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.

Even More Everyday Science Mysteries: Stories for Inquiry-based Science Teaching

I have just borrowed another good book on Science from Read@Academy. Here is the one.

I will just write about the theories in the book as I mentioned in my earlier post, I want to document my learning process so that I can always refer to it in my later years of my profession. We too can come out with stories or mystery tales, focused on a particular conceptual area. It can be our day to day activities or phenomena.  This book inspires me to  write my own stories one of these days!

Development of Mental Models
Research has shown that in almost every circumstance, learners have developed models in their mind to explain many of the everyday experiences that they have encountered ( Bransford, Brown, and Cocking 1999; Watson and Konicek 1990; Osborne and Fryberg 1985). According to the learning theory , constructivism, all of life's experiences are integrated into the person's mind; they are accepted or rejected or even modified to fit existing models residing in that person's mind.Then, these models are used and tested for their usefulness in predicting outcomes experienced in the environment. If a model works, it is accepted as a plausible explanation; if not, it is modified until it does fit the situations one experiences. Regardless, these models are present in everyone's mind and brought to consciousness when new ideas are encountered. Rarely, they may be in tune with current scientific thinking, but more often they are "common sense science" and not clearly consistent with current scientific beliefs. One of the reasons for this is that scientific ideas are often counterintuitive to everyday thinking. These ideas can be referred to as prior conceptions, children's thinking or common sense ideas. They are usually firmly embedded in the mind and they are highly resistant to change. If these ideas are allowed to remain unchallenged, they will dominate pupils' thinking to the point that the scientific explanation will be rejected completely regardless of the method by which it is presented. These misconceptions are useful since they are the precursors of new thoughts and should be modified slowly toward the accepted scientific thinking. New ideas will replace old ideas only when the learner becomes dissatisfied with the old ideas and realises that a new idea works better than the old. It is our role to challenge these preconceptions and move learners to consider new ways of looking at their explanations.

 &

In pedagogical terms, there are differences between scientific literacy and the curricular combination of science and literacy.

Scientific literacy is the ability to understand scientific concepts so that they have a personal meaning in everyday life. In other words, a scientifically literate population can use its knowledge of scientific principles in situations other than those in which it learned them. For example, the author considers people scientifically literate if they were able to use their understanding of ecosystems and ecology to make informed decision about saving wetlands in their community. I have learnt something about " Scientific Literacy".

Currently, there is  strong effort to combine Science and literacy. One reason is that there is a growing body of research that stresses the importance of language in learning Science. Hands-on science is nothing without its mind-on counterpart. The understanding of scientific principles is not embedded in the materials themselves or in the manipulation of these materials. Discussion, argumentation, discourse of all kinds and social interaction - all forms of commuunication are necessary for pupils to make meaning out of the activities in which they have engaged. And these require language in the form of writng, reading and particularly speaking. They require pupils to think about their own thinking, hear their own and others' thoughts and ideas spoken out loud, and that they eventually see these ideas in writing to make sense of what they have been doing and the results they have been getting in their activities. This is the often forgotten" minds-on" part of the " hands-on, minds-on" couplet.

As teachers, we need to help pupils to be aware of their thinking or practise metacognition as they read and investigate . We need to model for our pupils by thinking out loud as we view a phenomenon. Help them understand why I spoke as I did and why it is important to think about my process of thinking. We  may say the following:

"I should design an experiment to see if I am right."
" Did you notice how I make a prediction that I could test in an experiment?"

Modeling your thinking can help our pupils see how and why the talk of science is used in certain situations.

Scientists use their vocavulary and organisation when they talk about their work and it is called " discourse"( Gee 2004). Pupils need to learn this discourse when they present their evidence, argue the fine points of their work, evaluate their own and other work and refine their ideas for further study.

The Language Of Science
Science includes things other than just verbal language. It includes tactile, graphic and visual means of designing studies, carrying them out and communicating the results to others. Also, many common words such as work done,  food have different meanings in the real world of pupils but have precise meanings in Science. We need to teach pupils their way of communicating when they study Science. They must learn new terminology and clarify old terms in scientific ways. When we talk of scientific things, we talk about them in the way the discipline works. We should not avoid scientific terminology but try to connect it whenever possible to common metaphors and language. We should use pictures and stories. Words such as compare, evaluate, infer and observe are words that ask for thought and action on the part of pupils. We should role model and often ask questions using these words to get pupil to solve problems.


The role of the teacher is to help the pupils to identify the problem or problems and then design ways to find out answers to the questions they have raised. In the stories, we can include "distractors" also known as common misconceptions or alternative conceptions.

One of the stories is about a girl, Vashti noticed that sometimes the big puddles dry up faster than the little ones and wondered why that would happen. One day, she was at a baskeball court after the rain. She observed 2 puddles of water of different sizes.  She smiled and challenged Juana, " I 'll bet you this big puddle will be gone when we come home this afternoon, and this little one over here won't.

We can use the stories to start exploring, extending the story and engaging in inquiry.

Using Authentic Examples For Higher Order Thinking Skills

There are many authentic examples in Newspaper that we can use it to engage our pupils with higher order thinking skills when teaching Science. Science is really every where!

Last year, I found this picture in Straits Time, June 8, 2011 which is so relevant to the topic on Heat. This year, I showed the pupils the 2 pictures.

I asked the pupils why  the open air sculptures are covered with tarpaulin on a hot day. Pupils were able to tell me that metals are good conductors of heat and thus may scald the children if they sit on it.

More details on this piece of news can be found http://www.publicart.sg/?q=node/375 .

I also showed my pupils this picture.

You can get the picture and more information from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/4360255/Heatwave-in-Melbourne-plays-havoc-with-the-Australian-Open.html .

Similarly, I asked the reasoning question " Why do you think the tracks still buckle when there are gaps between the tracks?".

Last year, I went to San Francisco. I managed to get a picture like this.

It was raining very heavily and it was really cold outside. The warm water vapour in my hotel room lost  heat on the cold window and condensed. My colleague, Kha Ghee wrote this.

A few years ago, I was on holidays with my sister in Japan. When  I came out from my shower, this is exactly what I saw on the mirror in the hotel. I did not think of taking picture at that time but luckily I can find it from the internet.

When I looked at the mirror, I saw myself clearly framed up in a picture. It was really beautiful! I was so amazed and impressed. I immediately touched the dry part of the mirror. Yes, it was warm which is why water droplets could not be formed on that part of the mirror. Whenever I teach condensation, I will share with my pupils the story of this magical mirror  and they are always very captivated!