Podcasts for A level biologists

On Friday I discussed the plans for my Year 12 Biologists, and said I would send them a list of good Biology reads. One students pipes up that he would prefer podcasts, and several others seemed excited at the prospect. So, I have listened to most the BBC Sounds App, ( The BBC is glorious, but needs to ditch the "Sounds APP" because I just don't get it. ) and come up with some radio shows that will help set the Biology in context, demonstrate the application of the Biology, and hopefully inspire some University choices. 
I have purposefully not selected the large Coronavirus programming, except for the excellent show Inside Science, which is excellent and is also varied. I am not trying to cover the curriculum but providing them a chance to relax, practice listening and enjoy their own Biological knowledge. So here are my starters for 10...

BBC Inside Science https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b036f7w2

Anatomy and physiology

Systems and organs are well broken down in this series  https://aca.st/647d82 

Memory and Alzeihmers https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0359kvy

Genetics

Naming genes https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b00lyfy1

The age of the Genome https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ssmcp

CRISPR https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bcrcrx

Ecology and Evolution

A brief Natural History  https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b01pw1nr

The Cuckoo https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b0100216

Aping evolution https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nk0wz

A guide to Farmland birds (others are available) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0137xqs

 

Self Assessment- What value does it have in Enquiry based learning?

I'll start by saying I am not a fan of the Assessing Pupil Progress (APP) chart, I feel it gives tasks to do rather than describe the thinking behind how to do the task. Presented here is a Science example although, I think this will be true in all subject areas. I am sure the interesting and useful learning points contained within the APP are not the completion of these task but the thinking necessary to be able to do these independently. So for my subject how to think like a scientist is more important than being able to draw a line graph.
So, I have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to plot the thinking behind key scientific skills. Although these examples are subject specific I would hazard a guess that all subjects will be able to plot out the developmental thinking that a student needs to take to make progress within these skills. I have broken these down into 24 seperate thinking skills. Some of these are sub divisions of different kinds of thinking. For example Logical thinking has three parts:- Using data to support theories, deriving ideas from other ideas and linking cause and effect. Each one has been placed into a level ladder so that students have some form of pathway to follow.This has been a time consuming task, I have read a ridiculous amount of academic texts trying to find developmental hierachies. I am not saying what I done is accurate, but, they have given a clear focus to my teaching and have also broken down the skills into steps, so that clear targets can be given. I have also correlated these across the APP so that they have a concrete link to the levels ladders.

This example show with * where the criteria matches the APP, with strand 5.

Students have recently completed a Scientific enquiry, designed around some of these( 8 of the
24 skills). This was an open ended Science Enquiry, requiring students to do a lot of thinking for themselves or at least make some decisions after being guidded through the thinking.At the end of this task they self assessed with a teacher discussion and guidance to grade their work/thinking during the enquiry. Many were able to justify the levels they awarded themselves.

This is what they tell me about

1. How accurate are they at levelling their own work?

2. Is there any difference between ability groups in this?

The following based upon a random sample of 38 students work, producing 200 self assessed levels over 8 of the APP style criteria.

How the data works. Each SAT level is divided into 3 parts ( for example 5c, 5b 5a leading to 6c,6b,6a). So a score of 3 is one complete SAT level. All levels are compared against end of year reported teacher derived SAT levels.

Despite students only awarding themselves the correct SAT level ( level 5, 6 etc) 26% of the time the students were overall fairly close to their reported SAT levels. From the 200 levels derived by this method 37% were the same as the teacher levels. They underestimated them by a factor of 2.02, meaning that they were around 2 division of a SAT level, for example they said a 5c and the reported level was 5a.(this would be a scoreof 2, as would a 5a and a 6b).The spread of the student self assessed levels is 2.5 so that all students are on average within one level of their reported level, backing up the previous measure. So, it is okay to trust the data produced by students.

This underestimation is not a concern and I am tempted to consider it of value, suggesting that the students have thought about where they have rated themselves. Pleasingly it also suggests the levels within the ladders are of some accuracy ,contain real challenge for the students and in some way are a rigorous form of assessment. Consider a set of data that completely matched their teacher assessed levels, would you firstly trust it? I wouldn't. It would also be impossible to identify areas to work upon to improve.

Inevitably some of the Skills identified will be more difficult to do than others, especially when the students have never previously been asked to think like them. So, I think the data asks a lot of useful questions about how to go about developing these skills and their genuine importance in the learning of Science. I am hopeful that these level ladders will help, as students have identified themselves across the board, on each of the 8 skills in this sample.

A few interesting pointers have also come to light when looking at how the consistency of the students across the ability range. Although the same size is slight homogenous, and therefore prone to skewing effects, there is some genuine food for thought.

Firstly that the level 5 students correctly identify their SAT level 40% of the time and the levels 3 and 4 students 33%. Compared to only 21% of the level 6 students. ( No difference was seen with the top end level 6 compared to the low end). Why is this? Could it be due to the more able students being more reflective about their learning? Could it be down to these students understanding the criteria better? The data suggest yes, the students who most undersestimate their grade is the level 6 students, by a factor of 2.65, gladly still within one level. The level 5 students underestimate by a around half a level (1.8) while the level 3 and 4 overestimate their ability by a small amount (0.33) or for example from 3a to 4c. Another possible explanation is that this form of assessment may actually be testing genuine student ability. Its test what a student can do not what they can remember or have the ability to write down. I hope so. Oh dear I'm beginning to defend the APP!

The big thing I'll take from this is that the first draft of my version of the Science APP is just that a draft. Some of it will need rewriting to make it more accessible for lower ability students and clearer in making it explicit between the levels. But, it does seem to be close and the evidence suggests its a useful thing to have in the classroom.

I have fourteen of them written and in need of refining, four crudely done and six that have not been started! If anyone is interested in giving me a hand let me know!

This Years Teacher Record Sheet

Last year I was determined to make the most of the informal observations that I would make as a matter of course during teaching. I thought long and hard about what I would see in my class, part of this was to catch the students doing something right. So last year I redrafted this four times to get it right.

So, it is therefore obvious that I have started a fresh this year. Although I have definitely learned something. I am hopeful that this years model, is more focused on the learning my students are doing and will inform the next teaching/ learning step easily. This will be shared with my students at the very start of the year. Every student will have one that I will fill in during lessons and when I look at their work.

The first section is all about improving on task behaviour, students work better if they think you are watching them, hence my insistence in not solely recording if homework is completed, but class written work, learning tasks such as a card sort and their involvement in discussions. The final one is so important to record as all students should be involved in this, for many reasons some students will struggle to complete all written tasks. I also want to add value on task discussions.

The second section is all about the quality of their learning, and, again this will completed during and after lessons. It is based around my own interpretation of Biggs Solo Taxonomy. It is one of my key focuses of my learning agenda this year, so it should be helpful to centralise this. I must stress that this is not just for written work and sitting in and listening to conversations will be just as valid.

The next section is a relic from last year, which is the ANECDOTES section, a hugely powerful classroom management tool. Poor learning behaviours being recorded and then recited back to students changes behaviour. Take for example " This is the third time this half term that you have not had a pen, you did not have one on the 12th and 19th of June!" Students very quickly get embarrassed into doing something different. More importantly the recording of good learning behaviours turns out to be a reward in itself, all with the added benefit of basically writing your reports as you go along. The anecdotes will include significant events and notes taken form random classroom scans.

I have added my schools Five R'S of good learning characteristics. These being Reasoning, Reflectiveness, Responsible, Resourceful, and Resilience. To reflect upon afterwards, possibly through discussion with the students. I intend to classify them positive or negative for each characteristic. The motivation for this is that this makes up a big part of our student monitoring and reporting system. So I want at least some evidence to reflect upon rather than just a gut feeling.

Then finally comes the assessment section, the things I would normally record in my record book, exam scores and grades for individual tasks but also a grade based upon topic specific observations made per topic. (More on this too follow.) The other novelty included is a record of science specific thinking skills which I am currently developing in place of the new APP's.

So there you have it draft one of this years record keeping, hopefully learning focused, dialogue fueling, and evidenced based decision guiding. Any comments on improvements are gratefully accepted. I'm sure draft two is just around the corner.

Abbie is never interested.

Having returned home after (what appeared to be) a great lesson with 8S2a on a Friday afternoon, I have decided to see exactly how successful I have been, if indeed I have. My gut feeling about this is that the students had done well, engaging in quite technically and cognitively difficult conversations; planning and setting up a scientific experiment.

They have been testing the 5 second rule, that food dropped on the floor is safe to eat if picked up within 5 seconds. The students have been challenged to think like scientists as I decided this was the day to try out the scientific thinking skills I have been developing over the course of this year. the specific one for today were: Clarity, Significance, Fairness and Relevance.


After an hour discussing, planning redrafting the students were tired but really getting into this kind of thinking. On return from a welcome lunch break the students set of to make decisions about the exact method they would use, and then set it up. The thing that struck me was the quality of they were having between themselves and with me were fantastically detailed and show remarkable reflection from the students.

At the end of the session I directed them to a wallwisher site, to answer the question "how have you thought like a scientist?" I was hoping to extract the kind of language I had introduced them to earlier, and from this be able to reflect upon their successes and then decide the next steps. They had around about 5 minutes to do this. A simple quick model of efficient assessment for learning if I do say so myself! Let see if it works and does it back up my gut feeling. I am getting quite into evidence based teaching at the moment. I am writing as I analyse so this could turn out to be a damp squid of a post. The important thing for me is that the process is making me thinking about what my students said or did.


So the outcomes for this and the next lesson are:-

And here are their end of lesson reflections

So here goes....

The first thing I notice is that the word bacteria is used frequently, which indicates that outcome A is sorting it self out. I was very conscious in planning this lesson that the content part, as small and would receive no directed teaching activities, as students should begin to pick these up through the activity. It seems that the research is right. I can safely assume that I will not need to do anything extra about this outcome. The reflective question asked is intentionally not content based, but still this learning comes to the surface.

Outcome B is also represent in this brief review, with "Wolfy" referring directly to their growth, and Liam describing bacteria multiplying. I'm loving this so far. Even the conceptual knowledge, albeit a simple one,is being learned with a targeted activity.

The numerous mention of the five second rule is suggesting that the link between bacteria and risk to health is being made. Kaylie and Brandon also start developing this a little talking about even clean surfaces have bacteria on them. Despite this, I think this will be a valid place to start next lesson with a question like " Does the Five section rule keep you safe?" just to make the link explicit to all and it will lead to a discussion about evidence, which is where I want the lesson to head next.

One thing is beginning to emerge, and that is the confidence and the enjoyment the students have had from their learning. This is not an outcome but does suggest that learning has taken place. Despite me phrasing the review question as "How have you thought like a scientist?" a large number of students have started their comment with I have learned. Abbie even goes as far as "I was very interested". Abbie is never interested. Emily is proud and "Baxter" is obviously pleased with the praise I gave "so na na na na :)" She even knows what she was praised for.


I am also able to identify the students who have just focused on the content and not mentioned the process. So, when the class begins the end of activity debrief I will focus on these students. I will also have a chat with max to get him to explain his comment, I'm not sure what he means and I'm not sure he does either.


The area that I'm not sure these brief comments will give me is the procedural knowledge and the meta cognitive outcomes. Are they using the scientific thinking language introduced today. Tom's comment about how to test for bacteria, although not clear hints that the idea of a scientific test has come through. A few students comment upon their thinking one even describes it as deep (and I would agree with her, a marvelous student) and one other describes creating a fair test. I think there is a some awareness of their thinking.



"Baxter" has genuinely surprised me with her comments, normally a distracted and distracting student she shows a great understanding of the concepts in the lesson. Impressively she identifies the need to collect evidence to the question being ask.This means that she is at least aware of the need for clear questions and relevant data. She has picked up on two of the big themes in the lesson. This being outcomes F and G. This is pleasing, now does anyone else. Lewis talks about fare (sic) test and Clare talks about "developing" question. We did draft the questions and then I model my thinking on deciding which was a good one. The process is apparent. "JoRDAn" seems to be suggesting to be looking for proof, so this may indicate he is aware of the need to produce evidence again outcome G.



This is obviously a tricky decision, I think some students have grasped these concepts where others have missed the boat. This is a little at odds with some of the conversationa with the students. This is the great thing about formally reflecting upon lessons, I'm trawling my brain to look for evidence that my students were successful. "JoRDAn" was very perceptive about fair tests and identifying problems this does not come across in his comment. Putting it all in perspective, the fact that this is the students first introduction to the new thinking language and the reflection only took 5 minutes today. The signs are positive some students clearly understand. So my next step will be to recap the language and to keep modelling it, the final task in this enquiry is for the students to self assess themselves. I will introduce this material earlier in the lesson than I originally planned.


So, I've learned a lot about my students again not by marking books but by considering in detail the evidence the students presented. I have students to target for help, to praise. I have a lesson starter that is needed by the students, and have been able to amend my next lesson plan to support my students. A worthwhile hour spent not marking books.