applied. Sending out example sheets.

Numeracy..
Where is your dot?
Tamara and Chris.
Nice activity. For creating a need. Example how do you know it is acidic?

The bulk of the day is developing our programmes along aus curriculum.

Last night it was pointed out to me what a good way of documenting my practise this blog is so I’m starting it up once more as a daily thing but I’m going to try to limit the time I spend doing it.

10 Science: Looked at the chemistry of our metal production by electrolysis practical from yesterday with an emphasis on determining the chemical changes that took place and creating a word to model this. I then put the question to the class about how we could electroplated zinc on to a copper coin by electricity and we worked our way to an idea. I’m going to use a plating solution that I came across and then we’re going to alloy the zinc and copper to give our coin a brassy finish. It worked okay when I trialled it.

9 Science: the great fish body shape investigation. Long tubes, lots of water and plasticine shapes. A couple of boys over excited by the freedom and some groups of girls who really got involved and had fun. Objective one fulfilled. Now they have the task of designing an animal for their ecosystem and some glossary terms for home work.

8 Science: making wet mount slides. A lesson I really get into. I grow some mean algae in my pond. Unfortunately we no longer have a video microscope that operates with out computers and I’m still to be successful getting a picture with an iPad so no photos of the seriously cool views of algae we had. Lots of detail visible. I don’t think the students were as impressed as I was. I kept telling them how good a job they had done and they would look at me as though I was crazy. Homework was for the laggards who hadn’t finished their take home test to do so or do it on Friday lunch.

Prof Bob. Hill filling in for Brian Schmidt.
Found out this morning that there is an iPad app for the Pasco software and an air attachment so no leads etc… Now have to keep persuading others to use this.

Key note address: Living with fire.

History of oxygen in atmosphere and then onto what we now know about the history and evolution of flowering plants.
All early fossilised plants served as charcoal. Fire a critical part in their early evolution.
Oxygen level below 13% can’t light a fire. Above 23% anything will burn anywhere – all vegetation. Above 30% spontaneous combustion.
Fire a very important part of the environment until about 60 million years ago less significant … Reduction of oxygen and climatic changes. Extremely high CO2 at the same time . No ice, tropical, forests at poles. Also very wet. No dry season.
These were the conditions in Australia until about 35 million years ago … Became more seasonal, temperature changed, less CO2 more fire. Current around Antarctica stopped movement of heat south from equator. Much larger temperature gradient. Summer winter rainfall boundary moved northward faster than Australia. Low nutrients also helped create a vegetation that was predisposed to burning when fire returns.
Poor nutrients and drying increase leaf litter. Eucalyptus are fire promoting. Xanthorrea is also another excellent example.
Epicormic shoots. Eucalypts do best when high fire frequency.
Fire plays a large impact on the type of vegetation cover. Big land surface of the Earth.
700000 definitely trees on the nullabor as tree kangaroos. Palm valley etc.
IncreAse in eucalypt about 200000 years ago so could it have been homo erectus using fire?
Diets of emus and genyornis before genyornis became extinct .. Emu diet became restricted C3 vs C4 plants materials. Converted drought adapted to fire adapted ?
Europeans interrupted the fire cycles created by original occupants. Including addition of annual weeds.

Dr Roslyn Prinsley national advisor science mathematics education industry.
Twitter feed @conasta
Big Science Competition? High percentage of students find Science interesting and think it can change the world (voluntary). But they don’t particularly want to work in Science.
What work do Scientists and Mathematicians do? Jobs growing 1.5 times faster than other areas. Important skills active working, critical thinking, complex problem solving and creative problem solving STEM graduates better equipped ( employers survey). Also STEM positions in employment increasing. Growing interest in supporting Science in schools. Scientific literacy of country needs to be lifted. 1118 occupations in which STEM grads work in over 600 industries.
Not a lot of positive support for a mention of Christopher Pine as Education minister.

CSIRO Education outreach still functioning and challenges etc still running.
Prof Lynn Koviac .. Food and nutrition flagship.
Science it takes guts!
Australia is getting older and fatter. 1 in 3 obese children 26% of children overweight or obese. Links to lots of metabolic diseases.
Challenge .. Longer healthier life … For the health system.
Chronic disease will account for 80% of disease burden … Huge cost problems.
Huge increase in proportion of population obese since 1980
Thinking about mega trends and what they mean for health.

Semmelweis and hand washing as an example.

Addressing the challenges through delivery modes, efficiency, prevention and new technologies.
3D printing of food.
Genomics science challenge, proteinomics, etc … Molecular biology of selves and how it interacts with genes. Epigenomics. Adding methyl groups to change activation of gene. Data deluge
Diet exposure lots of it is bio active. Has opportunity to interact with our genes that produce 100000 proteins 300 to 500 thousand metabolises. Also extended genome through microorganism.
Role of gut nutrient and fluid uptake, immune tolerance, defence against infections, signalling to the brain.
Human Micro Iomega Project first map of microbes 100000 species on an healthy person.
Might be worth finding video the hungry microbiome
Methyl DNA to produce a test for colorectal cancer. Blood test for people refusing feacal screening test.

Prof Andrew White intriguing chemists and annoying computer scientists cqc2t.org
Quantum computers
Two weird things about Quantum mechanics wave particle duality, entanglement
Half silvers mirror experiment 2 Pairs of. Been done with particles as large as buckyballs.
Bells inequalities
Culinary Analogy for entanglement. Using cake sampling in ovens on conveyor sampled randomly.
Einstein hidden variable theory …. Faster than light information.
Qubit
Electronic potential energy surfaces
Quantum chemistry
agx.white@gmail.com

Elizabeth Saunders. The differentiated science class.
Things to consider ….
Diversity, academic goals in content and skills, use of resources, choice/allocation, presentation, open/closed, formal/informal, abstract/concrete, individual/group/whole class, time length, assessment, homework, timeframe.
Options Activity grids bloom’s and gardner’s. Example of a year 9 communications Technology – I’ve done similar things. The trick is how to assess. Maybe look at the blooms level tasks and keep notes records. Zoe and I did something very similar but we did need to structure our choices better.
I thing there was a bit more money in this school than I’m used to having available.
Could you do this electronically?
We often do this process with points allocations for students to use in choice .. Higher points are awarded for create and evaluate tasks and less points for remember and understand with the task set so that more time was needed to do the higher order thinking skills tasks. Scaffold the completed task more completely would help too.
That’s a thought using the grid for homework setting. Of course homework would have to be done.
General questioning skills are a god idea too.
Just mentioned the points system.
Showed a maths example which looks like part of the whole maths I ran with middle school kids. I’ve been differentiating more than I thought.
Learning contracts … Used those but we barely have the time to do the negotiation. Which the presenter just said too.
Universal Design of Learning
This is big picture planning
Multiple means of representation, multiple means of expression, multiple means of engagement.
Choice rich tasks sometimes are definitely not enough….

Need to get a grain mill.

Digital leaders workshop
Looking at google drive at which I am a neophyte but developing user.
All my year 9 students have a google account and I’ve shared with them and created google forms
They are supposed to share with each other …. We’re not all quite there yet.
This presentation run by students Lachlan and Zac from my HG.
They took us through the types of documents they can create and how to share files.
Going to be looking at the allow comment function (haven’t used yet). Good way for students to upload their work and the teacher can attach comments. Can also used to resolve problems. Looks useful I’ll have to check it out.
You can colour code you folders.
Right clicking on documents shows lots of options. You can put Youtube videos directly into a presentation. Just an insert video and then search youtube.

Next up photoshop….
Presented by two year 8 students
Can be used to make posters, magazine, covers image into images. The students showed how to make a photoshopped image in a few minutes

Next up using media in stage 2….
Presented by Robert in year 12
Advocate the use of our media resources for use by stage 2 students.
Showed some research project outcomes created using electronic media.

Last two sessions in the board room.
StopMotion Maddy and Sophie. Talked about process they went through to make their stop motion … Fruit Race

Health movie about drugs and health.

The students showed clearly how they valued their learning in this area.