St Mary's School visit to Fish & Game

 Observing fish food by using our senses.

 Testing to see if the different sizes of fish food travel different distances when thrown.

 Observing fry (young trout) in a white bowl. What colour are they after being in the bowl for one hour? Will they turn completely white?

 Let's see if fry change different colours.

 Checking to see if there are colour changes in the fry depending on each coloured bowl they were in.

Yes, fish do turn blue after four weeks!

Drains in the Eastern Region

These are the types of drain that we are surveying. All the information we gather is entered on a tablet and this is downloaded onto a main database at the end of each day.

Collecting Data

When we go out and record the characteristics of drains, I need to know all the different types of vegetation both submerged under water as well as the plants along the sides of the drains.

Likewise, when I need to record the development/ages of the broods of ducklings, I need to know what they look like at each stage. That is why I have been researching the different types of vegetation found around drains, and also the developmental stages of ducklings, and making a record for myself. Researching the vegetation types was easy and I was able to create an identification sheet quite easily. However, the duckling classification was much harder because there was no actual classification using images available, so I had to make my own. It took me a long time to find each image of a duckling and match it to the written description. I will be using these sheets when I go out to do field work.

Mallard Ducklings

Science Curriculum Days in Wellington 11 - 14 August 2015

We all flew to Wellington to attend four curriculum days run by Brigitte and Dayle. It was the first time that we all met again after starting with our hosts, so a great time to find out what everyone has been up to with their science hosts.

The five Science Capabilities were explained to us, and these capabilities are what we are going to focus on during the curriculum days that are to follow. The Science Capabilities are used in schools to teach the Nature of Science properly. They were introduced a little under two years ago.

We engaged in a number of science experiments which focused on some of the science capabilities. In this experiment we focused on Capability 1 which is observing and inference. We observed everything that happened and then tried to explain why these things might be happening.

Skittles in Water

Everyone very engaged with the experiment. All went to plan and we observed some interesting changes. We then guessed why these things were happening (inference). When we finished that, we wanted to know more...(curiosity and wonder)...

So we tried to position thew skittles in a different way to see what would happen...

We answered some of our questions, and we were also left with more questions...

...and that's how science works!

Why does the colour repel from the skittle at this stage?
Why do the colours form lines?
Why do some colours cross over and blend while other colours don't?


This is where we all meet at the Royal Society building in Wellington.

At the Royal Society, we all took part in an experiment which involved chemical reactions and lids exploding off plastic drink bottles.

Everyone soon learnt to get out of the way of an exploding bottle. Of course, it ended up a competition to see whose lid would travel the longest distance - just like our students!

 Finding Gold! A chemical reaction

We visited three schools in Wellington to see how science had been implemented into each school. Every school was so welcoming and they all were very generous when sharing their ideas and resources with us. Below is a easy way to store science equipment at Onslow College. We were able to see a number of senior classes in action on our visit. thanks to those teachers who had us visit their classes while they were in the middle of teaching.

 This is a green house made out of recycled drink bottles. Thanks to Carol at Hampton Hill Primary School, and a former fellowship teacher, for sharing her school's journey in science.

 At Samuel Marsden College, we were able to view many resources available for science teaching. Thanks to the teachers there for their valuable information, and for the afternoon tea.

How do you make a working circuit using play dough? Well it turns out to be quite possible actually. One way primary teachers can let children experience circuits when you don't have all the fancy gear. And yes, the lights were actually going!

Host: Fish and Game New Zealand