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

Literacy, Assessment and Memory bundles. LAMB's

Way back in June 2018 our Science department  attempted to set out what we wanted our curriculum to be like, after our initial interleaving of the concepts. Since then we have been working towards this through our Wednesday CPD time, curriculum development tasks and through the idea of the weeks. Each part of our wish list depends upon the design of the curriculum, our choice of pedagogy and our skill as teachers to deliver it.

Reading this list again the prominence of Literacy, Assessment and Memory in what we value is very clear.

To ensure constructive alignment every SOW has

●     Learning Intention sheet for student books

●     Key ideas/ Misconceptions clearly identified for teachers

●     Pre- quizzes aligned to learning intentions

●     Been double checked against the syllabus

To ensure quality two way feedback every SOW has

●     A prequiz using an assessment grid

●     Marking tokens for each key ideas.

●     Tasks that have inbuilt self reflection and assessments

●     Useful demonstrate tasks for quick teacher feedback. (eg Hinge questions)

●     End of topic tests and/or is part of a summative test

●     Tasks to develop exam technique

To ensure development of student skills and knowledge (including literacy)

●     Regular opportunities to write in an extended way-with feedback

●     Read complex academic texts to develop student scientific vocabulary.

●     Tasks that develop vocabulary.

●     Tasks to practice scientific skills- with feedback

●     Tasks and marking tokens that focus on Required Practicals and associated language and skills.

●     Strategic homework

To ensure long term retention

●     Multiple exposure planned and made clear to teachers

●     SOWS are interleaved and spaced - 5 years.✓

●     Tasks to activate prior knowledge

●     Use of low stakes testing eg last year, last topic, last week,last lesson

●     Planned spaces between teaching and marking tokens.

●     Knowledge organiser for each topic

●     Strategic homework

To ensure clarity of teaching

●     Slides that structure and augment explanations- not necessarily to scaffold a lesson.

●     Clear useful diagrams, analogies, images

To ensure engagement

●     Task that set context and provide interesting hooks

●     Tasks develop student agency

Literacy

A good start point for the view taken on literacy comes from the EEF Literacy report that states

“Reading, writing, speaking and listening, are at the heart of every subject in secondary school. Focusing time and resources on improving reading and writing skills will have positive knock-on effects elsewhere, whether that’s being able to break down scientific vocabulary or structure a history essay.”

It recommends the

●     Prioritising of subject-specific literacy skills across the curriculum.

●     Teaching vocabulary to support pupils’ development of academic language.

●     Developing students’ ability to read and access sophisticated texts

So, it is with this in mind that we have developed our Literacy strand to our new Literacy, Assessment and Memory bundles (LAMB’s). This has been a major focus for the idea of the week since it began, and so we have many simple and effective strategies to hand. Many are summarised here: A summary of Literacy strategies

Assessment.

Macfarlane Dick and Nichol recommend  that good feedback practice:

1. helps clarify what good performance is (goals, criteria, expected standards);

2. facilitates the development of self-assessment (reflection) in learning;

3. delivers high quality information to students about their learning;

4. encourages teacher and peer dialogue around learning;

5. encourages positive motivational beliefs and self-esteem;

6. provides opportunities to close the gap between current and desired performance

Providing effective feedback is a complex business, but two general principles seem to apply fairly consistently.

1. As students approach mastery a delay in feedback can be beneficial, for example after an exam or marking token .
2. Immediate feedback is beneficial when students are in the early stages of developing their understanding.

○     Task level feedback is only useful here

○     We must balance giving feedback and teaching new ideas as dealing with feedback uses a lot of working memory.

So, we must provide focussed opportunities to check student understanding that are quick and to the point but still aiming to meet all the criteria set out by Macfarlane- Dick and Nichol. It is especially important that the dialogue between teacher and student dialogue, as in the two way feedback on our wishlist. Ultimately,this will increase the amount of quality teacher feedback in books but reduce the burden of marking. This again has been a recurring theme in the ideas of the week. At the heart of these strategies is the idea of a hinge activity to reveal the student current understanding quickly and accurately.
Memory.

The Memory strand, as the others has been a major theme for idea of the week. A summary of the strategies can be read here The strategies include those that support the limitations of working memory and strategies that seek to encourage long term retention of knowledge.

Our pre-quizzes work on the The Pretesting Effect  which paints a somewhat counterintuitive view of learning and testing

“In terms of long-term learning, however, unsuccessful tests fall into the same category as a number of other effective learning phenomena - providing challenges for learners leads to low initial test performance, thereby alienating learners and educators, while simultaneously enhancing long-term learning.”

To supplement this retrieval practice is a way of supporting the retrieval strength of learned concepts. The students in essence practice how to remember. We have been long time fans of the expanding retrieval schedule and many of us have selected to measure its impact for the Great Teaching Groups. As Lee Croucher astutely pointed out this week, the design of these is somewhat responsive to how well students have performed in previous lessons, and this makes it more difficult to pre plan this kind of task. What we can prepare are question banks that will provide regular practice with the big, frequent and important ideas within them.

Conclusion.

A key strategy in learning is the idea of multiple exposures to the idea being learned Nuthall said

” Provided a student is able to piece together, in working memory, the equivalent of three complete definitions or descriptions of a concept, that new concept will be constructed as part of the students long term memory”

His research primarily suggests some useful planning suggestions. So that for learning to take place, students must:

interact with a full explanation of concept at least once.

interact with the information on at least four separate occasions

This makes the tasks in the LAMB’s so very useful, providing the opportunities to revisit the concepts over and over again in differing ways so that learning has the best chance to happen. Teaching followed by a literacy strategy, followed by a memory task followed by a focused assessment makes this a realistic aim.

Strategy is one thing and so it supporting teachers to feel equipped to use new them  So the ideas included in LAMB’s have been (and will be) supported by the idea of the weeks  to help us deliver the great curriculum our students deserve. Each task, in essence, is quite small, and  will not take long to plan. So relatively quickly it should be easy to build up a library of useful tasks- focused on key ideas and misconceptions.  Imagine a department of 10 (pretty easy for a Science, Maths or English department) contributed one task per week over the course of a year we could have around 380 tasks to support the development of our students' scientific  literacy and supporting their learning through quick and effective assessment and opportunity to transfer knowledge to their long term memory. It certainly is a worthy aim.

The first two LAMB's are available here.

Writing with Year 7 in Science

How to write like a scientist

A lesson reource as part of the E.A.T. project. Students will get to grips with what makes a scientific explanation. Drafts and reflections will be posted on http://educateatown.blogspot.co.uk/

Fishbowl Discussions to develop oracy.

The Opportunity.

A rewrite of last years plans has presented and opportunity to develop this essential part of literacy ( and here too) I initially thought the content to be taught would prove to be a good for a "presentation" using the criteria, we had used in Year 7. Although, it was tempting to build upon this the idea  it was dismissed in preference for a more dialogic approach that leads to learning.  I have been interested in developing this with my students ever since the sage advice from Geoff Barton (particularly on slide 51) during a fortunate visit for some INSET. This HTH unboxed has also been at the back of my mind for sometime and has been useful in pondering how to plan this for my students.

Not this time fella me lad...

I was fortunate that I only had to rewrite most of one lesson for this to tackle this inadequacy, when I stumbled upon this fine teaching video from the Teaching Channel. all became clear. This post is a chance to share the methodology I am planning to use, to help make speaking and listen a key part of how we will learn Science.

The Plan.

The "Fishbowl"  will be set up as following.

 

The  students will be split into three groups. Each group will have a go at each role. The roles can be summarised as:

 

Role 1- Speaker- They will be in the middle discussing the questions and dilemmas.

Role 2- Coach- They will listen out for how well a particular panellist is communicating, use of key language and connectives. They will debrief them at “half time”.

Role 3 – Observer- They will be summarising the debate so far, listening out for coverage of the different energy resources, evidence used, the questions asked and answered. They should produce a set out notes and will be asked to feedback to the class the important/useful/interesting comments made at half time and at the end of the discussion.

Each Fishbowl will run for 10 minutes, split into two halves with a 5 minute coaching halftime.

 

The “Speakers” will discuss their response to the following big question which has been the focus of study in the preceding lessons.

" Do we still need fossil fuels?"
 

 The following sub questions will help the students discuss the evidence.

Why are we considering not using fossil fuels?

If we don’t use fossil fuels what should be used to meet the electricity demand?

If we do use fossil fuels how do we ensure that the pollution is not a big problem?

Are the alternative fuels up to the job of meeting our energy needs?

What should be the energy production strategies for the UK to ensure 24hr year round electricity production that meets demand?

How could this be different for different parts of the world?

Following the Fukishima nuclear disaster – what would you recommend for Japan?

The Structures.

To set this up, with each class I intend to describe the roles and issue the observation sheets and success criteria.

Coaches will have a sheet like this, which they will use to observe and feedback to one other student.

While the observers will have a checklist of what content should come up in the whole conversation.

 

 

The big question is then to be shared, making it clear that the conversation is to answer this, while the sub questions are there to keep the conversation moving and help breakdown potential solutions to the problem posed.

It will also stressed to the students that their notes and their experiences are important here, this will be a useful revision of the learning of the previous lessons.

I will only now place the students in threes, to manage distractions, and then ask them to number themselves. Once done, I will assign a role to each number and establish an order for the conversations.

It will wise here to pause and grant the students around 10 minutes to prepare potential responses and familairise themselves with the success criteria and feedback sheets. I am hoping they will use these resources to pick up ideas of how to phase, at least their opening gambits during the conversation.

 
The Feedback.

The first discussion will now take place, split into two halves of five minutes. This time is arbitrary and largely determined by their age and the amount of content expected in the conversation. At half time the observers will be asked to summarise the key points made so far,suggesting what might be missing? What content or evidence could the speakers be using?

 

I will also  tally chart the contributors collated, which is a powerful way to provide non-judgemental feedback upon speaking, those that have avoided or minimised their interactions will be challenged by cold hard facts.

 

The coaches will then be given opportunity to  quickly feedback what connectives have been used well so far to the whole group.

The groups of three students will then briefly meet to receive specific feedback, using Kind, Specific and Helpful protocol.

 

Kind – I like how you….etc

Specific- You need to use more connectives….You haven’t mentioned….etc

Helpful- Try using ……Remember that oil releases carbon dioxide when burned.. etc

 

I think the retrospective starfish, will help students frame this in a positive constructive way, coupled with a selection of connectives will help focus students on how they communicate detailed scientific ideas. I expect this halftime  feedback to have a noticeable impact on the second half performance.

 

To conclude this session the observers will be asked summarise the conversation, again highlighting key concepts raised in the conversation. The coaches  will then be asked to identify what the speakers did better in the second half. It will be important to catch the students doing better here. A  similar lesson structure using SOLO taxonomy and connectives had a positive impact upon student conversations.

The students then rotate roles.
 

The reflection.

A debrief will be held as a quiet written session to aid reflection on personal learning, with the students responding to the following questions.

How well did you speak during the debate? What did you do well? What would you try to do better next time?

What connectives did you use? How did they help you communicate?

Why is it important that we develop our speaking skills?

The next steps...


This is the planning I will endeavour to record the conversations and half time feedback on Soundcloud and post them in a linked post.

Lieracy and Science part 2- Writing strategies.

This is the second part of a blog post on why and how developing literacy in Science is beneficial to teach and learning science.

 Unsurprisingly my educational appreciation of Connectives derives from my use of SOLO taxonomy. In a Science context, it also makes sense to classify them as in  these useful resources. This helps to chunk content knowledge with the appropriate connectives. For example while sequencing the route of blood through the heart, or a method. Sequencing is essential for lots of science concepts. Add to this the Cause and Effect connectives, such as because, therefore and due to and your students will have a decent start point for Scientific thinking armoury. This is the exact reason why being explicit with these is a great case in point for teaching literacy as it also develop Scientific thinking.

This photograph shows how useful they are to students. During a critique these Year 7 students (correctly) identified that the final paragraph needed restructuring to bring together all of the evidence. So I asked what connectives might be useful, the three they chose were most helpful as can be seen by the next two pictures of student draft two's!

 

 

A post on connectives structured around SOLO can be read here.
That Superman amongst us David Didau embellishes upon this here


One of the main focuses I have recently had is how students write. This has been especially during writing methods (instructions) and conclusions. I have encouraged, through critique and feedback for my students to write in the third person.  This has many benefits for learning Science. Firstly it encourages students to write more clearly about the Science, data, findings etc and not hide behind what they think or even what they did. The more I have thought about this the more I have come to realise that it encourages that wonderful Scientific trait of objectivity. That is to say, for the sake of an example.... By writing in the third person students are trained to become more objective in their thinking. (See it works!)

 This students work show the impact it has on the quality of the Scientific work. Surprisingly, this work only took twenty minutes, yet the progression is still taking place and started weeks ago. Learning eh! (Irony)

The Point Evidence Explain (P.E.E) paragraph has also become a regular feature as students learn to write conclusions to experiments or investigations. Although, this seems a straight forward method it is worth considering an "analysis" section or activity before students write. You'd think the need to have processed the data before you started writing would be a no brainer. Apparently it's not. As a result I have formalised the analysis  before requesting a P.E.E. paragraph for the conclusion. Don't let this put you off, the familiarity of P.E.E. to students does help make the abstract task of drawing conclusions at least a more structured affair.

Both connectives and the PEE paragraph allows the teacher to hoop jump, meeting the need for teachers to mark for literacy, but in a really  useful way for both the subject knowledge and literacy. Now that's subversive. I think the following examples show this and the impact of the marking, which even occurs between activities. Learning eh! (Irony)

and its follow up task ...

 

 

The role of projects, success criteria and critique in my development as a teacher has been central to my growing understanding of literacy and it's importance. Asking students to complete worthwhile tasks, that has an audience makes the use and emphasis upon literacy purposeful. This adds an essential ingredient, namely motivation. When you add this to the clear demonstration of progress (let reclaim that word) students see value in literacy. This is the power of teaching it in ALL curriculum areas, it becomes normal. I am yet to have a student complain or whine at the prospect  of practising their literacy, young people see it's a vital part of learning and being successful. So no matter how uncomfortable I feel using them, it has clarified how I look at my subject and how I teach it.

Using models whether teacher or student derived to draw out success criteria demonstrates this wonderfully. Increasingly students are suggesting these literacy qualities as part of their success. This is real progress for me.

Literacy in Science part 1-First and Second glance reading strategies.

I must admit literacy was off my radar for too long, it was something else to do. Two intertwined events have changed my view and I now see it as a central part of what I do to teach Science. The first one was understanding in the broadest sense by what Berger describes as beautiful work. The second was visiting High Tech High and seeing the books written and published by the students. How the ideas of a subject are communicated is important.
So, what I'd like to do with my next couple of post is compile some of the strategies that help develop student literacy and learn Science. The duality of this is essential for me and students; it gives it a pedagogical purpose.
First Glance and Second Glance- How To Read a Scientific Journal
Several moons ago, I was lucky enough to be involved in the pilot for LSS project, with Kings College London and the Weizmann Institute. Although much of it was vin ordinaire. These two procedures however,  have remained part of my practice.
Journals articles outside of your specialism are daunting, so imagine how they must look to students, impregnable like Michael Gove's sense of self importance. Cock. However, often they are the most exciting things about our subjects. Not only do they have the method, data and conclusions of investigation, but they have the Scientific thinking behind them. Why should we hold back, nay hide these wondrous articles.

In brief the first glance technique is a trick, a way if exposing that lack of confidence that complex writing brings. The questions that are then asked highlight the essentials; Title, authors, date of publication.The things the knowledgeable reader does subconsciously  When the students realise that they can do this with ease its wonderful to see that the incomprehensible becomes accessible and of value to them. I am fully aware that time, effort and skill in selecting a relevant, useful and readable article plays a big part in the student response, but when asked " Would it be useful and worthwhile our effort in reading this article further?" unanimously the response has been yes. This is testament to the main part is usefulness of the First Glance procedure.

The Second Glance is always much more readily accepted as a challenge. I would recommend following straight on with the procedures,(For the full procedure and some clear examples can be found here) I tend to  add another brief reading spell to help increase their  familiarity with the text. Once more this is a trick based task, when students see they have detailed questions to answer they instantly think they must read everything. So the strategy of stopping them quickly, and then reading the first line in every paragraph,  seems like a revelation to them. I do tend to write questions, for their first exposure, that have questions derived mainly from the first line of each paragraph to reinforce this idea. Just this simple method makes skimming much more efficient. As a lazy reader of many years, I'm still amazed at how much information this renders.

The crafty part of the Second Glance strategy  is in the  students NOT to answer questions,  but to find where the information can be found and record it. I like this for three reasons. Firstly, it keeps the students reading and looking for information and  not copying it from a page. Secondly, it implies that the information i.e. The article will always be theirs for rereading. For me that's very useful. it shouts "Find the parts that will help you learn and concentrate your efforts here"; why didn't someone tell me to do this years ago? Finally,having questions helps them practice scanning looking out for the keywords.

I have used of both  these as stand alone tasks, but a project based approach brings a whole new purposefulness to them. It is an important and liberating way of allowing students to actually find out things for themselves with structure and a way of developing their reading.