PRIMARY CONNECTION 2 DAY COURSE

Wednesday 8th June

 ENGAGE PHASE:
o Engaged with prior beliefs and understandings – eliciting prior knowledge

 An inspiring teacher is:

o Organised
o Relatable
o Patient
o Creative
o Passionate
o Understanding
o Caring
o Knowledgeable
o Approachable

 Peceptionogram
o Graph dots
o Out of 100 importance
o
 Learning is the core business
 Short clip on LASER - CATALYST
 Acronym – light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation
 Demonstration of how knowledge is power

 Scientific literate
o Interested
o Engaged
o Sceptical and questioning
o Identify and investigate
o Make informed decisions and empowerment
 To be critically literate

 Scientific skills of learning and science is always changing need to forever question and
learn

 Reflect on Engage Stage

 5 Pillars
o Collaborate learning
o 5 E’s
o investigation
o science and literacy
o assessment

Collaborative Learning: - Congruence: Explore Phase

 collaborative learning

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 assigned roles in the groups page 8.

 manager
 speaker
 director - provides guidance
 provides structure for group work and collaboration
 primary connections, recommend groups of three
 research has shown that learning is enhanced for science when students learn
collaboratively
 reception to year 2 groups of 2
 years 3-6 groups of 3

Primary Connections uses 1 key concept and that is Science understanding

Engage phase – what are shadows and how are they formed?
Adult: a shadow is a shape that is formed through the absence of light

 Cumulative listing
 Engage- elicit prior knowledge diagnostic assessment
 Need to use the students’ vocabulary. Do not paraphrase
 Know what children understand
 Engage captures students interest and curiosity
 Probing and questioning ‘why do they think that?’
 What they think can change
 TWLH chart
 Encourage multi-modal representations
 Photos – diagnostic data can be stuck in the journal

Explore phase:
 Children get to challenge their prior conceptions
 Through exploration evidence is gathered to support scientific truths
 Confidence in reasoning ability
 Shared experiences that can be discussed and explained
 Build students’ science inquiry skills
 Produce work that can be used in a formative assessment
 Modify their non-scientific conceptions

Explain phase:
 Given the opportunity to use the experiences and data to explain scientific concepts
 Students use their own language
 Students can talk about what they’ve learnt
 While students form their explanations formative assessment can come from this
stage
 After observations scientific explanations are taught clearly and succinctly
 Support students to construct explanations
 Introduce scientific explanations and terminology

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Elaborate phase:
 Survey
 Design
 Secondary data investigations
 Reconstruct and extend explanations
 Express findings
 Discuss the quality of their evidence
 Use question starters
 Investigative exercises
 Provide an opportunity for summative assessments of inquiry skills

Evaluate phase – final phase – summative assessment:

 Students recognise and reinforce scientific understanding by revisiting initial
conceptions explored in the engage phase.
 Refer back to the TWLH chart
 Reflection builds metacognition
 Students are encouraged to conduct their own self assessment and record their
findings in their science journals
 Students will acknowledge their own progress in meeting learning goals
 Gather evidence of change in children’s conceptual understanding

All phases have equal value in the inquiry:

 Share the 5 E’s with the students
 Let them know what stage they are in and what learning takes place in each phase
 The children then can use the meta language contributing to the students’
metacognition
 The 5’s is encapsulated in the constructivist theory
 Skilled in communication
 Students learn how to learn

The five whys?

This is a great sheet for evaluating knowledge. Also works as a class discussion in the early
years.

Elaborate phase:
 investigation
 Pedagogy that underpins the fair testing investigation
 Communicate effectively
 Investigation question
 Class discussion to elicit variables
 Can be whole class development
 Or it can be done in groups of 3 following the collaborative approach
 How to generate an investigative question?
 Focused on two variables, what you are measuring and what you are testing

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Acronym for a fair test:

Cows: change one thing - independent variable
Moo: Measure or observe another thing – dependent variable
Softly: Keep the other things the same - controlled variables

If you can not provide the evidence, it not a scientific world view

QCER (page29)

Q – What question are you trying to answer

C – What is your claim at this point
E – what specific evidence do you have to support your claim
R - How does this evidence support your claim? Can this be linked to a scientific concept?
Are there alternative explanations for the data you collected? How accurate is the data?
Reasoning

Assessment: (p 46) P3T

Paper: write a purpose statement

Passing: paper gets passed around and key words are underlined

Purpose: Group assessment, from the words that are underlined the most. Purpose
statement is written using the most underlined words.

Is the process of gathering information pertaining to the students’ achievement?

Three forms of assessment:
1 – diagnostic – engage phase, concept map, mind map, TWHL chart, draws out students
existing ideas
2 – Formative – explain stage, effective strategy for improving learning, feedback should
direct attention to the activity at present
3 – summative – is used in the elaborate and evaluate stage. Work samples that can be used
to assess the students learning
Evaluate Phase: questions throughout the unit to gather information, can compare to the
engage stage.

Summative assessment word loop – journal entries, reflective task, go back over summative
and diagnostic assessments.

Thursday 9th

Cross curricular links:

Literacy: reports, spelling, persuasive writing, labelled diagrams
Maths: graphs, numeracy, measurements
Science:

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Global Café Exercise: 3 café owners around the classroom. Class divided into thirds, group
discussions take place at each café. Café owners overhear and take notes on the discussion
and then report back to the class

Everyday literacies: we use in everyday life communication both verbal and non-verbal

Literacies of science: graphs, representations of data, tables. Practises, processes, ways to

communicate our scientific information.

Scientific literacies: engage in discourse about science, identify questions and information.
Provides a vehicle for scientific collaboration, across the world.

Collaborative exercise:

How do we control light in the home?

First exercise: we used every day literacy: drawings on 4 post it notes
Created a bar graph collaboratively 4 tables joined together to create graph
Insert photo

TWLH Chart in the engage phase: Runs throughout the Unit

Date new entries, reflect on how much students have learnt over the time period.
The purpose is to track learning: “I once thought this, now I know this and why!”
What we think we know – engage phase
What we want to learn - explore phase
What we have learned – explanation phase
How we learn – explanation phase

Quality Matrix:
Modify Literacy Focus – labelled diagram insert photo

Australian Curriculum: Science

Science understanding:
 Biological Science
 Chemical Science
 Earth and space Science
 Physical Science

Science as a Human Endeavour Strand divided into 2 strands:

 Nature and development of science
 Use and influence of science

Science Inquiry Skills:

 Questioning and predicting
 Planning and conducting

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 Processing and analysing data and information

 Evaluation
 Communication

Unit Planning:

1. Start in the Evaluate phase: - report, game, model, quiz an iMovie, mind map, word
loop.
To display the science understanding from the Australian Curriculum
summative assessment task for Science Understanding

2. Elaborate: design an investigation, utilising science understanding and science

inquiry skills. The purpose of running through the investigation first is to trial all
variables, safety, etc.

3. Explain: define

4. Explore: reliability, accuracy, identify variables, materials, measure. Takes up most of

the time in preparation.

5. Engage: hands on demonstrations, create a need to clean. Create a hook! Challenge

students. Play video with no sound

INDIGENOUS PERSPECTIVES:

Very important for our students and future generations re: sustainability, cultural
awareness.

Evaluate:

Do’s:
 Teach four units per year, one from each colour
 Teach the lessons in sequence
 Modify the unit based on the literacy outcomes
 Check website for updates
Don’ts:
 Cherry pick from units
 Try to cover multiple conceptual area’s at once
 Avoid the chemical and physical sciences
 Leave out the literacy processes

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REFLECTION:

Overall I found the two-day course to be invaluable. The teachers were both currently in
teaching in head positions in the science department of primary schools. They had both
taught for over 20 years, and were extremely passionate about Science. They spoke of the
importance of allowing our students to safely take risks and foster a love and appreciation of
science in them. They taught us practical and fun ways of engaging (or hooking) the students’
curiosity in the engage stage of the 5E’s learning process.

We thoroughly explored the 5E’s process and were taught how to plan a unit of science by
following that process by backwards planning. We also were shown how to navigate our way
through a Primary Connections Unit plan and how to make the most of the available
interactive resources on the Primary connections website.

We actively participated in investigations and fair testing and were given valuable tools for
facilitating these scientific literacies in the classroom. Their aim was to build our confidence
in teaching a unit of science and the course definitely helped build that confidence.

We were given a resource book with templates in it, for use in the classroom. We participated
as students in lesson activities that we would use in our classroom practice.
In conclusion it was a lot of valuable information in the short period of two days. Well run and
very well facilitated. I am glad I participated.

Philippou, Helen - phihy001 | 09903745R

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