9.00am Registration and Refreshments

9.20am Welcome

9.30am Choice of Seminar

• A.Creative ideas for Special Needs in Science
• B.Using ‘Enquiring Minds’ to deliver a creative Science Curriculum
• C.Science, Art and Writing
• D.Active engagement and challenge

10.30am Coffee

10.45am ASE Science TeachMeet

A TeachMeet is an organised but informal meeting for teachers to share good practice, practical innovations and personal insights in teaching.  Our teachmeet will purely have a science focus and participants are welcome to come as spectators or presenters. Please see further details below.

11.45am Plenary and Evaluation

12.00pm Event closes

The cost for this event to members is £7.00 and to non members is £12.00. All participants will receive a free resource pack including either the See SAW book for primary teachers or the Big Questions DVD for secondary teachers.

To book your place please email Sue Banner on banner.sue@gmail.com. Please state your name, school, primary/secondary and your preferred choice of workshop. Please also give your ASE membership number if appropriate. If you don’t hear back from Sue, assume you have a place.

A.Creative ideas for Special Needs in Science – Rob Butler C.Sci Teach

A look at some creative ideas and strategies to use with students with special needs, or who perform below national expectations, with the aim of engaging students and raising achievement.  Rob Butler has over 13 years of experience teaching in a special school, and will be sharing tried and tested ideas from his own practice. You will have the opportunity to see samples of web material appropriate to this group of pupils.

Target Audience –teachers, technicians, students, TAs, tutors and advisors. The content is mainly secondary but some material is appropriate for upper primary

B. Using an ‘Enquiring minds’ approach to deliver a creative Science curriculum – Margaret Fleming Education Consultant

Enquiring Minds explores how students’ ideas, interests and experiences can inform the content, processes and outcomes of teaching and learning in schools. At a time of curriculum reform in primary and secondary schools, Enquiring Minds provides guidance and research to help support schools through the process of change.  Margaret Fleming has worked with a team of colleagues from the LSN Triple Science Support Programme to develop resources based on this approach to teaching and learning. She will share the ideas developed in the context of Triple Science Biology.

Target Audience – secondary teachers, technicians, students, TAs, tutors and advisors.

C. Science, Art and Writing (SAW) Jane Winter

SAW is an innovative and cross curricular approach to science, which inspires poetry and art work while increasing scientific understanding for all ages.  In this session we will tell you about our experience of using this approach with children in the EYFS, KS1 & KS2 in our school.  This session will provide ideas for your Art and Literacy subject leaders to help promote science teaching and learning in your school, along with some great ideas for manageable, creative and fun science days. . 

Target Audience – primary teachers, co-ordinators, Students, TAs, tutors and advisors. 

D. Active engagement and challenge, Melanie Edwards Science AST, Redhill Academy

A hands on workshop in which you will take part in several Teaching and Learning strategies that have a proven record of engaging and challenging students of all ages. The strategies can be adapted to teach various areas of the Science curriculum; they also require minimal resources and little preparation time. Therefore, you will be able to incorporate the strategies into your lessons the very next week! Descriptions of the strategies will also be provided to allow coaching of colleagues back in your schools.

Target Audience – teachers, technicians, students, TAs, tutors and advisors. Mel will be speaking from a secondary viewpoint but much of the material is appropriate for upper primary

ASE Science TeachMeet

A TeachMeet is an organised but informal meeting for teachers to share good practice, practical innovations and personal insights in teaching.  Our TeachMeet will have a science focus and participants are welcome to come as spectators or presenters. Presenters will sign up for a 2-3 minute presentation or a longer 5-7 minute presentation which can be about any topic related to (science) education, and in any format.  Having seen some of the exciting and innovative practice in the East Midlands, we would hope that many of you will sign up to share with us some of your ideas and innovations in the classroom.  Every idea shared is worthwhile.

Target Audience – teachers, technicians, students, TAs, tutors and advisors

Visser J, Differentiation and the Curriculum, Birmingham, 1993, University of Birmingham

Differentiation is the responsibility of each and every teacher and should be a routine part of planning. Only the teacher can differentiate their own lessons – it can not be delegated to the Learning Support department or simply copied out of a book.

Types of differentiation

Differentiation by outcome

Giving all students the same task (and any supporting resources) and letting students attempt it at their own level. E.g. create a poster to show…

Differentiation by support

Giving all students the same task and teacher directing more attention to specific students/groups of students. Could also be giving weaker students supporting materials for a task or specialist apparatus (e.g. a digital thermometer)

Differentiation by grouping

Putting students in groups chosen by the teacher. Could be grouping by ability, gender, interests, social/behavioural groups or mixed ability.

Differentiation by resources

Giving all students a similar task but giving different resources. For example a students doing an experiment and then one group of students given a scaffold to support their investigation whilst another group might only get a list of equipment.

Differentiation by task

Giving students a different task to do based on their ability, interests or aptitude.

Could be as simple as getting each group to present the same information in different ways e.g. a scene in Shakespeare – a poster, a comic strip, a story, a play or an essay

Could be setting a different task for students – e.g. working on different sets of maths problems, working on different texts, reading different stories/plays etc.

Where to start?

•Learning objectives – all/most/some or levelled objectives

•Knowing your students – subject assessment data, reading ages, CATS scores etc

•Be organised – teachers need a work-life balance. Throw in drama activities etc that require little marking, use peer marking & self assessment

This post is taken from a presentation I gave at a mainstream school recently.  Is there anything you’ve done that you’d like to add – if so I’d love to hear your comments below.

My advice – if you have PGCE students get them on the case.  PGCE students have to show capability in ICT skills and what better way to learn than by mastering data logging equipment and rolling out activities to the rest of the department.

Data loggers are excellent tools for SEN students – hopefully the ideas below will encourage you to dig yours out and get them up and running again!

Using data loggers as a digital measuring device

At the simplest level just using a data logger as a digital thermometer works.  It is easy to read and using like this is a good way to introduce the technology to students.

Using data loggers on the IWB to show live data

Most data logging equipment can be connected to a PC and used to show live data from an experiment on the IWB.  You could even get students to take regular readings from this live data, building up skills like timing and recording results, whilst keeping the activity simple.  This is especially useful where there could be health & safety implications from the experiment.

The image shows the data captured from an experiment investigating the insulating properties of dog fur!  This graph was displayed at the end of the experiment, with live data being displayed on the screen as the experiment was underway.

Data loggers also allow many students with poor numeracy skills to visualise the results and answer questions like ‘did the temperature go up or down?’ which they might not have been able to do from a table of numbers.

Using data loggers to capture data and create a graph of results.

For students who lack the necessary coordination or organisational skills to collect results over a period of time, why not give them a data logger and get the hardware to do the work for them.  Students are released from the requirement to collect readings at fixed intervals, they don’t have to struggle to read the thermometer and the data is even graphed at the end by the data logging software.  More advanced students can even export their data into Excel.

This graph shows the temperatures collected during the dog hair insulation experiment (unfortunately I didn’t start the data logging collecting data until we had finished using the live display on the IWB).   Again this allows students with poor numeracy to visualise the results, and to make comparisons between the different data sets collected (e.g. which temperature dropped the fastest? the most? the slowest?)

Do you use data logging hardware/software with SEN students.  Leave me a comment and share your ideas with others.

To make this topic more hands on we’ve done a series of practical lessons looking at different types of waves.  Perhaps you’ll have time to squeeze a few of these in – they do make a dull topic more fun.

Radio waves

Investigating properties of radio waves using a mobile phone by using Bluetooth to send photographs to each other (check your school policy on mobile phone use first!).

Factors which affect Bluetooth signals (worksheet)

Microwaves

Measuring the speed of light using a microwave oven

Infrared

Using a digital camera to view the infrared signal from a DVD remote control.

Light

Spectrum – splitting white light using a prism.

the spectrum worksheet

Ultraviolet

Ultraviolet sensitive beads (work in sun or with a UV lamp).  Also looking at security markers, money, credit cards etc under UV light.

Collective memory

If you haven’t done one of these before you really should.  Students of all ages love them – and they are easy to prepare.  I choose a suitable image related to my topic (with text and images/diagrams) and I split the class into groups.  Each group has to recreate the diagram but they are only allowed to come and look at the image one at a time, and for a limited amount of time.  The competition between groups is an excellent motivator – and if you get the groups to plan how they are going to do the activity, and evaluate their practice at the end it makes a good thinking skills activity too!

Jigsaw

I’ve attached a jigsaw template to this post.  The premise is simple – find a suitable diagram and then overlay the jigsaw (MS Office tools are sufficient e.g. PowerPoint, Word, Publisher).  Print out the diagram and you have jigsaw lines over the top.  I’ve managed to cut out 5/6 at once or you could pass the image for a teaching assistant to cut out.  Again preparation time is minimal and it is a good way to get SEN students to think about an image – working very well for those with poor hand-eye coordination.

Link to black jigsaw (with transparency – for general printing)

Link to white jigsaw (with transparency- to overlay over photos etc)

This jigsaw was completed by one of my weakest students – he not only managed to complete the jigsaw (telling me about some of the things on it) but managed to glue it down himself too (pity he didn’t quite get the paper the right way around!).

I looked for some other ways that PowerPoint (and possibly its Open Office equivalent Impress) could be used as a teaching tool with students who have special needs or perform below national expectations.

Sequencing

Give students a presentation in which the slides are in the wrong order.  Tell them to put the steps in the right order and then give a presentation based on the new order.  It is a good idea to use pictures/slides in which the order is ambiguous or where there could be more than one correct answer.  For extremely weak students this could involve sequencing photographs from a previous lesson e.g. ones taken during an experiment.

Example: Year 7 students (Wikid Science – Forensics) are asked to solve the mystery and explain how the forensic investigator came to be in hospital covered in burns.  Students have to solve the mystery and put the slides in the right order.  They then present their ideas to the group where they receive peer assessment/feedback.

Audio (or video) annotation

Give students a presentation with information to be interpreted on each slide.  Pupils must record an audio or video clip for each slide with an explanation.  Play back to group, possibly with some peer assessment.  Can also be exported as a video clip.

Example: Year 7 students (Wikid Science – Extinction) are asked to interpret the graphs and say what they mean.

Completing presentations

Using a partially completed presentation you would ask students to complete it.  This could include adding suitable graphics to text already created (or vice versa) or adding existing information to a scaffold.

Example: In this writing frame I would ask students to add information to each slide from planning through to conclusions and present it.  Students can add extra information and peer assessment information about the content.  To differentiate the activity, add more detail to the scaffold (e.g. sub-steps).  Students then present to another group or the whole class.

Story telling

Ask students to prepare the narration and present to a pre-created presentation.  This is similar to adding narration but is simpler to organise and doesn’t require microphones.

Example: In this presentation on the water cycle (from the TES resources site) students have to explain what is happening and present to another group of pupils (or the whole group depending on numbers)

Multiple choice questions

Just as it sounds – using a presentation with a quiz, let pupils answer the questions individually at computers, or on the IWB in a group.  If you search Google you can find pre-created templates, or you could make your own.

Example: Multiple choice quiz on plant classification.  Plays a different sound for right and wrong answers.

I hope you found some of these ideas useful.  Please leave a comment below (or via the contact me form at the top of the page) if you did, or if you have any questions.

I’ve heard many science teachers complaining about APP.  True it is yet another new initiative and true its effectiveness has yet to be determined, but it does have the potential to improve Science assessment across our schools.

Why APP?

• Provide a clear assessment system linked to the new framework/KS3 curriculum
• Students should know where they are and where they are going (Assessment for Learning)
• Teachers can plan for progression and know how a student is doing
• Schools can confidently track attainment of groups of pupils
• APP is not about assessing pupils and doing nothing with the data.  APP is not intended to be a summative assessment tool.

Remember APP is not statutory.  You can’t do it wrong – whatever works for you is fine.

I used to use the PIVATS assessment criteria for assessing the How Science Works strand, but had increasingly found it a poor match for the new science framework.  This meant that I had to give APP a good try.

How I implemented APP with my students
I took the APP threads which had been created by Eastwood School and I added some level 1 & 2 statements from the draft copy of the Primary Science APP.  (Eastwood school broke the APP strands into sub-strands or threads which make it easier to see the progression between levels)

I decided to create discrete APP activities to use in class.  This seemed a much easier way to collect data than flicking through pupils’ books with an APP chart next to me.  It also provided a meaningful way for pupils to see the progression between levels.  I follow (loosely) the ASE’s Wikid scheme of work which has a strong how science works theme (since it was written to reflect the release version of the Science framework).  Wikid science is full of opportunities to create APP activities (I’ve uploaded some of my APP activities – follow the teaching resources link at the top of the page).

My students (as special school pupils) tend to have lower than average literacy/numeracy levels and so activities need to provide a way for students to express their science skills without being held back.

Pitfalls of the APP system (compared to what we had before).
APP does not measure sub-levels.  Statements within a level are not intended to be hierarchical but not all the statements within a level are of equal challenge.  I score pupils as a weak, straight or strong level which gives three sub-levels, averaging these scores gives a wider range of sub-levels.

I also created a level ladder (replacing PIVATS statements with APP criteria of comparable difficulty) to use when marking books, and to display on the wall.  I intended this to support our school policy of target setting for pupil IEPs.  I’m not sure how useful this is yet, but I’ve uploaded it to my resources site.

Assessment at KS4. The expectation is that students are assessed using examination criteria at KS4. How well this works depends on the course you are running.   Modular science courses (we’ve run Entry Level, BTEC Introductory and GCSE) provide feedback to students as end of unit marks, but it’s easy to lose track of progression, especially for pupils who make small steps of progress.

Any science APP only records progress against a narrow range of criteria. How do you record a pupil who suddenly answers questions in class, or a student who might independently have started collecting their own equipment.  Special schools tend to focus on life skills and social skills within all curriculum areas.

What about the other three attainment targets for Science?  We currently have no idea of how we will be expected to report in 2011, and what the weightings for the attainment targets will be.  I would expect there to be a significant weighting to the how science works skills giving the investment in APP, but there is still likely to be variation in quality of assessment of the range and content.  Current advice is to continue assessing range and content in the same way you have always done since you will be expected to report back on these at the end of the key stage.

Where next?
I came up with the idea of developing a feel for each level, characterised by the key words and phrases from each level.  To create this idea of ‘levelness’ I used the Wordle Site and entered APP criteria to create a Wordle for each national curriculum level.  If nothing else they look good displayed on the wall!

Summary of current assessment practice @ KS3

• APP task for each  topic (with a need to improve the quality of tasks for pupils performing below level 3)
• Level ladder to be used to set targets for students’ IEPs in line with whole school policy.
• PIVATS document used alongside for target setting and tracking purposes for range and content.  Some end of unit tests (from Testbase) and level assessed tasks used to support teacher assessment.
• Optional SATs for Y9 pupils to verify teacher assessment

How does this compare to your school?  Feel free to leave a comment below.

Click on the APP tag to the right to read my other posts about APP

Remember my layout was based on teaching science to pupils who have special educational needs, within an 11-19 special school.  My needs (and therefore solutions) may not be the same as for a mainstream science lab.

I eventually went with a more traditional layout of a lab with rows where I could see all the pupils doing practical work.  I’ve listed some of the considerations to think about if you are going through the lab refit process.

This is the photo album showing the new lab all finished.  Click on a picture to see it in more detail.

Points to consider (with the benefit of hindsight)

• How are you going to use your lab – where will gas, electricity and interactive whiteboard wiring run?  This will influence your final design.
• Make sure you agree as much as possible in writing – especially where fittings are to be removed and replaced after the refit.  This ensures that they will be looked after properly during the process.  Get contact number and email address of the person who will be project managing, and make sure they have yours.
• Check with other schools that have used the company and supplier of furniture.  The company who did our refit were very willing but ESA McIntosh was unable to meet the agreed delivery dates.  This meant we had a stripped and empty room which was out of use for two and a half weeks of term time.
• When the work is finished, check carefully and document in writing any defects or things you need putting right.  Have an experienced eye check over again (e.g. site manager)

What could have gone better?

• My blinds were creased and soiled during storage.  Fortunately they cleaned up reasonably well and a good steaming made most of the creases drop out.  Steam is also handy for removing labels and stickers stuck to walls and desks!
• The layout makes access to the sink difficult, students don’t seem to have realised that we have two sinks and all flock to the same sink.  Pupils need directing to sinks to stop traffic jams.
• Mobile furniture gives some flexibility.  I didn’t go for service islands because of the expense of laying conduits in the floor, and I didn’t want my gas taps round the edge of the room (so pupils work with their backs to you).
• White walls, ceiling and black floor makes a small room seem bigger.
• Neutral colours work better than strong colours like red, which some pupils don’t find as comfortable to work in.  They also make the lab feel more spacious.
• Organised storage – Pupils like to know where everything is, and that equipment is arranged so that the most commonly used pieces of apparatus are the easiest to access.  This may sound like common sense but it took a few reorganisations before we hit on a way of storing equipment that minimised traffic jams and students squeezing past each other.
• Check the dimensions of store cupboards.  Mine are deep enough for standard folders (not lever arch files) but only the bottom shelf is tall enough for ring binders, with folders having to be stored horizontally on top shelves.
• Make sure all cupboards are locked with a master key (I had 14 similar individual keys for my small lab, telling them apart is difficult).
• Check that you have sufficient drawers to store all your glass-wear, check the cabinet descriptions (in my case a drawer unit was a cupboard with a drawer on top, not a unit full of drawers).
• Stools – try and get stools that don’t make holes in the floor.  There are stools on the market that rest on a bar rather than individual feet.  This removes the problem of stools with lost or worn feet making holes in the floor covering when students swing on them.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about our refit.

I’ve been pretty amazed at the number of people (presumably teachers and teaching assistants) who have found my resources online.  I’m getting 20 to 40 hits a day which I was quite pleased with.  In the three weeks since I uploaded the BTEC Science resources, 230 people have followed the link from the TES site and the BTEC resources have had 800 page views (according to Google Analytics).

I attribute the popularity of these resources to the price (FREE!) and the fact that there are very few BTEC Science resources on the market despite the spiralling popularity of the course.  My head told me I ought to sell my resources commercially through a publisher, but that means polishing them further, and filling them out to cover more topics.  Having seen the dubious quality of many published SEN resources from authors who seem to have done just that I didn’t want to go down that route.  All of my resources were created to use with specific classes and not for cash.

After completing my NPQH I returned to the classroom as an AST because of my passion for science teaching and ensuring students have the best possible science education.  If giving my resources away means more teachers using them in their classrooms and enhancing the science education of their students then that is reward enough.  Ultimately I want to see teachers taking my ideas and techniques and using them with their own pupils to improve science provision for all.

That is why I give my science resources away!

(And that’s why I like to hear from people who use them!  If you use my resources in your science lessons, leave a comment below and let me know what you think of them!)