CBA1 (current second years)

Moody_mona

Hi.

Has there been any guidance on CBAs for current second years? This time last year we would have been told that then second years only had to do one CBA. (well probably much later than this time last year actually)

Is anyone still waiting to do their CBA1 with current second years? We try to organise them in our school that students are only doing one CBA at a time, but that's out the window if the ones that would have been completed in the Christmas to midterm and midterm to Easter sections of the year now need to happen in Easter to summer term.

I'm teaching Science in a classroom this year and at a loss as to how to carry out experimental investigations.

Thanks!

m*pp*t

I don't think we were told until the last week of May last year (or maybe the last fortnight). I teach science as well and our school has been trying to move on with the CBAs remotely. I contacted the NCCA in January looking for guidance about the difficulty with carrying out the Experimental Investigation for CBA1 (I also pointed out that due to time lost in 1st and 2nd year it would be only reasonable to reduce the requirement to one CBA per subject - this wasn't mentioned in their reply). The response basically said that the new guidance allows schools to adjust the windows/dates for CBAs as required based on local needs. Which we have chosen to interpret as an allowance to reverse the order of the CBAs. So we're doing the research investigation (CBA2) with second years. And we'll worry about the experimental one next year if needs be. The only concern of the NCCA seemed to be that there would be consistency within school (ie that the whole Science department would coordinate their approach.)

m*pp*t

https://ncca.ie/en/resources/revised-arrangements-for-the-completion-of-classroom-based-assessments-for-the-cohort-of-students-2018-2021

That's the link to the guidelines document sent to me by the NCCA back in a January. (it's stupidly still named as relating only to the 2018-2021 cohort but it does have a mention of the current 2nd years as well.)

Moody_mona

I appreciate that!

I'm reluctant to change the order of the CBAs (although I do think it's an excellent idea. I'm doing CBA2 with my 3rd years because I think the skills are so important).

I don't have enough consistent engagement from my second years to attempt a CBA with them at home unfortunately. Hopefully they won't be overloaded when they're back in the classroom after Easter.

Alqua

I can't understand how we would be expected to do 'classroom-based assignments' when we are not in the classroom.

m*pp*t

Moody_mona wrote: »

I appreciate that!

I'm reluctant to change the order of the CBAs (although I do think it's an excellent idea. I'm doing CBA2 with my 3rd years because I think the skills are so important).

I don't have enough consistent engagement from my second years to attempt a CBA with them at home unfortunately. Hopefully they won't be overloaded when they're back in the classroom after Easter.

I personally much prefer CBA1 - I love watching the students tinkering around with ludicrous ideas and then refining them down to something more realistic that forces them to think scientifically. But as I said to the person I contacted in the NCCA these kids lost time in the lab last year and with safety precautions they've been able to do very little hands on practical work this year. So realistically I don't think mine have enough awareness of their capabilities/limitations in terms of gathering data to be able to develop sensible investigation ideas. If labs go back to normal next year then I'd hope they'd be better prepared to do CBA1 in third year. (But in all honesty, I'd be very surprised if the required amount of CBAs doesn't get reduced for this year group as well.)

In terms of overloading the kids, we've always made the point to management when they start getting into knots about it, that the work gets done during class time (with maybe minimal amounts of work to do at home - but equivalent to a reasonable amount of homework that you could be setting anyway). So, if staff are sensible about how they frame the workload then there shouldn't be any extra stress on students. So if I were you, I wouldn't feel too bad about them doing multiple CBAs concurrently.

Moody_mona

m*pp*t wrote: »

I personally much prefer CBA1 - I love watching the students tinkering around with ludicrous ideas and then refining them down to something more realistic that forces them to think scientifically. But as I said to the person I contacted in the NCCA these kids lost time in the lab last year and with safety precautions they've been able to do very little hands on practical work this year. So realistically I don't think mine have enough awareness of their capabilities/limitations in terms of gathering data to be able to develop sensible investigation ideas. If labs go back to normal next year then I'd hope they'd be better prepared to do CBA1 in third year. (But in all honesty, I'd be very surprised if the required amount of CBAs doesn't get reduced for this year group as well.)

In terms of overloading the kids, we've always made the point to management when they start getting into knots about it, that the work gets done during class time (with maybe minimal amounts of work to do at home - but equivalent to a reasonable amount of homework that you could be setting anyway). So, if staff are sensible about how they frame the workload then there shouldn't be any extra stress on students. So if I were you, I wouldn't feel too bad about them doing multiple CBAs concurrently.

Thanks again for this!

You're right about CBAs concurrently, and I know it's just normal school work, it just kind of goes against what we've tried to avoid by spreading out the work.

I think doing CBA1 right now for me would be for the sake of it - for the reasons you outlined, limited practical experience etc, and I don't think they'd be getting the most out of it.