Science directed task for Phase 1

Arrange to observe a small group of children, including your two focus children during a science lesson taught by your teacher mentor. You will need to be able to observe and listen to the children in order to develop a clear understanding of their ideas, and possibly skills. Your role in this activity is not to teach the children, but to find out what the children already think and understand. You may do this by listening to and possibly facilitating the children’s talk. You may be assessing their understanding of a scientific concept or their working scientifically skills and the focus of your observations will vary according to what is being taught. This activity will support you to assess understanding through the AfL strategies you observed in the lesson. You should reflect on your understanding of AfL strategies and the activities that were presented in a recent Professional session.

You will be observing your focus children and making detailed notes that you can then use to gain an understanding of what they already know. Afterwards, you should share and discuss your observations with your mentor.  Please use the child observation forms to do this. If these focus child observations are handwritten, keep them in your Planning and Assessment folder. If they are electronic, file them online in your OneDrive portfolio.

The findings from this task should be included in your pupil progress presentation to your teacher mentor. The presentation should also be saved to the Pupil Progress folder within your OneDrive folders. The presentation should include a summary of any activities within the lesson that supported your assessments, for example, did your mentor use activities such as concept maps, questioning, drawings or concept cartoons to elicit responses from the children and stimulate talk? What questions were used by your mentor or you?

If, for any reason, you will  be in a class where no science will be taught during Phase 1, please arrange to observe another teacher teaching science, following the guidance above. You should then arrange to work with a small group of children (including your FC) and use an activity or prompt to elicit their understanding about a science topic or concept they have recently learnt about. Alternatively, you could devise an activity to help you to assess their working scientifically skills. Don’t forget to refer to the PLAN and TAPs documentation to help with this. Again, go back and look at the activities and resources from the recent science and Professional sessions.