Food Matters

For this Sec 3 (NT) science broad theme of Food Matters (which covers three topics on Sources of Food, Food Chemistry, and Food Health & Safety), the teacher Hisham started off with a verbal discussion with his class on the concept of Food in general.

Students came up with a vast range of broad inquiry questions, which were noted down by Hisham.

In the second lesson, he introduced trigger experiments on food testing. He led the class in a couple of food experiments in which the students got to test for starch, sugar, etc. in foods. The class became interested in the growth of plants as part of how food is made/created, and class discussion ensued. Students wrote down notes in their journals.

The third lesson, Hisham brought in another trigger experiment on soil acidity, where students experimented with the acidity/alkalinity of three different types of soil. This was again followed by class discussions, and students subsequently went online to KF to post their notes and ideas. In a KF view 'Sources of Food' (Fig. 1 below), students brought up ideas on agriculture and mass production.

Fig. 1. KF view 'Sources of Food'

In following lessons, Hisham selected a few students' notes regarding fertilizers ("I wonder how fertilizer help plants grow faster?") and food production ("How to improve food production?") to expound on. He used these questions to show students two videos; one on fertilizers (Fig. 2) and one on the slash and burn method, a cheap means of clearing land and making soil fertile (Fig. 3). Consequently, students went online to KF to post their thoughts and ideas on the KF view 'Soil Fertility' (Fig. 4).

Fig. 2. Video "What are fertilizers?"

Fig. 3. Video "Slash and Burn method"

Fig 4. KF view 'Soil Fertility' 

In this manner, the experiments and videos were in fact a means of shaping students' ideas on the theme of Food Matters.

Causes of WWI

The history topic that a teacher, Melvin, was to cover with his class was the causes of WWI.

His trigger activity was to split students into groups to work on the inquiry question “Was Germany responsible for WWI?”, but each group was assigned different roles of key players in WWI, e.g., Group A represented France, Groups B represented Britain, Group C represented Germany, etc. Students were instructed to answer the question from their assigned perspective. They wrote their individual answers on pieces of paper, which were converted into respective group flowcharts and write-ups in the next lesson.

KB pedagogy consequently came into play when Melvin took each group's flowchart and write-up and passed to different groups for peer review. Students were tasked with writing new things they learnt from reading the other groups' work, and posing questions for the group. In this way, Melvin got students to work on improving and building on to ideas.

In subsequent lessons where students were actively posting their ideas and inquiries on KF, students continually thought about, and questioned, the role of the key players in WWI (i.e., Britain, France, Germany, etc.). For example, in a KF view (Fig. 1) where Melvin questioned his students if the Treaty of Versailles (TOV) was fair to Germany, a student answered that "Germany did not cause the war to happen...", and named Austria, Hungary, France, and Great Britain as countries who should shoulder the blame as well (Fig. 2).

Fig 1. KF view "TOV fair?" of Melvin's class

Fig 2. A student's note in the KF view "TOV fair?"