Do you struggle to include science in your teaching programme?
You’re not alone.
It became a real concern a few years ago, when the New Zealand Council for Educational Research noticed that teachers particularly struggled to include the Nature of Science strand in their science teaching.
As a consequence, students often don’t understand the kind of knowledge that science produces, or how it is developed.
Connected+ can help change that.
Connected+: helping students become citizen scientists
We began publishing Connected+ in 2013 for the Ministry of Education. It’s part of the Instructional Series, which is supplied free to all schools in New Zealand, and supports learning across the New Zealand Curriculum.
Each year, the series addresses one of the ‘nature of science’ strands: gather and interpret data, use evidence, critique evidence, interpret representations, and engage with science.
You’ll know that engagement is the key to student achievement (the OECD backs this up), so one of the key goals of Connected is to motivate, excite and engage students in science learning.
Let’s produce a generation of citizen scientists!
Turning science into an eLearning experience
The great thing about Connected is that it is both a print and a digital resource – opening up a world of possibilities for teaching and learning in science.
Your school already receives printed issues and PDFs of the teacher support material (find it on TKI too), but you also have access to Connected+ on Google Drive.
Find out how to get started using Connected+ on Google Slides.
Connected+ on Google Drive gives you access to:
- Digital versions of the articles in each book on Google Slides
- Hyperlinks to additional content (including video) to extend the lead article in each issue
- Audio files for each of the lead articles (making them especially accessible to ESL students and struggling readers)
- PDF versions of each article
- Word versions of the teacher support materials (as well as PDFs), which teachers can adapt to meet the context for learning and the learning needs of their students
- Word versions of each article, to allow students (and teachers) to use the text for multiple purposes
- Open-source photographs, illustrations, maps, graphs, and other graphic elements to download and reuse (even manipulate if you want!).
Connected+ on Google slides
Level 2 Connected+
Level 3 Connected+
Level 4 Connected+
Connected+ feedback
The Ministry of Education, Lift Education, and CORE Education want your feedback on Connected+. We encourage teachers working with students at curriculum levels 2–4 to use Connected+ with their students and then tell us:
- What does the print and digital model let you do that you couldn’t do before?
- How do your students use the digital content?
- What other digital assets would you like?
You can send your feedback to Lift Ed’s Alex Collins here.