SASTA Early Career Conference

Today I attended the SASTA Early Career Conference, and learnt some really good techniques and gained access to some really good resources. I thought I would write brief reflections and provide links to the relevant resources here while it is all fresh in my mind, mostly for my own future reference.

I got a participation certificate for attending, which can serve as evidence towards the APST.

I attended five sessions, so below I will include the abstract, a breif reflection, and links to any relevant resources, for each of these five sessions. Finally, I’ll include some comments on the other sessions (which I didn’t personally attend).

Making it relevant to your students

Easy ways to show your students how what they are learning in class is relevant to them and the impact it might have on their lives - both day to day as well as big picture.

A selection of techniques, learning tools and resources on how to deliver interesting and fun science to your students ensuring they see the why as well as the what.

The focus of this session was on SHE centered teaching. Making the content relevant to our students by representing the content in relatable ways — talking about important scientists as human beings who played the violin, who hated cheese, etc. By designing the teaching ‘flipped’, starting with the SHE, the application, the reason we care, and then going back and linking it to the content rather than the other way around we can make it relevant to the students and hence more engaging.

One of the key resources that Hilary promoted was the RiAus education website that she runs, and updates five (asterix) times a week with good SHE centred resources. This is a great resource to keep in mind. She also runs PD sessions, and in particular offers a free PD that would be applicable school-wide on unconscious bias, based on the STEM pack on the education website.

Strategies for managing the work place

In my career I have faced a range of situations as a teacher that I was ill-equipped to deal with. A school is a unique work place and as new teachers there are many things you will face besides the students. This discussion designed to advise you of some experiences you may encounter in an educational workplace and how to deal with them and where to seek support.

We will go through scenarios with the aim of unpacking successful strategies for dealing with:

• Gossip
• Withholding information
• Abuse of authority
• Suppressing creativity
• Criticism and bullying
• The effects of stress

In addition, I will be able to provide you with information on how to access support within and external to your work place.

This was an intense session. Joanne bravely shared her story of bullying and harassment in the workplace, the devastating consequences of it going too far, and the safety networks we all need to engage with in order to help protect ourselves. In essence: the union, as a resource of immense knowledge and experience can support and give advice on some really tough situations.

Lets really do science inquiry

The Australian Curriculum: Science emphasises inquiry-based teaching and learning. Scientific inquiry promotes critical and creative thinking by encouraging flexibility and open-mindedness as students speculate about their observations of the world. In an inquiry classroom, students are able to challenge themselves to identify questions and draw evidence-based conclusions using scientific methods.

In this workshop teachers will investigate the process and practicalities of inquiry learning in the Science classroom. They will engage in hands-on activities that will inform their understanding of the types of inquiry and how to implement them in their teaching program.

Kate was awesome. She showed us some activities we could run to really emphasise science inquiry in exactly the kind of way that I would do it. In one activity she gave us sealed boxes and we had to make observations to form a hypothesis about what was in the box. We never got to open the boxes, and this activity served as a fantastic analogy for science — scientists don’t get to “look inside the box”, they don’t get to find out if they are “right”. They can only make observations and provide evidence for their conclusions, and that is the end of it. The focus should be on the process of collecting and presenting evidence logically. We did two other activities too, one to do with the size of the earth and the moon, the other with a baloon filled with water not popping when exposed to a match. We also discussed how to introduce the concepts around variables, using a “Variables Grid”, and an “Investigation Planner”.

Unplugged: Science through Gaming

Board games and table top roleplaying games (ttRPGs) are increasing in popularity with new titles appearing constantly, many of which are based around critical thinking and/or science. Students often become engaged in board games and ttRPGs due to their accessible nature, ability for competition or cooperation, and a feeling of supported risk. This workshop aims to get participants working with recently developed board games and ttRPGs, considering how these games could be used in their classrooms, and working to develop/alter a game so it can be used for a subject they are teaching. This workshop is aimed at both new players and table top pros; and participants are welcome to bring along any games they enjoy.

Lauren spoke about incorporating games into learning. One of the things that I thought was particularly cool was how she is currently having her year 10s design, playtest, and apply the engineering design process to construct a game to help her teach the year 8s about cells and cell differentiation. The end product game seems complicated, but awesome. Role playing took a major role in these games, and in other parts as well. One of the really cool things she produced was a simplified rule set roleplaying game, complete with rulebook and character sheets, for playing role-playing games with her students.

Five fun, formative frameworks

Five ways to find out what your students know, without marking: IF-AT, Kahoot, Google Quizzes, personal whiteboards and no-hands-up.

Scott spoke about a number of really effective formative assessment strategies. He ran his whole session off a set of notes including links to resources, which he provided to us. One of the key messages I took from it was the reinforced understanding of the importance of immediate feedback techniques and of recognising ‘fixed’ mindsets as opposed to ‘growth mindsets’ in our students, and ways to encourage this changing. I’m keen on the no-hands-up technique, and I really liked how he ran it with cards instead of paddlepop sticks. I really want to try that. IF-AT seems very cool and effective, if slightly expensive and as he mentioned, tricky to get good questions that prompt the right kind of discussion. Although he did also point towards a very good resource in that he used questions from previous ICAS tests. Kahoot and Google Quizzes also provided immediate feedback techniques. One of the things that really struck me though was his explanation of how simply having a personal whiteboard to write on instead of writing in a book could make students feel so much more comfortable suggesting approaches that might not immediately be correct, because they felt they could erase them and correct them. This is such a crucial way of thinking, that I’d really like to try it because that barrier is a tough one to breach in my experience.

Other sessions I didn’t attend

Here I’ll list some of the resources provided from other sessions which although I didn’t personally attend, I learnt more about through discussion with peers during breaks and afterwards, and each of these sessions also provided links to their resources online through a padlet.

Going from Graduate to Proficient

There was a session I missed to do with going from Graduate to Proficient, from Provisional to Full TRB registration, and it seemed that some useful examples/ resources where provided in that sessions. Here are the slides from the session, and some additional resources on annotating evidence, and examples of evidence. They also when through the forms and conditions but I’m guessing that would all be available through the TRB and might be subject to changes so I didn’t include those here.