TheFlippedScientist

A recent education report from Tokona Te Raki has argued the streaming, also known as ability grouping needs to stop as it disproportionately affects the academic performance of Māori and Pāsifika students. Having now read the report, the paper does have a statistically significant conclusion that Māori does not have the same long-term outcomes as non-Māori, however, this is a correlation and not necessarily the cause of this underachievement. So yeah, I decided to go down the internet rabbit hole and see what the global situation was and if indeed streaming was a major cause of Māori educational underachievement. First things first let me define my terms so anyone reading knows what exactly what I am talking about.  ‘Streaming’ is used to describe a variety of approaches by which students with similar levels of current achievement (note I do not say ability) are consistently grouped together for lessons. ‘Streaming’ can involve grouping students into classes for all or most of t...

As the pandemic continues to force lockdowns in parts of Europe and the Americas, online learning continues to be in effect for many schools. As a science teacher, this has proved a challenge as science is a practical and hands-on subject. Not being able to allow students to experiment, test, and explore firsthand, however, has encouraged me to develop and build upon my teaching practice.  One lesson, I learned early, was when preparing to teach science online, I needed to be reflective and understand that I could not take my face-to-face classroom and simply replicate that online. I had to ask myself what had changed? This was then followed by, What did I need to do to adapt to that change? For me, this involved considering what the big ideas of the lesson are and what the students need to do to obtain those big ideas and show that they have learned and understood them before moving on. I utilized Catlin Tucker's 5E lesson design model to assist me in this adaption. One way I eval...