In this video, Martin describes the science context for the writing task. He discusses the teaching and learning involved as students develop scientific investigations.
The students carry out an investigation on a topic of interest and display their findings at the NIWA science fair. The investigation includes the application of a scientific process of fair testing to establish the validity of the conclusions. This learning context provides several opportunities for authentic writing, in particular, procedural writing and the recording of observations, ideas, hypotheses, responses, and conclusions in a reflective journal.
Curriculum links
Learning areas:
- Science: level 4, investigating in science
- English: level 4, Writing: purposes and audiences
Key competencies: participating and contributing, thinking
Related teaching and learning activities
Martin sparked the students’ curiosity and engagement by demonstrating several experiments to the whole class and then setting up shared experiments that the students worked on in pairs or small groups. As the students worked, he prompted and questioned them to discuss and develop hypotheses.