Stuffing the new Y9 Sci curriculum

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 Gosh, it's been a while since I last posted. This NZC draft has got my pen out.

Today I tried to stuff the Y9 curriculum list of content into something myself and our department might be happy to teach. We are a context-based department with a deep and lived connection to our cultural narrative. We have been teaching content within a Nature of Science framework and assessing through NOS for 7 years.

I really feel like I am stuffing the content into some contexts our rangatahi might be interested in. Much like you have to stuff a tent back into the bag it came out of so you can do the zip up. There is sooo much to stuff in. 

After staring at it all and trying to make my mind bend to all 10 pages of it! I couldn't keep enough of it in my head to make any out any contextual patterns. So, I went to my trusty critical friend AI (Copilot) to help. 

Initially, AI came up with the following contexts

  • Hazards and pressure (AF8)
  • Matter and Materials 
  • Life's logistics
  • Ecosystems and Kaitiakitanga
As a Canterbury school, AF8 (Alpine Fault 8) is a good local context and we already have a unit that will go with that nicely, with some tweaks. I liked the Kaitiakitanga part of the ecosystems context, but I felt it was tacked on. Materials and Matter - well, that is not a context. AI had nothing for me on that. Life's logistics is a cool heading, but the context isn't really there when the AI offered me a plan for the topic. 

Later in the day, after going off to class (likely doing something else with my mind bought this to the surface), I remembered a Superheroes context year 11 plan I developed and taught for Y11 (old standards) at a different kura. According to AI, this context will work nicely for Matter and Materials. 

In the more detailed topic plans AI had a ratio of 75% core lessons (explicit teaching) and 25% of the lessons investigative and activities that gave opportunities to the social nature of learning. I was losing the will to live just thinking about delivering that many teacher-centred chalk and talk lessons, goodness knows what our ākonga would think about that! Maybe they wouldn't think after 5 min of listening to yet another chalk and talk lesson 'cos they'd be daydreaming, scheming some mischief and/or doodling on their neighbour's book. So, I told AI to remake the topic plans based on a maximum of 15 min per hour of teacher talking and the rest of the time on investigating and doing learning activities that gave students time to work socially to unpack and make sense of the concepts of the lesson. 

I wanted to bring in more of our cultural narrative, so it was more centred in what we do. So, I shared some info about our cultural narrative and it suggested Crossroads of Life - Science at Pūtaringamotu. We already have a Y9 unit called Who Lives at Our Place and so this new context can re-use some of the resources we already have developed. I would place this context in term 1, to help foster whānaungatanga for our year 9s coming into our kura.

After a long discussion with AI as a critical friend, we have come up with the following contexts

  • Crossroads of Life  - Ecosystems
  • Superheroes - Materials and chemical reactions
  • Life's logistics - Body systems and traits
  • AF8 - Forces, motion, and pressure

I am not yet happy with fact that these contexts are not very cross-disciplinary in science (i.e. the contexts stay mostly within their knowledge group of chemistry or biology etc with little overlap). And I am not yet happy that Life's logistics is just a title, and not a proper context. 

So, some more kōrero with AI is needed. After that, I am going to extend the superheroes context into the term 3 topic replacing Life's logistics and look at superhero genetics, inheritance and body systems.

I believe this might be possible to teach Y9 the way I want to. Some of the finer points need ironing out, but I have a beginning. 

Further kōrero with AI has now bought be to these contexts, which I feel is a good starting point to planning our details and resources. AI even made this handy 1 page visual. It'll be easier to keep it all in my head. I still don't have a lot of science interdisciplinary contexts, maybe that will come to me later.



Now that I have done this once, it might be easier for Y10. Also, my faculty have had no input into this yet. It isn't something we have done together, and I would like us to. Then they will have had a chance to both unpack the content list and think deeply about what it is we do that is important to us collectively. Maybe we need to have this kōrero with AI, as a team.





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