Good starting points

1. Good starting points Problem: How can students be stimulated to work in a explorative way at school? How can I as teacher make my students to ask questions and make hypothesis, which can be used for scientific investigation? How can I as teacher develop a spirit of openness and free mind. And how can I give them ownership to their own learning process? Can I as teacher arrange situations where students experience authenticity in school projects

2. Nordlab material- from 2003 made by: • Annemarie Møller Andersen, Danmarks Pædagogiske Universitet, København • Maj-Britt Berndtsson, Sogneskolen, Jægerspris • Steffen Elmose, CVU Nordjylland • Trine Jarløv, Pædagogisk Udviklingscenter, Helsingør • Eigil Larsen, Undervisningsministeriet • Birgitte Pontoppidan, Århus Dag- og Aftenseminarium

3. What must a good start on a school project? • Create awareness and set a focus • Mobilize curiosity and busyness • Make the children work creative by creating room for open minded thinking, space for investigations and scenes for exploring and acting • Generate and develop concrete experiences • Make the students re-think their theories and challenge their explanations • Elucidate standards and aims for the work to do • Give the student an idea of how to start now

4. Possible starting points

5. experiences • An experience can be a starting point when the teacher has intentions to open for the pupils active and authentic problem solving participation in a science project. An experience can in these way be: • A visit to a water plant • Showing them how much water is used to flush a toilet in one year • A story about how astronauts visits toilets • A visit to a purification plant for waste water • A film or an animation that shows the water cycle • A film that shows how waste water make problems in developing countries

6. Telling- Storyline En storyline er normalt kendetegnet ved en organisationsform, som dels fastholder lærerens overordnede styring af forløbet, og dels muliggør en høj grad af engagement fra eleverne gennem deres indflydelse på indholdet (Falkenberg og Håkonsson, 2000). Undervisningsformen er desuden karakteriseret ved, at de enkelte delforløb er bundet sammen af en sammenhængende historie, som gerne skulle lægge op til elevernes medfortælling. Den overordnede styring sikres gennem: • En optaktshistorie, som placerer resten af forløbet i tid og sted. Optakten skal åbne op for mulige retninger og helst binde an til elevernes nysgerrighed og interesse for hvad der følger • Nogle forud planlagte storyline-punkter, som udgør forløbets indre struktur. Punkterne formidles til eleverne i form af nogle nøglespørgsmål, som skal udformes, så de både angiver retning i elevernes valg af løsning på spørgsmålet/problemet, og samtidig er tilstrækkeligt åbne, så de ansporer til elevernes selvstændige arbejde med undersøgelser og valg af løsning • Lærerens valg af organisation – lægger storylinepunktet op til at eleverne arbejder selvstændigt eller i grupper ? • Produktforventninger – læreren annoncerer i forbindelse med storylinepunkt og nøglespørgsmål, hvad delforløbet skal ende med.

7. Telling- a good story • A good story creates beautiful or funny or emotional or detestable pictures inside your head. • A good story makes you wonder and give you ideas of questions to tell and things to investigate

8. Representations Models? • A model can be seen as a two or three dimensional picture or product of something real perhaps in smaller scale. It can also be a diagram or a construction. • It often simplifies things and only shows the most important or obvious or characteristic things. It often shows abstract phenomena's in a simple way. • A model is an interpretation of real things or connections • Pupils models can tell you how they think and see things and can be used for investigation. “Is it right what these model tells us?”

9. Testing a model • These models can be used at the start of Flush. It concerns water resources and water consumption • Tell the pupils: ” we have a lot of water on the planet and in the ground in many countries. But clean water we won't find in all places.” • “Now you have to make to pictures”: • A picture or model that shows us how the water circles in nature. Following elements must be seen: ocean, land, lakes, rivers, clouds and threes. You must draw lines that shows us in which way the water circles and the connections between the elements. • A picture or model that shows us how we circle water, we call it the human water circle. Following elements must be seen: a house with rooms: kitchen, bathroom, living room, cellar and other rooms. Show us how the water enters the house through pipes and where these pipes comes from. Show us how the used water leaves the house through other kind of pipes and where it now goes to. • Now we can discus your models and maybe investigate what we need to know

10. Repræsentations- concept maps

11. statementsQuestions There are basically two types of questions: Is it like …? Is it different from …? • Questions of understanding or comprehension: Are questions caused by wondering: ”does it really look like that?” ”Is it really why?” ”I thought that it was otherwise?” “What happens when…?” • Questions for getting information: ”What is that?” ”Is it like that one?” The pupil want to get his categories right.

12. StatementsAllegations • Astronauts drink urine • You can drink water from a lake with a Lifestraw • A human being contains 60% water • Less than 1 % of the water on our planet can be used for drinking purpose • You can flush your toilet with rainwater • A desert rat do not urinate • Thousand of children die every year from drinking polluted water. • Lot of deceases are spread through waste water • Many fish in streams running through developed countries are hermaphrodites, both male and female or better no male. It is caused by urine from women using P-pills.

13. I wish you a good start and hope you will have many exciting projects to investigate