Investigating water quality

At Sydney Adventist College, a graduate teacher begins her lesson in science by asking her students to discuss whether a stream in a photograph is clean or dirty. She identifies students’ responses as potential ‘characteristics’ of the water’s quality, and organises these in a concept diagram. In the next lesson students undertake a practical investigation of a nearby creek’s water quality using data sampling equipment. This data is collated in the following lesson.

The graduate teacher plans a lesson sequence in science, exploring and testing how students learn through practical inquiry, analysing data and sharing results. While the extracts selected for the video do not show the planning processes for the sequence or the individual lessons, she is confidently in control of the content and the teaching resources at her disposal at each stage of the learning activities. She introduces the language of scientific inquiry naturally and appropriately, she builds understanding through developing thinking strategies, and uses simple yet appropriate data logging technologies for the fieldwork.