Helping students practice academic writing :Connecting "Cause" and "Effect"

I have once again become very interested in student literacy. Especially in how it can deepen student thinking and develop their understanding of the content through deliberate practice. Science teachers (at least this one does) get very fustrated with students answer "it gets faster". What gets faster? Why does it get faster? So, for me, the ability to connect cause and effect either the through connectives or verbs is a key strategy for students to practice.

This worksheet is designed to firstly give the rules and some explained examples. The examples show how changing the position of the cause and effect and/or the  "connective" can change the emphasis from being placed on the cause to being focused upon the effect. Simply put whatever is found at the end of the senetnce will have the emphasis; placing the cause before the effect places the emphasis on the effect; and vice versa.  The student response "it gets faster" is fine in short questions but will very quickly become meaningless whem explaning ideas that have multiple steps or factors in play. The examples are also used to highlight the need to locate the action, another key skill in (more complex) scientific explanations. Students are asked to label the Cause, Effect and COnnective to encourage a little metacognition on the structure of sentences.

The worksheet is designed to increase the cognitive load throughout, allowing students to embed this skill. The first task merely asks the students to select an appropriate connective. It also sets up more examples students can refer to, by having this as such a clozed exercise students get to interact with more complex scientific examples.

The second task again reduces cognitive load by asking students consider where the emphasis is. Is this a sentence that highlights the casue or the effect taking place. Again this task helps provide a range of examples, and labouring the content. It is hoped that this activity will encourage student to metacognitively consider how they write.

The third task is bigger step up asking students to rewrite the sentences to change their emphasis. The support that makes this leap of faith manageable is that all the information they need is in the example they are working on and in the previous tasks.

Finally students have a few  questions to answer. To complete this they need to infer what the emphasis needs to be, and then structure an answer. Although the questions have novel situations, they content is the same as in previous tasks so that students can focus on writing this well. The questions increase in difficulty with questions 1 and 2 are simple and straightforward to answer as either the cause or effect is given, while questions 3 and 4 students will need to workout what will happen and then explain it. The examples in Task 1, which uses the language of resultant force should support them in completing this

The following are useful generic links, with examples:
https://www.open.edu/openlearn/ocw/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=19204&section=5

https://www.learninghub.ac.nz/cause-and-effect-writing-structures/

If you would like a copy please click here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Iky47JvOhUfCb31bC-WnTmVphMJS4S8whEEqhxX_5WE/edit

What can teachers do to tackle student misconceptions? An example.

Posner and Strike (1992) suggest that the following conditions must be met if students are to correct their misconceptions (or to have them corrected):

• There must be some dissatisfaction with the student’s current understanding. Students are unlikely to be aware of these, and it therefore falls to us to make them purposefully aware of the ones they hold. This can be difficult, as theories” work for them perfectly well in their everyday lives, and we have to tutor students to become critical of their own thinking.
• The new conception must be intelligible or understandable to learners. This is where our skill in representing ideas specifically tailored to the learning needs of the students in front of us comes to the fore. Our assessment practices need to allow the students (and teachers) to see that they are ‘getting it’.
• The new conception must appear initially plausible; it must seem to be a better possible answer than the misconception. 
• Keeping our instruction ‘real’, rooted in what is known (i.e. their prior knowledge), making connections clear and using concrete examples all help students to alter their understanding of things.
• Finally, the new conception should suggest the possibility being fruitful or useful to them as learners. We can do this by helping students transfer their new understanding and applying it to new examples.

I would humbly add that the role of planned multiple exposures to the correct conception is also essential. Undermining hard held believes is going to take time to shift. 

Strategy 1: Encouaging dissatisfaction.

These tasks are designed to make students ware of the misconception, in a way the makes it absolutely clear that the student did not know that they did not know. For this to happen the alternate answers must at least seem plausible and contain the same kind of content as the correct answer.
The following example, fails to do this with only one plausible answer as John Fashanu, Noel Edmonds and Skeletor did not ride the Tour de France until the 1980's. That was a joke by the way, I point out this not as way of being facetious but as a way of emphasising that it is quite easy to accidently teach a misconception. 

For more on the design of multiple choice question I highly recommend this from Vanderbilt University

In this science example, students often think that the current comes from the battery, jumping out when the circuit is connected. In addition this misconception is linked to another where student believe the current is "used up".  So this dealing with this first will allow this idea to be transferred and applied to this situation. It is therefore going to be fruitful, and be part of a sequence of multiple exposures to the correct concept.

Note that only three options are given in this question , but importantly all answers are plausible.  So rather than sticking to a steadfast rule of  say "I will always give 5 options", the plausibility of the content takes precedence. 

When deliberately trying to exposure a misconception, I tend to do so with a whole class discussion. Using techniques that involves as many students as possible, for instance: asking for hands up fro each response, before asking a few students why they think what they do. Interestingly this year I had one student, almost instantly,  asking " is this about a metals delocalised electrons?" He knew the answer but was not confident about, so exposing it and reinforcing the correct answer can help those with and without significant prior knowledge on the content. If he had of been confident my tactic would have been to  defer my answer in an attempt to create a bit of ambiguity, to encourage dissatisfaction, and further thought. Normally stuidents think ( and they did even when this student spoke up) that the current comes from the battery. I try to avoid telling them that they are wrong, as I wan them to doubt it themselves first. So ambigous responses such as "mmm interetsing" help do this. 

Although, I may use a similar or even the same question in a Pre Quiz to a module, when attempting to incite some dissatisfaction with the student’s current understanding it is important that we focus on one concept at a time whenever possible. Clearly some misconceptions will have complex and interconnected reasosn so this is is not always possible. 

Strategy 2: A plausible and intelligible alternative

The next slide has my follow up to this discussion, I plan to not give the definitive answer until after the students have discussed the next slide. This slide is intended to make clear in the simplest possible terms what the correct idea is. In this case that the electrons that form the current are already present within the components of the circuit, and that on completion the battery provides a 'push' to make these charges flow. The visual shows this, and the open switch, allows for discussion of what the battery does. 

I often ask prompting questions, more or a less in this order:

1. What are the blue circles representing? 
2. What charge do they have?
3. Are they "flowing" or moving in this image? How do you know? 
4. What if the switch was closed, what would then happen? 
5. What do you notice about the amount of current before and after the component? 

This section of the lesson of the lesson attempts to do to things. Firstly have the students acknowledge that their origional think was indeed a misconception and, secondly,  present them with plausible and intelligible. Many students "get it" once they see the image and begin to articulate why they are wrong. 

I often go back to the origional question and ask who wants to change their mind. This is an importamt classroom cultural moment as praising this encourages thinking in what Doug Lemov would describe as a "culture of error". 

This image is a screen shot from the wonderful phet simulation. At this point the students are in now in need of a succinct and clear teacher summary of the correct answer, the simulation provides the perfect backdrop to this. 

Strategy 3: Realness.(Where possible)

In this lesson the students would then build a simple series circuit and measure the current at two points to show that this phenomena is real. This is also another exposure to this idea.

Strategy 4 Multiple exposure (within the lesson).

The lesson has a review based upon another model of current, comparing the bike chain to current and circuits. 

Students very quickly work out through discussion that the pedals represent the battery, the back wheel would be the component and the chain the wires. With minimal prompting they start to associate the links associate the links with the charge. following this further insights into the behaviour of current become clear. The links are evenly spaced; they dont move until they are pushed; they do not jump around the chainring (battery) if there is no pushing. This concrete example ( and therefore more plausible) helps students see their new knowledge as fruitful and leading to new understanding. 

Strategy 5: Multiple exposures (across lessons). 

As this topic develops other concepts must be added such as potential difference and resistance. These are opportunities to build on what hopefully will have become prior knowledge. A good example from future lessons is this classic teaching image. In the image the current is labelled as Amp and needs the push from the Potential difference (volt) to get moving. 

Strategy 6: Feedback.

Students are asked to describe in writing the relationship between the current, potential difference and resistance that is encaspsulated within the picture. They are asked to use the leave a line between each one that they write.  This provides a space where they can reflect on what they have written correct wrong ideas and add missing ones in the light of a model example; class discussion; teacher prompts; or teacher written feedback. 

A copy of the lesson resources are available here 

Notes on Millar 2005 "Teaching About Energy"

This is what proper Pedagogical Content Knowledge looks like. It is absolute where it can be and heralds warnings where it can only be vague. Much of the debate in the article is not about rival researchers opinions but is about the balance between serving the needs of the student and the needs of the content.

I have chosen to re-read this as I am in the throws of re-writing our Scheme of Work for KS3 on this. As I roughed out the content , and began to consider the misconceptions it was necessary for me to get back to the basics. What do we know about the teaching of this subject? I have started to compile the highlights so that the rest of my department can quickly see why (and how) decisions were made in the creation of this part of the curriculum. Energy is one of the topics that all science teachers find awkward. Especially since the content is has changed: not as the result of  what Energy is, but as a result of how it should be taught. So as a result textbooks and resources have traditionally dealt with "forms or types of energy" i.e. it is a type of "stuff" , which on the whole is now frowned upon (Yes the vague "on the whole" is intended as there are moments where describing a “quasi material substance” is a "good enough model") .  This is what this article addressees, and it is therefore a very good read.
Find it here: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/129328/1/2005_Millar_Teaching_about_energy.pdf

My notes are as yet unfinished, but can be found on the slides below:





For a muchmore thorough treaty of teaching Energy Neil Atkin does a fantastic job here: https://www.neilatkin.com/2016/06/09/teaching-energy-new-approach/

Trawling for our PCK: A tool.

Planning lessons is so much more than just creating structures and frameworks. Good planning involves us employing our pedagogical content knowledge; it dances at the intersection of our knowledge of:

• Our subjects.
• How our subjects are learned: the common misconceptions, threshold concepts and difficult ideas.
• How students learn.
• How (or whether) specific teaching strategies work.

Consider the following PCK extraction device as a net to cast over the recesses of your mind to capture  the nuances of  how we need to be able to teach a concept/ idea well.  It is based upon the bloody marvelous tools developed by John Loughran in ‘Understanding and Developing Science Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge:  though it’s not just for science teachers, this tool has a finely tuned "Cod End" in which the tasty teaching morsels can be captured. A good net is always going to be a compromise between having holes  which are too large and everything can merely pass clean through, and one with too small holes that captures everything in the most cumbersome fashion possible. I believe this set of questions provides an useful balance for  thinking and planning. It’s not a checklist, and there’s no need to use each question: choose which prompts are most useful to you, your students and the content,  as although the example below gives many questions that appear helpful, it’s best targeted at areas where important, difficult concepts or misconceptions lie.

Aspect of PCK

What is the concept to be learned? (a single concept works best for clarity)

What should students know before learning this?

What might they already know?

What misconceptions might they have?

How will you find out about student ideas?

What will they find difficult? Why will it be difficult?

How can this be made easier to learn? Is this idea so important that you will deliberately manage the number exposures over coming lessons?

How will you represent this knowledge so that it is unambiguous to students? Analogies/models? Symbols? Language? Sequence? Diagrams?

Why is this knowledge important? Is this one of the main concepts of your subject?

Where is this knowledge going? How might it be used in future learning?

How will teaching and tasks/activities help students engage with this idea?  Why have you chosen these activities?

What caution do you need to exercise? How might you teach a misconception?

What else might influence student thinking on this? How might they know what they know?

Although the example given below is a science one many of my colleagues across all areas of the curriculum have found it a useful prompt to thinking about their teaching and a way of pulling ideas together before they plan lesson sequences

Aspect of PCK	Science example
What is the concept to be learned? ( a single concept works best for clarity)	How dissolving takes place. Year 7 beginner science.
What should students know before learning this?	Particle model will help students understand how this process takes place. Key terms: Solvent, solute and solution
What might they know?	Lots of examples of things that dissolve things and things that are dissolved.
What misconceptions might they have?	That the material being dissolved disappears when in solution. Students find the change of state of the material being dissolved confusing, often think of it as melting. This is exacerbated by
How will you find out about student ideas?	Ask them to predict the 100ml of water to 100 ml of ethanol. Do they know taht particles can be different sizes in different materials? How aware are they with the spaces between the particles?
What will they find difficult? Why will it be difficult?	Visualising what is happening to the particles do when in solution. Distinguishing the key terms due the similarity. When materials dissolve they, on the surface, look like they have disappeared.
How can this be made easier to learn? Is this idea so important to manage the number exposures over coming lessons?	Rice and Pea model will help visualisation. Multiple exposures over several weeks to the terminology. Work from concrete (examples) to the abstract (particle model) Will have a venn diagram activity (on stand by for this lesson) for when we study changes of state to distinguish between dissolving and melting
How will you represent this knowledge so that the it is unambiguous to students? Analogies/models? Symbols? Language? Sequence? Diagrams?	Rice and Pea model. Concept map of key terms. Discuss examples of solutes, solvents and solution before defining them.
Why is this knowledge important? Is this one of the main concepts of your subject?	2/3rds of the earths surface is a solution. Living things rely upon solutions for transport and function. Lots of complex science is based upon this.
Where is this knowledge going? How might it be used in future learning.	Students will soon learn about the factors that affect the rate of dissolving. Students will use this knowledge to separate the soluble and insoluble substances (i.e. is a property) Later students will study ideas about concentration, osmosis, rates of reaction.
How will teaching and tasks activities help student engage with this idea?  Why have you chose these activities?	Rice and pea makes what is happening accessible and a reference point. As does the simple summary solute+solvent=solution. A brief practical on dissolving ( and its subsequent write up) allows for plenty of application of new  language and ideas.
What caution do you need to exercise? How might you teach a misconception?	Care must be taken when talking about the rate of dissolving. Using terms such as “fastest” are misleading, but will be part of student every day language. Important for the knowledge to be applied in different situations so it does not become “inert”. Practicals will help with this.
What else might influence student student thinking on this? How might they know what they know?	Lots of TV adverts proclaim fast action, when they mean in a short period of time. Kitchen/cooking experiences maybe provide some useful start points. Reminding of the taste of sea water will remind them that solutes do not disappear.
What signs might students show that they are “getting it”? What questions might they ask that anticipate next steps?	Students refer to “the solute” as opposed to sugar/ salt, and “solvent” instead of a water Are all solvents liquids? Are only solids dissolved? So are some particles smaller than others? Are the solute particles fitting in between the “gaps” between the solvent particles?

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 Understanding and developing Science teachers Pedagogical Content Knowledge by John Loughran et al. 2006 Sense Publishers.

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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!

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.

Why share Pedagogical Purposes? Part 1

I have recently stumbled across a few ideas that I think make clear why I think the sharing of pedagogical purposes works. I will admit that I am no expert in these matters but I am interested in tuning them into useful classroom tools.

I have recently recieved a copy of John Hatties Visible Learning book, and like all good books poses far more questions than it gives answers. The first thing it made me think about was when a teachers pedagogical knowledge becomes most useful. So in no particular order

1. when a learner does not comprehend and discerning why



2. when a learner has made a mistake and discerning why.



3. when progress is being made by a student and discerning why



4. when to intervene with a student and when not



5. when to utilise alternative ways of teaching/ learning.



6. when dealing with alternative conceptions that students arrive with.

All useful thoughts but ones that require solid evidence from students to help make a decision. Soemtimes a gut feeling is just not enough.

The final one fits very well with the idea of the learning --> unlearning--> over learning sequence. Which appeals immensely, but, in which position do I leave my learners?

Again, the very idea of students arriving with preconceived ideas about their world, is another good reason to have activities that illicit these so that teacher and student can explore and change them. Ian Mitchell of the PEEL project corrected me once as I used the term misconceptions, insisting, correctly, that they are alternative conceptions as they work in their current state of learning. All the more reason to ensure students are involved fully in the process.

The next thing in John Hatties Visible Learning I stumbled into was Poppers three worlds of learning of surface, mental and ideas which led me to Blooms taxonomy. Now, I thought I knew this ( and the revised one with Anderson et al) but somehow the educational world I've existed in seems to have missed the Four Dimensions of Knowledge. Many ideas in similar areas but nothings as resplendent as this. Once,I saw these I got the feeling that these will prove much more use to me and my students in the years to come. They also indicated to me that the sharing of pedagogical purposes are a route worth pursuing.

These are given as

1. Factual knowledge



2. Conceptual Knowledge



3. Procedural knowledge



4. 
   
   Meta cognitive knowledge

What strikes me is the simplicity, balance and usefulness of these. They shout teach me. They are very much what should be taught as opposed to how we should teach. Part of the criticism in Visible Learning is that teachers/ education is too often aimed solely at Factual knowledge.
I've had a go at reviewing a science enquiry I have written and we are about to use with around 400 year 8 students in Science. This should produce some interesting data to reflect upon over the summer.

http://tinyurl.com/ngcr7p Available here for closer scrutiny.

Essentially the ABC's are learning outcomes (statements currently) which have been plotted across the Four dimensions and up through Blooms taxonomy. The words in italics are the science specific thinking skills I am trying to develop in the students . I will blog about these when I'm finished creating the assessment hierarchies that go with them.

Now what this review shows me is that in fact the lesson plan actually does TEACH in the four dimensions. I will admit that this was done by accident but is satisfying non the less(if it works!). But what really excites me is the only reason it does this is that each task the students will do has a distinct, planned and assessable procedure that goes with it. For example when searching for relevant factors that would influence the outcome, the lesson flows as follows. Everything in blue is a way of sharing the pedagogical purpose with students. It is clear the emphasis that this requires, although it is not necessarily a time consuming thing.

1. Teacher states why we are going to use Debonos Green thinking hat



2. Use hat to generate many possibilities.
   


3. Debrief the use and the benefits of the hat.
   


4. Introduce filter map, say why its being used
   


5. Use filter map



6. Debrief use of the filter map



7. Summarise the factors that will be controlled.

I am hoping that in subsequent enquiry lessons the students will not require me to prompt and debrief as often, as they take over the decision making process of choosing which tool and when to employ it.

A final thought about this new grid was that the top four are all factual, and I have no planned "activities" directed towards them. I then realised that in fact they are not that important in this lesson, and that the students are quite likely to pick them up as they go along as this is what they will be thinking about. It then struck me that most of my teaching experiences have been directed toward this factual realm with an assumption that the "rest" will follow. In reality more teaching needs to directed towards the "rest" and the facts will follow.