Socio-Scientific Issues Teaching Focus - Year 5/6 Systems Hurdle Task

Jess Steele

Reflection Task

Comment [O1]: This was the title of the

specific teaching strategy we had to teach
our lessons to and that dictated our
approach to what was included within our
unit planner.

Overall, I felt our teaching unit across the three lessons was cohesive and well thought out.
While looking at this particular topic, the solar system, we ensured that the lessons were
relevant to the children that they were to be implemented with. The content being explored
directly relates to AusVELS Curriculum outcomes for the designated age group. In Year 5-6
students are expected to:

Recognise Earth is a part of a system of planets orbiting around a star (The Sun).

Recognise and identify that by being a part of our planet, we are included in a
complex system within a much larger system. (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment
Authority, 2016)

Hence, these lessons explore the other planets within the system we belong to. They also
relate to students as the content is one that students consistently find exciting, insightful
and an area of study they always want to know more about (Wiebke, Rogers & NargundJoshi, 2011). However, more importantly, by learning about the solar system at school,
children not only come to terms with certain events that shape and form a significant part
of their everyday lives but it makes an important contribution toward the development of
scientific literacy and the public understanding of science (Sharp & Kuerbis, 2005, pg.125).

In regards to the teaching approach, Socio-scientific issues, I found it challenging at times,

however, extremely interesting to see the students growth in comfort for the approach as
the lessons progressed. The Socio Scientific Teaching Approach (SSI) involves teaching
content, through the use of open ended controversial problems, that relate in some
aspect/s to students lives. This keeps the content meaningful and engaging. The contexts of
which these problems are derived from often relate to environmental, economic and social
issues in the global and local society (Ziedler & Nichols, 2009). Since this unit is about the
Solar System, the students see our planet as just one among a system of planets, and learn
about the Suns role in affecting temperature and providing energy. SSI involves informal
discussion and argumentation to integrate individuals experiential and ethical ideas,
alongside scientific conceptual knowledge to develop scientific reasoning skills (Sadler,
2004). For this reason, the unit includes discussion and justification in Sessions 1 and 3,
where statements are challenged and require scientifically based arguments to be
presented. Group research is conducted in Session 2, with a range of teacher-selected
resources to allow students to analyse and compare/contrast information as part of
practicing Scientific Literacy and critical thinking (Ziedler & Nichols, 2009).SSI uses open-

Comment [O2]: This shows how the

unit outcomes were informed by
curriculum documents.

Comment [O3]: This referenced

sentence provides evidence of how
knowledge regarding student learning has
been researched and thus applied
accordingly.

Comment [O4]: This demonstrates the

structure of the unit and how it has been
planned around our specified teaching
approach.

ended problems to elicit a range of plausible solutions so that when thinking about scientific
concepts, students bring their own ideas into discussions and must construct knowledge by
constructing arguments (Sadler, 2011). This idea provides the foundation for our final
session, session 3.
Therefore, through the use of the teaching approach Socio-Scientific Issues(SSI), this lesson
aims to provide students with the knowledge and skills to play an effective role in society
(Ratcliffe, 2013, pg.21) and their community as they learn how to effectively voice their
opinions, evaluate information and use knowledge in a way that adds value to what they are
saying . Key skills relating to the SSI approach such as gathering, analyzing, interpreting and
evaluating information alongside listening and responding to others, have been
incorporated into the lesson to engage students with the teaching approach while,
simultaneously, providing a meaningful learning experience that will provide students with
the skills necessary to be active participants in their community. (Zielder & Nicholos, 2009).
This is done by providing the learner throughout the lesson with the opportunity to engage
in activities that promote one or more of the higher-order practices of reasoning,
argumentation and decision making (Presley et al., 2016, pg.28), necessary components of
the SSI teaching framework. Also, as the SSI approach involves informal discussion and
argumentation to aid in students developing scientific reasoning skills, discussion and
justification to opinions are the fundamental to this lesson as students have to provide
reasoning as to why they believe what they believe within a social setting (Sadler, 2004). By
taking into consideration the local needs of the community and the students who will
engage in this lesson, all resources have been created/ organized by the teaching team. By
bringing in our own resources such as Ipads, borrowed library books, computer-generated
templates and handmade resources, students with have the optimal chance at completing
the required tasks to the best of their ability as everything needed to be successful is readily
available to them.
Needless to say, as the planning of the unit had occurred before we had had any contact
with our students, lessons, topics and activities were adjusted after the first lesson. While
we wanted to challenge the students thinking and get them to achieve success in both the
content area and strategy of teaching, we needed to make the activities for them
achievable. Therefore we changed a lot of the outcomes to rather than write a piece of
writing or write three sentences we either got students to write one sentence or we had
an in-depth conversation with each of them while broken into smaller focus groups.
Overall, the unit ran smoothly and we had little behaviour disruptions from any of the
students. When getting the students to conclude and state what they had learnt from the
lessons, all the students were able to state what was required of them, as set out in our unit
planner. While majority of the students were well behaved we did have some minor
behaviour management issues which were dealt with through the use of positive

Comment [O5]: This shows my ability

to select and use resources while taking
into consideration the community I was
going to be working in.

Comment [O6]: This shows how we

made our teaching as effective as possible
by tailoring the outcomes to the students
needs and capabilities.

reinforcement. To improve future lessons I would do some form of assessment used as a

base line to then develop future activities off of.

Comment [O7]: This shows the use of

effective classroom communication
Comment [O8]: This demonstrates my
ability to evaluate and state improvements
to one of my teaching programs.