Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

5 minutes

Tune in: The importance of measuring impact

25 minutes

Find out: How to evaluate data to assess your impact

15 minutes

Take action: What was your impact?

5 minutes

Reflection

We recommend you complete the previous lessons in this unit prior to this lesson.

Tune in: The importance of measuring impact

Step 1.

Listen to the MOAH Coreen Episode from 7:00 - 8:39 mins. The transcript for this section can be found on the Student Worksheet and in the link provided. The Coreen episode of MOAH focuses on a school in Blacktown that is committed to ensuring they create a respectful environment that supports their students and allows for equal opportunities for all. Their hoodie design focuses on embracing the school's shared history to illustrate the community's hopes for the future.

Invite students to reflect on these questions:

What is the impact of the student's hoodie design process?
What do you think they did to measure the impact?
When the school community receives their specially designed hoodies, how can they measure the impact it makes?

Step 2.

Invite students to read page 41 from 101 Lessons in Organising Change by Jack Manning Bancroft, the founder of AIME. The text from this page is included on the Student Worksheet for reference.

Ask students:

How does this information relate to their social change experiment?
What is the importance of measuring impact when you are using the scientific method?

Find out: How to evaluate data to assess your impact

Step 1.

Explain to students that one of the most important parts of any scientific report is the discussion section, which comes immediately after the results. If required, recap the parts of a scientific report which can be found in the Scientific Report Format factsheet.

Ask students to write down what it means to ‘discuss’ something on their worksheet.

Invite students to share their definitions with the class and highlight the common themes. You may like to write these on the board.

Possible responses:

What ‘discussing’ is: to talk about something, a conversation to decide something, hearing about other opinions and views about a topic or issue, conversation, active listening and responding, exchanging ideas, analysing a topic, talking about something in detail.
What ‘discussing’ is not: telling somebody something, a one-sided conversation/argument, not talking about something in detail.

Step 2.

Discuss with students what they believe should go into a discussion section in a report. Prompt them with the definition of discussion and how this relates to their investigation. You may like to write these on the board as you discuss.

When students write a discussion, they are not having a conversation with somebody. They are writing their own individual thoughts down. Ask students what they need to make sure they do for their discussion section.

Suggested response: Talk about other opinions and views in order to analyse their results effectively and not be one-sided.

If your class has conducted their social change experiment from the previous lessons in the unit, you can use the class results to talk about what they would need to discuss.

Step 3.

When your class has come up with the information they believe should go into this section. Show them this video which outlines how to write a discussion section:

How to Write a Discussion Section (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfCGoWtF_tc)

Step 4.

When you have finished watching the video, go through the list below with students on what a typical discussion includes. This is also included on their Student Worksheet.

The discussion is the place to analyse the results and to unravel their impact. It is also used to analyse the experiment itself and discuss things that might have impacted the experimental method or the results themselves.

A typical discussion will include:

A summary of the results
Identification of any patterns or trends that were observed and what these patterns might mean
Using previous research to put the results into context. Were they expected or unexpected? Why?
Did the results support the hypothesis? What does this mean for the variables?
Whether or not the results can be generalised to other situations
The limitations of the experiment, any errors encountered and an explanation of any unexpected results
Any improvements that could be made to enhance the experimental design
Possibilities for taking the research further

A discussion shouldn’t include any new information. It also shouldn’t be used to restate the results in words. A discussion is a ‘discussion’ of data, which means the results need to be interpreted and analysed to uncover their impact. A discussion should be half a page to a page in length.

Step 5.

Discuss with students how you might represent data in the discussion section by referring to the key points above. You may like to do this with your own data, or you can find example data in the teacher content information relating to the example research question about recycling that has been discussed - Does raising awareness about recycling within Year 8 increase the rate at which students use the correct bins?

Step 6.

Enquire with students about the components needed for a scientific conclusion.

The last section in any scientific report is the conclusion. This is a 1-paragraph summary of the investigation. A conclusion should include:

Restating the aim and the objectives of the research
Stating the main results and findings of the investigation and identifying if the results supported the hypothesis
Identifying any limitations which may have affected the results
Stating the implications of the findings

Take action: What was your impact?

Depending on how you are using this lesson, this section could take multiple forms.

If you are using this lesson for students to follow the process of designing an experiment to ignite change, each Take Action at the end of the lesson will correspond to forming a different section of their overall experiment. This first Take Action will focus on them writing a discussion and conclusion.

You could choose for students to develop their own experiments, or you could conduct one experiment as a class, and each student could write their own report.

This is an alternative approach to teaching the scientific method that could result in some social change within your class or school community. Consider spending some time thinking about ways your class could create change within your community and encourage students to think creatively about how they could make a positive impact and measure it. If you want to focus on the scientific method more, we would suggest focusing on a class or year-level change through one experiment.

Some possible examples could be:

Does raising awareness about recycling within Year 8 increase the rate at which students use the correct bins?
Does an awareness campaign about fast fashion influence the clothing choices of Year 8 students?

Step 1.

Divide students back into their groups from the last lesson or allocate them to groups of 3-4.

Using the information you have covered about writing a discussion and conclusion, ask the students to write a discussion and conclusion for their own social change experiment that you decided upon in the past lessons. You can choose to give students the appropriate amount of time–we would recommend at least another 30 minutes in another lesson depending on the level of detail you want in these sections.

Students can use a template such as the one available in the Student Worksheet to help them with planning before incorporating it into their report.

Reflection

Ask students to reread 'Impact is oxygen. Keep records of the score' from the beginning of the lesson.

What are the similarities between this story and a discussion section?

Are the concepts in a discussion and a scientific report only useful for science in the lab?

Evaluating Data to Assess Impact

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