Many schools and organisations around the country have been celebrating with light lessons in class and PD for teachers.
John Marsh of Tauranga Intermediate School has hosted workshops all week. Tuesday's session was based on the Science Capabilities and a website he has created with explanations of these and links to lessons which relate to these.
Science Capability site
He spoke of consumers being bombarded with products and services
See NZ Science Teacher for articles on capabilities and "science talk". This directed me to the ARBs. These have been redeveloped with NoS and Capabilities in mind and also link to BSC and MBS books.
His thoughts on the capabilities:
1. Gather and interpret data
is it measurable?
observation/inference
Jurassic Park example (Footsteps in the sand) in which you can judge the speed of a dinosaur based on its footsteps
2. Use evidence
mystery boxes - What's in them?
What do you already know? This reminds me of...
3. Critiquing evidence
Tree Octopus example the site looks plausible, internet does not get peer reviewed or sued! Published material can.
Using science ideas/advertising to sell products such as colonic irrigation...
4. Interpreting data
portrayed as good science
NZ example is Ribena
5. Engage with science
How Wolves change rivers in Yellowstone Park
Where do you get your information from and how do you verify it?
Innoculation debate and links to autism
related to the notion of certainty and scientists are never certain!
risk taking and informed decision making to reduce risk
general public know more now and more discerning and demanding
Who is saying it and why?
Do they have a vested interest?
Decisions about own and others health, when balancing risk there is no definite right/wrong answer (does this also relate to the capability 3 critiquing evidence in which not all questions can be answered by science?")
Nuclear is now the clean fuel in Europe but there are risks involved
Hydro electric is clean versus damage to ecosystem and cost involved
NZ water cleanliness standard is "wadeable" due to Dairy industry influence
The capabilites are rich with discussion opportunities. Another real life issue is the 1080 debate. Do the benefits of eradicating possum outweigh the numbers of native and non native species in the forest also being killed?
John also had a variety of activities set up which investigated the properties of light.
My favourite was this simple activity which demonstrates the concept of refraction. I might set this up at our Science Expo in Term 3 for parents to try. This is also an example of a discrepant event - something which does not turn out as expected.
The second workshop I attended was based on 101 science activities which can be done with a piece of string. These included pendulums, paper cup telephones, instruments, newton's cradle, centripetal and centrifugal force, capillary action.
The gems I took away from these workshops were the importance of discrepant events to engage and invoke curiosity and also the ease with which we can use a few simple items to demonstrate science concepts. With a few well thought out questions we can then extend these activities to build on NoS concepts and science capabilities.
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