Back at School

This is week 4 of the school year and it has been a busy start to the school year. having been away for 6 months it is surprising the little things I had forgotten but, to use an old cliche, it is like riding a bike and things are running smoothly now.
Science is a major focus in my class now, not only in the in depth unit I am teaching but also in incidental things and I have been sowing the seeds for something I want to do with my class later in the term. The major unit is about the rocky shore which makes sense to follow what I was working in last year. we have had four classes visiting two different rocky shore sites. Two classes visited the reef at Kawaroa while two classes visited the Tapuae Marine Reserve. The following day they swapped locations. The Kawaroa is walking distance from school and not part of a Marine Reserve so was a good place to be able to compare findings with. Before the visits each class watched a power point of species they might find down there and as they walked down to their first quadrat I heard them saying things like "there's a snakeskin chiton" and "look a radial limpet' It was quite exciting to know they had learnt these things. In groups they completed three quadrats at the three intertidal zones. They repeated this at the other reef on the following day. They also had time on both days to explore on their own. Back at school we are looking at the data we collected, and have other things planned. The other teachers have all talked about the children working like scientists on the reef, another comment that has excited me. Here is a video I made about how to collect data from a quadrat.

The incidental science teaching has been wide and varied, from watching a video about whale sharks and discussing what they eat (this came out of a current events contribution) to looking for living things in an area outside our classroom and talking about what makes athing alive, to how scientists would go about the same task, and why they would do this. This is also the seed I am planting in my class at the moment for a project later in the term.

In between the science there is writing, maths, swimming, art, music, reading, testing, and all the usual things that fill the start of the school year. It is certainly different from the lst two terms I had, but I am enjoying being in front of a class again.

December 27

Here it is the middle of the holidays and science is still a big part of my life.  In todays Taranaki Daily News there was a story about the setting up of the Tapuae Marine Reserve, and about its future. I feature in a little bit of the story and was interviewed a couple of days ago. It made me think about the importance of Marine Reserves as well, and how they are a place where the environment can grow back into balance. The ecosystems don't have extenal influences being put on them and so over time they can change back to what they once were.
Anyway here is a link to the story
http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/life-style/6191815/Proud-to-be-kelp-huggers
Oh and yes I do know the journalist that wrote the story, rather well in fact, she is my wife.

Week 20

Week 20 and I have come to the end of the first part of my Fellowship. Wednesday was spent in Wellington with the Royal Society of New Zealand staff and the other teacher fellows. I had a 6 am flight to Wellington so it was breakfast in the airport before being shuttled to our venue. More coffee and chats was the first thing on the agenda and then we were put into groups for our presentations. Each person had to to a 8 minute presentation (with 2 minutes for questions at the end.) We were in groups of 8 or 9 so we heard about the different things people had been up to. It was really good to hear and learn about what other people had been up to. Half of the teacher fellows were part of the Awarded scheme and so their presentations were more about what they had achieved. The Primary Science Teacher Fellowship teachers presentations were more about the process of what we had done and the nature of science we had learnt about.
After lunch we had discussions about heading back to school and what to expect. Next year will be the begining of the next phase of this Fellowship, leading our staff to raise the level of science teaching in our schools. We were awarded certificates and had a chance to unwind before heading back to the airport and home.
 I have loved everything about being on this Fellowship because there have been new challenges and things to learn. Next year there will  be new challenges and new things to learn and I am looking forward to that as well. I am also looking forward to being back in front of a class because it is that aspect of teaching I enjoy the most, developing a class that works together. In lots of ways the Fellowship has confirmed that I enjoy being a teacher, and now I have a new string to my bow. I will be a better teacher of science from this experience, and I believe I will be a better teacher all round.

This will be the last weekly post but theree will be some posts next year as I try new science teachng in my class and with my colleagues. Stay tuned for those and until then have a happy Christmas and holiday.

Week 19

Spent most of the week in Auckland taking part in curriculum days taken by Core Education. The days are designed to help us when we go back to school next year by focussing on the curriculum. It was agood time to have the days because we have been so involved with science that we had lots of experiences to draw on and because it does make us think about next year. In lots of ways it is a nice culmination of all the work we have been doing. Our presenters Dale and Brigette are both excellent value and they complement each other and work well together. We had a lot of hands on activities to balance out the times when we had to do a lot of thinking. One of the highlights was going to Kelly Tarltons for an educational trip. We got to go behind the scenes a little bit and see a couple of turtles that had washed up on New Zealand beaches. They are being nursed back to health.

The other good thing about the week was getting together with the other teacher fellows. We get on easily as a group and we must have all been good because secret Santa visited us all when we went out to dinner. For the out of Aucklanders we got to eat out each night, Malaysian, Thai, and Italian. All very nice. We were lucky someone knew there way around Auckland and places to eat.

Week 18

Another busy week of learning.
I was at the beach by 6:30 on Monday morning, a good low tide and one last transect to do at the southern end of the marine reserve. Was a nice time to be there too. Saw a few brittle stars down near the low tide mark too which I hadn't seen before.
With the data collected I spent a couple of days with Elise trrying to put it into a format that can go onto a GIS map. We added some photos but it took a while to change the Excel data into a csv format for the map. Eventually the data will be online as a baseline for others to see. We spent a couple of mornings on this and there was a real sense of satisfaction when we got things to work. (Though an email this weekend from Elise means I have to change some things) It is about learning anew way to present data that will become accessible for lots of others.
On Thursday afternoon I spent the time with my class. It was to prepare them for a trip to the Marine Reserve on Friday morning. My approach was different just for the hour and a bit I was there because of the things we have talked about in developing an understanding of the nature of science. It was arushed session, I had to get in what we were going to do, some species they would see, why we were doing it, why scientists would do this, as well as the usual organisation and safety stuff.

Friday morning was a lovely Taranaki day and we were at the Marine Reserve by 9:15. I set out a 45m transect and put the kids into groups 5m apart. They had a quadrat and different recording sheets. They counted and recorded what they could see. They made a good job of this. We moved the tape up the beach and they carried out 3 qudrats in total. "Look Mr Smart we found a chiton!" (On Thursday no one knew what a chiton was or had heard of one) "We found a hermit crab" It was really exciting to hear the enthusiasm of the class and their genuine excitement at learning and finding new things in the rock pools. After morning tea they had achance just to explore the reef and they found some new things then as well.

I have missed this contact with my class and know I will look forward to being back at school next year, and I know I will be a better science teacher for my experience.

Week 17

Time seems to be moving really quickly and I am running out of weeks. I spent a lot of this week making graphs in Excel with the data I had collected from my transects. I certainly got quicker at making them as I went.
Monday was back on the beach in the morning, there were lots of bluebottles washed up because of the wild weather we had had. There was also a prion on the beach washed up but still alive. Last Friday when I was at the beach I photographed a bird I hadn't seen before. I couldn't identify it from the bird books I got out of the library either. A few emails later I found out it was a wandering tattler. They are infrequent visitors to our shores from Alaska and Eastern Siberia. I was quite pleased to get a shot of it on the beach.

I spent Tuesday back in Stratford looking through the microscope for species in soft sediment samples. Wednesday and Thursday were back in front of the laptop typing up about what I have been doing and what I have found out. Friday was more of the same but I did get down to the beach for a short while.
  Friday lunchtime I took my daughter to get some lunch, she had just finished her level 3 exams. Anyway waiting for our food we overheard a woman telling the owners that allergies were caused by all the additives in food these days and that 4 out of 5 children now have allergies and this is the reason why. My time around scientists and workiong with science made my ears prick at this. Really I thought to myself, what evidence is there, what proof is there, what studies have linked these two things, or is it just what someone thinks and it gets repeated often enough then people will beleive it without asking questions. Thankfully in the car my daughter thought the comments were wrong too. It reminded me of another time when a man my wife was interviewing firmly believed there were more rips at beaches these days because there were more ships off our coast. This is a true story. Thankfully science makes me ask questions, even though I might not always get the right answers I know where or how to research to find out. This is a skill we need to teach as well.

Week 16

Eight chitons on one stone! This was the sight that got me excited during one of my quadrats on Friday morning. Eight Chiton glaucus Green Chitons together on one stone. I finished counting other things in the quadrat before I took a photo. As I held the stone I could see them moving, sliding slowly away from the top of the rock. With the photo quickly taken they were back where they had come from.

It is sights like this that get me excited on the beach, large cats eyes, lots of little half crabs scurrying away from under a rock, the quadrats that are almost 100% sandy tubeworm, and some of the really big limpets I have seen lately. It illustrattes how well I am getting to know this area and the how much I am noticing within the marine reserve. It has been the continual working in the marine environment and having the chance to observe and research in one specific area that is bringing me this depth of knowledge and understanding. I did spot a seabird that I couldn't identify on my way back though. It sounded like an oyster catcher, but it was grey, will need to some more research on that one next week. 
Spent lots of the week writing, there are only a few short weeks left and a few things I need to complete, and some things I want to finish. This has also meant a chance for reflection on all the things I have done and learnt as well as more thinking about what is the nature of science. I had a session with Elise learning more about using Excel and have produced a couple of quick graphs about some of the things I found.

As well as all the species and science I am learning about, Tapuae Marine reserve is a beautiful place to be as the view back to Moturoa Island shows.