National Environment Agency

Recently, we had green audit validation.

Green Audit programme is designed as a simple environmental audit programme for all schools in Singapore. Students work in teams to audit their school and submit results together with a report on their environmental efforts, including plans for improvements. The Council then conducts on-site visits to verify claims and provides suggestions for improvements.

Mr Joe Lim, the project manager, came and educated us quite a lot. Here are some of the learning points on caring of the environment.

• Adjust the air-conditioner to about 26 degree celcius and turn the fan on.It saves more energy as compared to adjusting the air-con at 21 degree celcius only.
• Get from the canteen vendor the fruit peels or the vegetables and throw them to our rotting log habitat. That will speed up the decomposition process.

Process Skills

I have been thinking of setting targets for pupils' process skills in the science workplan. I believe that pen and pencil assessment does not show a complete picture of pupils' learning. So we need to have alternative modes of assessment.

The next question is how to assess the different skills. In my school, we have been using Science practical. The tasks set by the teachers were good. I actually wanted to set targets for individual skills such as observing, classifying, using apparatus etc.

When I sat down and analysed what are the skills being using for a particular task, I noticed that there were a number of skills involved.

For example, pupils were given 4 buttons. They were to observe and classify the buttons in any of the folliwong ways.

So in reality, when we are given a task, we always use integrated skills. So I have to set targets for integrated skills instead of specific skills.

Skillful Teacher - What Have I Learnt Today?

According to "Skilful teacher", what happens in the beginning and at the end of the lesson is what people tend to retain the longest. I always begin my lesson with lesson objectives. I need to use the last 10 minutes of the lesson effectively.


Today, I conducted a lesson on electrical conductors with the Primary 5 pupils. At the beginning of the lesson, I shared with the pupils the lesson objective -  Pupils are to identify and classify electrical conductors and insulators. Pupils were given bulbs. batteries and wires to design a circuit tester to test whether the items given conduct electricity. At the end of the lesson, I got pupils to summarise with the following guiding questions.

• What Have I Learnt Today?
• What Puzzled me?

I got these ideas from skilful teacher. I used to dislike using " What Have I Learnt Today?"  because pupils always like to write general statements which do not show understanding, for example, I learnt about conductors etc.


But after the lesson today, I have changed my perception on this question. It can also draw out pupils' misconception.


One of the pupil  wrote the following:

I did not know aluminium can conduct electricity as I always think  that only metals can conduct electricity.

This pupil have the misconception that aluminium is not a metal. She has the prior knowledge that metals are hard but what she was handling today is aluminium foil which is soft.

This response gave me great insight on making use of this strategy.

Formative Feedback

Today, Dr Koh, my NIE lecturer asked us to do a group activity on feedback statements. We were to decide whether the statements are formative.

I did not realise that the praises or encouragements that I gave pupils are not formative. For example, I often wrote ' Well-done!", " Neat work!", " Try harder!", " Lovely drawing!" on my pupils' Science activity books. The pupils are doing summative assessments.

I always think of only giving a score to an exercise or a test is a summative assessment, for example the semestral examinations in the midyear and final year. But I did not realise what I have been doing in classroom, giving those praises and encouragement are not good enough. I did not tell the pupils the areas they have done well.

It is always not easy to give individual feedback to a class of forty pupils. Right now, I always feedback to the class the areas they need improvement and  highlighted to them some of their classmates' model answers. I believe this is step to formative assessment.

Questioning

Questioning is my favourite topic. I feel that every teacher should spend time mastering this skill. But not all teachers think that. Last year, I introduced questioning as one of the strategy that the department would want the teachers to focus. So I actually thought of ways to do sharing and encouraging teachers to plan questions before they step into class. One teacher actually came to me and said that they have done questoning for so many years and felt that they did not need to plan.

Today, I read a chapter on questioning from the book " The Skillful teacher- Building your teaching skills". I was so happy that what I proposed last year was the right move and further confirm that every teacher needs to plan their questions before the lesson.

There are 4 main points of questioning.

• 
  
  It is an entire toolbox. The questions selected should be matched to hte instructional purpose.
• 
  
  All pupils including the low ability pupils need to be engaged with high level questioning. A lecturer once told me if we do not scaffold low ability pupils with thinking questions , these pupils will always not be improved and will always be labelled as " low ability".

• Questions should be planned when we are planning the lesson. Don't just spend time planning the activities and the topics for discussion and then wing it on what questions to ask as we go.

• 
  
  Pupils should be taught to ask questions. I have been teaching pupils to use questions starters, for example

" What happens if ......"

" Why do you think ..."

" What is your reason ...."

It is quite effective for a start but pupils still need a lot of practice.

Priorities in Practice : Essentials of Science, Grades 7-12 : Effective Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment

I have been updating the blog as much as I can for the past few days. I know when school starts in the next few days, I will be busy preparing the P6 pupils for PSLE science, planning Science lessons for the the P5s, studying, doing housework....

I recently read , "Priorities in Practice : Essentials of Science, Grades 7-12 : Effective Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment",  an E book from NIE library. Chapter 5, Assessment For Learning", caught my attention.

The book recommends that every pupil to be like scientist, keeps a Science notebook to raise questions, document procedures, collect data and write conclusion. Perusing the professional scientist's notebook conveys an especially important fact to teachers: Science is a human activity done by real people, not fill in the blank erercises that demand one right answer. " The students should learn to use the notebooks the way a  Sciencetist: to clarify thinking, to ask questions, , to find holes in their thinking, to justify their thought processes," says Sparkman.
The book also recommends to collect the notebook, about 5 per week, to find out what pupils know and what they need to know. This make me think that if we are do this, we are doing authentic assessments

I like the following tips on using the science notebook:

The book also suggests to have peer assessment by doing a round robin. Pupils are to look for the best aspect of another person's notebook and explain why. This process helps pupils to discern what needs improving in their own notebooks and get ideas for improvements.

All these are good ideas. Once I am ready, I want to implement them in my own class. Hopefully, I will get teachers who are interested to join me.


Right now, I also get my 2 P5 classes to owe a notebook but they use it to summarise what they have learnt using different graphic organisers like tables, concept maps, mind map, cause and effect flow chart etc. I got the idea and the pedaegogy from " Why don't children like school?" by Daniel T Willingham, a cognitive Scientist. Information can last longer in pupils' memeory when they synthesis knowledge, when they summarise what they have learnt. Pupils do not really learn by just underlining the key points in the textbook. We always have this perception that teachers who give a lot of notes to pupils are excellent teachers. More importantly, teachers must ask scaffolding questions to get pupils to construct new knowledge, teach them how to summarise.


“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime”—Author unknown

The Role Of Assessment In A Learning Culture

This article, The Role Of Assessment In A Learning Culture by Lorrie A Shepard is a great article on using differnet assessment tools to capture important learning goals and processes and to connect assessment to ongoing instruction.

My Take Aways

• Assessment practices should change to be consistent with and support social constructivist pedaegogy. This new paradigm is that both development and learning are primarily social processes. Cognitive activites are " developed" through socially supported interactions.
• There are 2 kinds of assessment, the " evil" and the " good". I suppose National examinations are the "evil" assessment. Its main purpose is for accountability. It does not prepare the pupils the skills require when they come out to work. " good' assessment will be the authentic assessments when pupils have to use a number of skills. On-going assessments which can be used as part of the learning processes are also " good' assessment. This leads me to realise that multiple choice questions are not authentic assessments. As educators, we need to strike a balance between teaching for " evil" assessment and " good" assessments .
• Once we are ready,  we have to make changes in our classroom practices to make assessment as art of the learning process. Here are some strategies that the article recommend, They are dynamic, on-going assessment, techniques for prior knowledge activitation, providing feedback, transfer of knowledge, be explicit in the criteria, self assessment and lastly evaluation of our teaching.

I am not good at summarising article. Do spend some time reading this enriching article.