Success criteria in science
Secondary foci: Literacy Skills, Inclusive,
How was it used?
This unit sets out to support pupils in year seven when they are setting their own success criteria when planning a scientific enquiry.
Pupils in Yr 7 often find it difficult to set their own success criteria when planning a scientific enquiry, because they are not familiar with this concept, so I thought that using real life situations instead might help the children understand and apply success criteria better. I also wanted the learners to work collaboratively, so they could share ideas and understanding with as many classmates as possible. To achieve this I created a Wallwisher wall where each pupil could add a success criteria next to each of the six familiar situations proposed to them. This was very useful to visualize contributions from the whole class, share ideas and generate discussions. However, though we had many comments (which was very good), there was no particular order and I felt these discussions could be brought a step further and be used to develop thinking. To achieve this I let the children use the Values Circles tool designed by NGfL Cymru. This developing thinking tool lets the learners add virtual sticky notes and place them at different distances from the centre of the bull’s eye of a dart board. At the centre and edge of the board the teacher can decide to write what they want, e.g. most relevant and least relevant, so the children can now consider success criteria added by different pupils in the class and decide how relevant for a particular situation they are. In this way they develop thinking skills as well as the ability to work interdependently.
Impact and Outcomes
- Pupils developed Literacy skills by writing comments independently and analysing contributions from their peers.
- The whole class took part in Peer Assessment of work by interacting with each other’s comments through class discussions, Wallwisher and the Values Circles tool from NGfL Cymru. Wallwisher allows the children to add comment and remain anonymous, should they wish to do so, and this was particularly useful in allowing less confident learners to contribute to the activity without fearing to be judged.
Learner feedback
My pupils loved using Wallwisher to interact with the activity and each other and they found this technology really useful to share ideas and notes. Using everyday situations helped them to understand the concept of success criteria and apply it to Science. They also liked using the NGfL Cymru Values Circles tool, as it helped them to sort things into more and less important.
Other resources
Data projector and a Tablet PC.
Lesson Learnt
It is really important that you set your wall in Wallwisher so that it can be moderated. If you do that, any new comment added by the pupils will have to be approved by you (the wall’s creator) before anyone else can see it.