The Science Conference
Trudy Widjaja, Year 5
What makes Year 5 so unique? It is the conferencing habit that
Mr Matthew implements with individuals and with groups in
every subject. He sometimes calls on each student to see him,
one-on-one, for a more personal approach. At other times, he
will bring the whole class’ attention for a group conference to
discuss certain topics. The reason he does this is because he
wants to make sure that students grasp the concepts better and
understand the lesson.
“Conferencing is good because it helps me know my mistakes
and what I need to improve on so that I may add these to my
next science project,” said Kellen, an energetic Year 5 student.
When students first learned about scientific methods a few
months ago, Mr Matthew intensively did a lot of conferencing
with them. He carefully guided them, gave input and
encouraged a discussion of new ideas. It does help students
make the task of their next science project much easier to do.
They can see that they are getting more confident and more
creative over time.
People can see this from their latest science experiments. Their
display board shows that each of the students has mastered the
concept of “scientific method”. Mr Matthew is pleased with them
and most of the students were graded well and were able to do
it flawlessly.
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