Science
Policy
1 Aims and objectives
1.1
Science teaches an understanding of natural phenomena. It aims to stimulate a
child’s curiosity in finding out why things happen in the way they do. It
teaches methods of enquiry and investigation to stimulate creative thought.
Children learn to ask scientific questions and begin to appreciate the way
science will affect their future on a personal, national, and global level.
. 1.2 The aims of science are to enable
children to:
•
ask and answer scientific questions;
•
plan and carry out scientific investigations, using equipment, including
computers, correctly;
•
know and understand the life processes of living things;
•
know and understand the physical processes of materials, electricity, light,
sound and natural forces;
•
know about the nature of the solar system, including the earth;
•
evaluate evidence and present their conclusions clearly and accurately.
2
Teaching and learning style
2.1 We use a variety of teaching and learning
styles in science lessons. Our principal aim is to develop children’s
knowledge, skills, and understanding. Sometimes we do this through whole-class
teaching, while at other times we engage the children in an enquiry-based
research activity. We encourage the children to ask, as well as answer,
scientific questions. They have the opportunity to use a variety of data, such
as statistics, graphs, pictures, and photographs. They use ICT in science
lessons where it enhances their learning. They take part in role-play and
discussions and they present reports to the rest of the class. They engage in a
wide variety of problem-solving activities. Wherever possible, we involve the
pupils in ‘real’ scientific activities, for example, researching a local
environmental problem or carrying out a practical experiment and analysing the
results.
2.2 We recognise that there are children of
widely different scientific abilities in all classes and we ensure that we
provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the
challenge of the task to the ability of the child. We achieve this in a variety
of ways by:
•
setting common tasks which are open-ended and can have a variety of responses;
•setting
tasks of increasing difficulty (we do not expect all children to complete all
tasks)
•
grouping children by ability in the room and setting different tasks for each
ability group;
•
providing resources of different complexity, matched to the ability of the
child;
•
using classroom assistants to support the work of individual children or groups
of children.
3
Science curriculum planning
3.1 The school uses the national scheme of work
for science as the basis of its curriculum planning. The national scheme has
been adapted to the local circumstances of the school in that we make use of
the local environment in our fieldwork and we choose a locality where the
physical environment differs from that which predominates in our immediate
surroundings.
3.2 We carry out our
curriculum planning in science in three phases (long-term, medium- term and
short-term). The long-term plan maps the scientific topics studied in each term
during the key stage. The science subject leader works this out in conjunction
with teaching colleagues in each year group. In some cases we combine the
scientific study with work in other subject areas, especially at Key Stage 1;
at other times the children study science as a discrete subject.
3.3 Our medium-term
plans, which we have based on the national scheme of work in science, give
details of each unit of work for each term. The science subject leader keeps
and reviews these plans. As we have some mixed-age classes, we do our
medium-term planning on a two-year rotation cycle. In this way we ensure
complete coverage of the National Curriculum without repeating topics.
3.4 The class
teacher is responsible for writing the daily lesson plans for each lesson
(short-term plans). These plans list the specific learning objectives of each
lesson. The class teacher keeps these individual plans, and s/he and the
science subject leader often discuss them on an informal basis.
3.5 We have planned
the topics in science so that they build upon prior learning. We ensure that
there are opportunities for children of all abilities to develop their skills
and knowledge in each unit and we also build progression into the science
scheme of work, so that the children are increasingly challenged as they move
up through the school.
4 Foundation Stage
4.1 We teach science in reception classes as an
integral part of the topic work covered
during the year. As the reception class is part of the Foundation Stage
of the National Curriculum, we relate
the scientific aspects of the children’s work to the objectives set out in the Early Learning Goals (ELGs) which
underpin the curriculum planning for
children aged three to five. Science makes a significant contribution to
the objective in the ELGs of developing
a child’s knowledge and understanding of the world, e.g. through investigating what floats and what
sinks when placed in water.
5. Science as an Inter-disciplinary approach:
5.1 English
Science
contributes significantly to the teaching of English in our school by actively
promoting the skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening. Some of the
texts that the children study in the
Literacy Hour are of a scientific nature. The children develop oral skills in science lessons through
discussions (for example of the environment)
and through recounting their observations of scientific experiments.
They develop their writing skills
through writing reports and projects and by recording information.
5.2 Mathematics
Science
contributes to the teaching of mathematics in a number of ways. The children use
weights and measures and learn to use and apply number. Through working on
investigations they learn to estimate and predict. They develop the skills of
accurate observation and recording of events. They use numbers in many of their
answers and conclusions.
5.3
Information and communication technology (ICT)
Children
use ICT in science lessons where appropriate. They use it to support their work
in science by learning how to find, select, and analyse information on the
Internet and on CD-ROMs. Children use ICT to record, present and interpret data
and to review, modify and evaluate their work and improve its presentation.
They also use e-mail to communicate their mathematical findings with other
children in other schools and countries.
5.4
Personal, social and health education (PSHE) and citizenship
Science
makes a significant contribution to the teaching of personal, social and health
education. This is mainly in two areas. Firstly, the subject matter lends
itself to raising matters of citizenship and social welfare. For example,
children study the way people recycle material and how environments are changed
for better or worse. Secondly, children benefit from the nature of the subject
in that it gives them opportunities to take part in debates and discussions.
They organize campaigns on matters of concern to them, such as helping the poor
or homeless. Science promotes the concept of positive citizenship.
5.5
Spiritual, moral, social and cultural development
Science
teaching offers children many opportunities to examine some of the fundamental
questions in life, for example, the evolution of living things and how the
world was created. Through many of the amazing processes that affect living
things, children develop a sense of awe and wonder regarding the nature of our
world.
Science
raises many social and moral questions. Through the teaching of science,children
have the opportunity to discuss, for example, the effects of smoking and the
moral questions involved in this issue. We give them the chance to reflect on
the way people care for the planet and how science can contribute to the way we
manage the earth’s resources. Science teaches children about the reasons why
people are different and, by developing the children’s knowledge and understanding
of physical and
environmental
factors, it promotes respect for other people.
6
Teaching science to children with special educational needs
6.1
At our school we teach science to all children, whatever their ability. Science
forms part of the school curriculum policy to provide a broad and balanced
education to all children. Through our science teaching we provide learning
opportunities that enable all pupils to make progress. We do this by setting
suitable learning challenges and responding to each child’s different needs.
Assessment against the National Curriculum allows us to consider each child’s
attainment and progress against expected levels.
6.2 When progress falls significantly outside
the expected range, the child may have special educational needs. Our
assessment process looks at a range of factors – classroom organisation,
teaching materials, teaching style, differentiation – so that we can take some
additional or different action to enable the child to learn more effectively.
This ensures that our teaching is matched to the child’s needs.
6.3 Intervention through School Action and
School Action Plus will lead to the creation of an Individual Education Plan
(IEP) for children with special educational needs. The IEP may include, as
appropriate, specific targets relating to science.
6.4 We enable pupils to have access to the
full range of activities involved in learning science. Where children are to
participate in activities outside the classroom, for example, a trip to a
science museum, we carry out a risk assessment prior to the activity, to ensure
that the activity is safe and appropriate for all pupils.
7 Assessment and recording
7.1
We assess children’s work in science by making informal judgements as we
observe them during lessons. On completion of a piece of work, the teacher
marks the work and comments as necessary. At the end of a unit of work s/he
makes a summary judgement about the work of each pupil in relation to the
National Curriculum level of attainment. The teacher records the attainment
grades in a mark book. We use these grades as the basis for assessing the
progress of each child and we pass this information on to the next teacher at
the end of the year.
7.2 Children take the national tests in
science at the end of Key Stage 2.
Teachers
make an assessment of the children’s work in science at the end of Key Stage 1.
We report the results of these tests to parents
along with the teacher assessments which we make whilst observing the work of
children throughout the year. We use practice science tests in Key Stage 2 to
assess children’s progress on an annual basis.
7.3 The science subject leader keeps samples
of children’s work in a portfolio and uses these to demonstrate what the
expected level of achievement is in science for each age group in the school.
8 Resources
8.1
We have sufficient resources for all science teaching units in the school. We keep
these in a central store where there is a box of equipment for each unit of
work. There is also a collection of science equipment which the children use to
gather weather data. The library contains a good supply of science topic books
and computer software to support children’s individual research.
9. Teaching Science to Gifted and
Talented children.
9.1
Gifted and Talented children are identified as those children who have good
subject knowledge or scientific vocabulary beyond their years. In the upper
juniors it will be an expectation that they will be able to plan an
investigation independently.
9.2 Gifted and Talented children will be
provided with a differentiated science curriculum and/or extended tasks in
order for them to reach their full potential.
10 Monitoring and review
10.1 It is the responsibility of the science
subject leader to monitor the standards of children’s work and the quality of
teaching in science. The science subject leader is also responsible for
supporting colleagues in the teaching of science, for being informed about
current developments in the subject and for providing a strategic lead and
direction for the subject in the school. The science subject leader gives the
headteacher an annual summary report in which s/he evaluates strengths and
weaknesses in the subject and indicates areas for further improvement. The science
subject leader has specially-allocated time for fulfilling the vital task of
reviewing samples of children’s work and visiting classes to observe teaching
in the subject.
Behavioral Objectives and How to Write Them
"Instruction is effective to
the degree that it succeeds in changing students in desired directions and not
in undesired directions."
Robert F. Mager
Robert F. Mager
Special note: In educational
psychology we define learning as a "change in behavior." This is a
little confusing but if a student could not answer a particular question on a
pretest, then received instruction, and then answered the question correctly on
a posttest, a change in behavior is illustrated and learning is considered to
have occurred. Objectives specify the learning or expected behavior so hence
the term behavioral objective. Other names used for behavioral objectives
include:
- Learning Objectives
- Outcomes
- Enabling Objectives
- Terminal Objectives
- Educational Objectives
- Curriculum Objectives
- Performance Objectives
- Operational Objectives
- Instructional Objectives
- Intents
- Aims
- Competencies
- Guide for the teacher relative to the design of
instruction
- Guide for the teacher for evaluation/test design (e.g.
written tests, OSCEs, etc)
- Guide for the learner relative to learning focus
- Guide for the learner relative to self assessment
- Statements of objectives tell others what we value.
- Causes careful thinking about what is to be
accomplished through instruction.
- Helps relationship between teacher and learner because
with explicit objectives the instructor is viewed less in an adversarial
role because students are not forced to guess what is to be learned.
- Enhances possibility to create focused independent
learning materials.
- Makes teaching more directed and organized.
- Communicates to colleagues what you are teaching thus
enhancing collaboration and teamwork with colleagues.
- Helps facilitate those situations in which we want
students to demonstrate competency (The objectives can be specified in
such as way as to specify competency.)
- Aids in program evaluation
- Forces teacher to think carefully about what is
important
- Helps avoid unnecessary repetitions in teaching
- Helps bridge the gap between vague, but relevant, and
important, institutional goals and actual instruction
- Provides visibility and accountability of decisions
made by teachers and learners.
- Provides models for the creation of objectives by
students
- Helps students make decisions regarding prioritizing
- Provides feedback to learners as objectives are
accomplished.
Cognitive
Domain
- Refers to intellectual learning and problem solving
- Cognitive levels of learning include: knowledge,
comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation
Affective
Domain
- Refers to the emotions and value system of a person
- Affective levels of learning include: receiving,
responding, valuing, organizing, and characterizing by a value
Psychomotor Domain
- Refers to physical movement characteristics and motor
skill capabilities that involve behaviors requiring certain levels of
physical dexterity and coordination
- These skills are developed through repetitive practice
and measured in terms of speed, precision, distance, procedures, or
execution techniques. Psychomotor levels include: perception, set, guided
response, mechanism, complex overt response, adaptation, and origination.
Tyler
Model
- The objectives or statement of the knowledge,
attitudes, and skills which students ought to have by the end of the
course
- The instructional activities or learning experiences
which teaching faculty provide to help students achieve those objectives
- The evaluation or testing activities which attempt to
measure knowledge, attitudes, and skills
"Identifying learning
objectives sharpens the focus of learning for the students as they progress
through their third year and it gives the clerkship directors distinct learning
agendas. Further, it allows the clerkship directors to assess the overall
achievement of the learning objectives they have identified as vital."
Lawrence S, Simpson D, Rehm J
"Curriculum objectives can be designed to match the way physicians encounter problems and preserve a generalist's perspective in patient care, yet allow appropriate emphasis of core content."
Ainsworth, M
Lawrence S, Simpson D, Rehm J
"Curriculum objectives can be designed to match the way physicians encounter problems and preserve a generalist's perspective in patient care, yet allow appropriate emphasis of core content."
Ainsworth, M
General
The learner will be able to: orally present a new patient's case
Specific
The learner will be able to: orally present a new patient's case in a logical manner,
chronologically developing the present illness, summarizing the pertinent
positive and negative findings as well as the differential diagnosis and plans
for further testing and treatment.
General
The learner will be able to: prepare appropriate new patient workups
Specific
The learner will be able to: prepare legible, comprehensive, and focused new patient
workups that include the following features:
- Present illness organized chronologically, without
repetition, omission, or extraneous information.
- A comprehensive physical examination with detail pertinent
to the patient's problem.
- A succinct and, where appropriate, unified list of all
problems identified in the history and physical examination.
- A differential diagnosis for each problem (appropriate
to level of training)
- A diagnosis/treatment plan for each problem
(appropriate to level of training)
General
The learner will be able to: retrieve medical information using the computer.
Specific
The learner will be able to: Retrieve information, demonstrating the ability to
- Perform database searches using logical (Boolean)
operators, in a manner that reflects understanding of medical language,
terminology, and the relationship among medical terms and concepts;
- Refine search strategies to improve relevance and
completeness of retrieved items;
- Use of standard bibliographic application to download
citations from a search and organize them into a personal database; and
- Identify and acquire full-text electronic documents
available from the www.
General
The learner will be able to: properly examine a stool specimen for the presence of ova
and parasites.
Specific
The learner will be able to: take stool specimens infected with 1 of 10 possible ova and
parasites and correctly identify them.
Even
More Specific
The student will be able to: take stool specimens infected with 1 of 10 possible
parasites, process it according to standard procedures, and identify under a
microscope examples of ova and of parasites (Parasites must be identified by
scientific name.)
Most books that provide instruction
on the writing of behavioral objectives state that an objective needs to have
three components as follows:
- A measurable verb (also known as performance)
- The important conditions (if any) under which the
performance is to occur and
- The criterion of acceptable performance
It is important to say that many
objectives are written in a manner in which the important conditions and
criterion are implicit. If they really are implicit the argument can be made
that they may not be necessary. For example, an objective might be stated as
follows.
The student will be able to name the
five stages of mitosis.
There would be no point in stating
the objective as follows just to meet the requirements of it having a
criterion.
The student will correctly
(criterion) name the five stages of mitosis within 30 seconds (criterion).
On the other hand, there may be
objectives that need to have the conditions and/or criterion specified. For
example, a teacher might begin the process of writing an objective with a
general statement such as:
The learner will be able to prepare
appropriate new patient workups.
He/she then might decide that this
objective is too vague or general to be instructional to the student and to
also let others who teach the student know what is expected. Therefore, in an
effort to improve the objective the teacher might add criteria as exemplified
below.
The learner will be able to prepare
legible, comprehensive, and focused new patient workups that include the
following features:
- Present illness organized chronologically, without
repetition, omission, or extraneous information.
- A comprehensive physical examination with detail
pertinent to the patient's problem.
- A succinct and, where appropriate, unified list of all
problems identified in the history and physical examination.
- A differential diagnosis for each problem (appropriate
to level of training)
- A diagnosis/treatment plan for each problem
(appropriate to level of training)
One could argue that the teacher
could add some time frame criterion such as - 1 hour - but such a time frame
might be meaningless and not necessary. Please note that in this objective the
condition is not stated and may be unnecessary.
Please note that if you think of the
purpose of the objective as a statement that serves the purpose of guiding
planning, guiding teaching, guiding learning, and guiding evaluation the need
to state or not to state the condition and the criterion will probably be clear
to you.
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