Rich contexts for science teaching
The New Zealand Curriculum is framed within the whakapapa of Te Mātaiaho. One component – mātaioho – is the process by which schools bring the national curriculum to life through local, national and global contexts. Learning locally – Connecting kids to their community outlines the benefits of local curriculum design.
The teachers in this video offer a selection of contexts to springboard ideas.
Prompting questions/ngā pātai
How does mātaioho add relevance to ākonga and your teaching?
How might local contexts help ākonga build lifelong learning capabilities?
What are some rich contexts that you would like to explore?
What would boost this context from a learning experience to a rich learning experience? Why does this matter?
Are there local people and/or organisations that you can tap into for expertise?
How does collaboration with mana whenua fit into planning a rich context?
Transcript
Mairi Borthwick
So one of our courses that we’re looking at is based around kaitiakitanga. We obviously look at the actual taiao itself and thinking about what can we do as good kaitiaki.
Meredith Wils on
Environmental science covers a massive range of things and it’s localised in our area as well. So the hydro scheme in the Tongariro area takes a lot of water from our local area and the students find that quite fascinating looking at how electricity is actually made.
Dianne Christenson
I’m looking at local biodiversity largely. So we’re looking at what species we have around us. We’re learning the skills that you use to gather data. Again, that goes back to the land, the water, the air and how we use it. And that leads into engaging with science.
Andrea Tritton
We’ve had such terrible flooding this year and it’s really impacted on a lot of people. We wanted the students to be able to compare the area that we live in to other areas in Auckland so we visited some of the dams that we have in the Waitākere Ranges. We brought in water engineers from Auckland Council. We really just let the students ask the questions, and then they’ve taken that in the direction that they wanted to.
Lian Soh
We started looking more into energy. We just said to them, hey look, can you list all the appliances that you’re currently using at each hour of the day? And so you get kids genuinely curious.
Mairi Borthwick
Really getting them to think about healthy homes, energy consumption, where energy comes from, bringing in that critiquing the evidence to making informed decisions.
Meredith Wilson
My second half of the year was looking at the health of the individual.
We really enjoyed critiquing the evidence for health products because students get bombarded with those on TikTok. It’s that citizenship and, and knowing what is good science.
Mairi Borthwick
If we can make sure that, in the future, they are making informed decisions based on science then we’ve made a difference in their lives.
Acknowledgements
Mairi Borthwick, Head of Science, Freyberg High School
Meredith Wilson, HOD Science, Ruapehu College
Dianne Christenson, Teacher, Whareama School
Andrea Tritton, Deputy Principal, Hobsonville Point Secondary School
Lian Soh, Science and Chemistry Teacher, Pāpāmoa College
Flyover of Freyberg High School. © Freyburg High School
Trampers at Te Āpiti Manawatū Gorge. © DOC. Released under Creative Commons licence CC BY 3.0
Students on a field trip, collecting and interpreting stream data, by Meredith Wilson. © Ruapehu College
Moths on green hat; students observing moths at night and corflute tracking tunnels by Dianne Christenson. © Whareama School
Flooding in Henderson, Auckland, by Feynmanfan. Released under Creative Commons licence CC BY 3.0
Upper Nihotupu Dam, Waitākere Ranges by russellstreet. Released under Creative Commons licence CC BY-SA 2.0
