Plant Transport System

I cut the celery stem into half to the middle of the stem and left it each overnight in 2 beakers of blue-coloured and red-coloured water. The food colouring must be really dark to get the tubes stained.

The next day, I showed the pupils the cross section of the stem. I wanted them to see the water-carrying tubes are stained with red and blue.

My pupils are good at their hands . They pulled out the tubes for me.

Food carrying and water carrying tubes

Blue stained tubes

Red stained tubes

These pictures can be good resources for questioning.

I took a beautiful picture of  celery at one of the Science workshop I facilitated. So I thought I should add in here instead of starting another post.

Look at the beautiful xylem tubes!

Rubbish Science

My husband always reminds me not to throw rubbish in the bin this way.

We can ask the pupils why it is better to fold the empty box and throw it into the bin.



Fruits, fruits everywhere!

I went for a walk at my neighbourhood. Great discovery!

I picked up 3 types of fruits and sorted them accordingly.



How are they dispersed?

 I realised that there are not many specimens in my school and decided my homework  for these holidays is to build up the collection in my school. When term 3 starts, I am giving my P5 pupils each of them the fruit with winglike structure. When I taught the topic in March, I could not pick up any. And I promised them I would give each of them one. They were very excited because I told them it was amazing to see the fruits spin. They are waiting to observe how the fruits can spin beautifully!

I dont know the name of the fruits below but obviously they are dispersed by explosive action of the fruits. I always tell pupils to observe the characteristics of the fruits and infer how they are dispersed.

I am a little surprised that the fruits below are also likely to be dispersed by splitting too.

These fruits are brightly coloured and they split open. Normally fruits that are dispersed by splitting are dry and brown. Anyway, it is a pleasant surprise.

I do hope to pick up som shorea fruits and have told Shirley to help me look out.



Hiking At Bukit Timah Hill

I went with my family last week, hoping to collect some specimens of seeds dispersed by different dispersal methods for school use during Science lessons. I think it was not the season for the plants to disperse the fruits and seeds. I could not find any instead I found some other organisms.

Bracket Fungus

Love grass with needle like structure- Dispersed by animal

Essentials Of Science Classroom Assessment

Another good book I borrowed from Read@Academy.

Using Journalling to Monitor Conceptual Change

There are 3 forms of journalling.

Open ended journalling

Pupils can decide on a specfic focus, format and length to write about a given concept. Basic rules are given by teacher.

Responsive journalling

Pupils answer questions posed by the teacher. KLW structure can be used. I like the recommendation by the author that one additional question  for L, " How is it useful?" will help to avoid rote memorization  and direct pupils to write more on their ideas , to apply what they have learnt to other situations - an important type  understanding that is application. I would want to try with my P4 classes.

Dialogic Journalling

It involves 2 persons. Teacher or pupil can pose the question. It can be conducted with a few representative pupils whose learning abilities represent the whole class. We can use ICT tools such as chat and forum, I have tried with my P4 pupils before using forum. It is a powerful assessment tool.

Here is the example I did.

Question posed by teacher: The more paper clips the magnet attract, the stronger the magnet is. Can you think of other ways to find out how strong a magnet is?

From the pupils' responses, I realised pupils have some misconceptions as shown above.

SpicyNodes: Sample nodemap

The next thing I would like to try out is using portfolios to document pupils' learning progression.


Characteristics of Portfolio Assessment

Portfolio assessment is based on a purposefully organized multisource collection of pupils' work. We need to ask 3 important questions.

1. What outcomes do we want to assess?
2. What assessment methods are best to assess them?
3. How do portfolio assessments supplement other methods of assessment?

It requires commitment from teachers and pupils and one such commitment is to accept multiple sources of pupils' work as evidence fro demonstrating ongoing learning outcomes.

Portfolio assessment involves pupils in selection of sample work. Portfolio assessment requires a shift in philosophy of assessment from teacher control to pupil control in content.We must be willing to give pupils freedom in deciding pieces of evidence to demonstrate their progress in the mastery of learning objectives. Teachers' role becomes mainly consulting and facilitating. Pupils differ in their abilities to make good judgements on most appropriate pieces of work and it is our responsibility to provide necessary help and bring pupils to an equal playing field.

Portfolio assessment involves pupils self-refelction and self evaluation. Pupils must justify their decision on portfolio entries. Inorder to do this, they must be self reflective and able to analyze their strengths and weakness in their own learning.

Portfolio assessment documents both mastery of learning outcomes and ongoing progress along with instruction. No matter what a pupil's initial achievement level is, every pupil has to demonstrate that progress has been made and new learning outcomes have been achieved.

Portfolio assessment is a tool for communication.  Portfolio only provides snapshots of a pupil's learning; it is through dialogue that we, the pupils and the parents can develop a more complete and common understanding about the pupil as a learner.The communication can serve as a platform for planningfurther  learning as well.