Skill companion: Collaboration in Science (Year 6)

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Skill companion · Year 6 Science as a Human Endeavourseegongsik /au

Collaboration in Science: a skill companion

A small set of reusable sheets that grow one Human Endeavour idea: big advances in science come from people working together and building on those before them, and there are good reasons why. Print the scaffolds once and slot them into the science lessons you are already teaching.

AC9S6H01

examine why advances in science are often the result of collaboration or build on the work of others

What a skill companion is

Human Endeavour ideas are not a topic of their own. They grow inside the science units a class teaches all year, such as Habitat Conditions and Survival; Earth, Sun and the Day-Night Cycle; Electrical Circuits and Energy; and Reversible and Irreversible Changes. So this pack is not a full term of lessons. It is three reusable scaffolds, a map of where they fit, and a short stand-alone lesson for teaching the idea on its own first.

Start here: five minutes

Read the pairing map on the next page: it shows which scaffold fits which science lesson.
Print the organiser whenever a lesson meets a discovery, and the case-study sheet once per child.
Cut out the reason cards once. They are reused all year whenever a class meets a story of people working together.
Open the free interactive unit on your board when you want a worked example of the idea.
Run the one-page mini-lesson first if you want to teach the idea before folding it into a topic.

No science background needed

This pack is written for the busy generalist teacher. Each scaffold explains itself in plain words, and the answer sheet gives a model organiser for the Solar System story, the case-study answers, the card key with a reason for each, a model answer for every Year 6 topic, and a quick three-level guide. In Year 5, children traced who built on whom. The step up in Year 6 is how working together helps: pooling records from more places and years than one person could cover, checking one another’s work, and combining different skills.

On the board

This pack is the printable half of a free interactive unit. On screen, children press “Add next evidence” in “How the model of the Solar System was built up”, switch between “Table”, “Bar chart” and “Line graph” in “How sky observations piled up, century by century”, choose a way of working in “Should you share your sky records, or keep them to yourself?”, and sort statements with “Supports” and “Does not support” in “Which statements show how the Solar System model really grew?”. Each scaffold in this pack turns one of those moves into something children do on paper.

seegongsik.com/au/y6/human-endeavour/AC9S6H01

Aligned to the Australian Curriculum V9 (AC9S6H01). This pack is original material from seegongsik, independently produced and not endorsed by ACARA. Curriculum content descriptors are (c) ACARA, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Free to print and use in class.

Where the idea fitsPairing map

Slot the idea into your science lessons

Every science unit rests on work that many people did together. This map shows such an advance in each Year 6 topic, how working together helped, and which scaffold to reach for. You do not run these as extra lessons; you fold them into the science you teach.

When you teach	An advance that took many people	How working together helped	Scaffold
Habitat Conditions and Survival (AC9S6U01)	Knowing which birds live where across Australia	Thousands of volunteers count birds in their own gardens and parks and send the counts in: pooling	Reason cards, then the organiser
Earth, Sun and the Day-Night Cycle (AC9S6U02)	Measuring the distance to the Sun from the 1769 transit of Venus	Only observers far apart could compare timings, and several at each place checked one another	The case-study sheet is this story
Electrical Circuits and Energy (AC9S6U03)	Solar cells that turn light into electricity	Teams built on earlier designs for decades, and labs in many countries tested and improved them	Organiser
Reversible and Irreversible Changes (AC9S6U04)	Working out that burning needs oxygen	A chemist in France repeated an English chemist’s experiment with a new gas and explained burning	Organiser, then the reason cards
Any science topic	The class’s own investigation	Pooling the class’s results and checking one another’s	The mini-lesson first

The three moves, and the picture that backs each one

When you want a worked example on the board, open the interactive unit and use the picture that matches the move children are working on.

Follow a model as each group builds on the last: “How the model of the Solar System was built up”.
Weigh keeping records against sharing them: “Should you share your sky records, or keep them to yourself?”.
Tell the real story from the lone-genius myth: “Which statements show how the Solar System model really grew?”.

How the scaffolds build the idea

The organiser lists who took part in any advance, what each added, and how their working together helped. The case study follows the 1769 transit of Venus, where observers far apart pooled and checked timings to measure the distance to the Sun. The reason cards sort real collaborations, from bird counts to the bionic ear, by the way working together helped most.

Scaffold 1 · Why it took many peopleOne per child

Why did it take many people?

NameClassDate

Pick an advance from our science topic. List the people or groups who took part and what each added, then tick how their working together helped. A row can have more than one tick.

The advance:

Who took part	What they added	How it helped
		pooled □checked □combined skills □built on earlier work □
		pooled □checked □combined skills □built on earlier work □
		pooled □checked □combined skills □built on earlier work □
		pooled □checked □combined skills □built on earlier work □

Think about it

1. Which part could one person never have done alone? Why not?

2. Where did someone build on work done long before them?

3. What might have gone wrong if the results had been kept secret?

Teacher note: the unit’s Solar System story fills the four rows well as a first go; a model is on the answer sheet.

Scaffold 2 · Case studyOne per child

The transit of Venus, 1769

NameClassDate

Every so often, Venus passes across the face of the Sun as a small black dot. These transits come in pairs eight years apart, with more than a hundred years between pairs, and one happened in June 1769.

Astronomers had a plan, first put forward more than 50 years earlier by Edmond Halley, who died long before he could see it tried. If observers far apart on Earth timed how long Venus took to cross the Sun, the small differences in their timings would let them work out how far away the Sun is. So countries sent observers to places far apart.

Tahiti	an island in the Pacific Ocean
Hudson Bay	in northern Canada
North Cape	the far north of Norway

These are the three places Britain sent observers. Observers from many other countries timed the transit too.

The timing was hard. Near the edge of the Sun, Venus seemed to stick to the edge like a drop of ink, so even observers standing side by side wrote down different times: on Tahiti, two of them disagreed by as much as 42 seconds. When astronomers later put the timings from many places together, the best results put the Sun about 150 million kilometres away, very close to the value measured today.

1. Why could one observer, however careful, not measure the Sun’s distance alone?

2. Why did each place send more than one observer?

3. Whose earlier work did the observers build on?

4. Find one example of each in the story.

Pooling
Checking
Combining skills
Building on earlier work

Scaffold 3 · Reason cards (cut out)Reuse all year

How did working together help?

Cut out the cards. Lay down the three grey heading cards, then place each real collaboration under the way it helped most. Be ready to say why: some cards could go under two headings.

PoolingMany people, places or years cover more than one person couldHeading

CheckingOthers test the work and catch mistakesHeading

Combining skillsPeople who know different things work togetherHeading

Each October, thousands of people across Australia count the birds they see in 20 minutes in a garden, park or schoolyard, and send their counts in.Card A

A lab reports a battery that stores more energy. Labs in other countries build the same battery to see whether they get the same result.Card B

Surgeons, engineers and hearing experts in Melbourne worked together to build one of the first bionic ears, an implant that helps deaf people hear.Card C

Before a science article is printed in a journal, other scientists read it closely and look for mistakes.Card D

Weather stations across the country have sent in the rainfall every day for more than 100 years.Card E

In 1769, observers in many countries timed Venus crossing the face of the Sun, and their timings were put together.Card F

Indigenous rangers and fire scientists plan cool-season burns together, joining knowledge of Country passed down for thousands of years with satellite maps.Card G

One class’s thermometer readings looked odd, so another class measured the same water with its own thermometer.Card H

For thousands of years, sky-watchers in many cultures recorded where the Sun, Moon and planets appeared, and passed their records on.Card I

Teacher note: the piles are not the same size. The key, with a reason for each card, is on the answer sheet.

Mini-lesson · Teacher planAbout 30 minutes

Many patches, one map

Use this stand-alone lesson to teach the idea on its own, before you fold it into a science topic. Each pair surveys one small patch of the school grounds for minibeasts. One patch says little, but the class’s patches pooled on one map show where minibeasts live, and the class can say why it took everyone.

We are learning to

explain why a finding can need many people, places or years,
tell pooling, checking and combining skills apart,
say how sharing results helps a whole class go further.

Success criteria

I can explain why our map needed every pair’s patch.
I can sort a real collaboration by the way working together helped, and say why.

You need

for each pair, a hoop (or 4 m of string laid out as a square) to mark a patch, a clipboard and a simple minibeast picture key,
a large map of the school grounds on the board or on chart paper,
the reason cards (scaffold 3), one set per table, and the free interactive unit on your board, if you have one.

Safety: look, do not touch. Lift only small leaves and put them back, leave every animal where it is, keep hands away from spiders and ants, wear hats outside, and wash hands afterwards.

Lesson flow (about 30 minutes)

5 min	One patch or many? Mark patches in different places: under trees, in leaf litter, on mown grass, beside a path. Give two pairs the same patch. Ask: “Could one pair tell us where minibeasts live in our whole school? Why not?”
10 min	Count Pairs spend five minutes counting every minibeast in their patch, using the picture key to name them. Ask: “Who else’s knowledge are you using when you name an animal from the key?”
10 min	Pool and check Back inside, pairs write their counts on the class map. The two pairs that shared a patch compare their counts. Ask: “What pattern can the whole map show that one patch could not? Why might the two counts differ?”
5 min	Why it took everyone Tables sort the reason cards under the three headings, then name where each way showed up in today’s map. Ask: “Which way of working together mattered most today?”

Running it shorter? Stop after Pool and check, and sort the reason cards in your next science lesson.

On the board

For a worked example, open the unit and press “Add next evidence” in “How the model of the Solar System was built up”: each step keeps the records shared before it. Then choose each option in “Should you share your sky records, or keep them to yourself?” and read what each way of working gains and gives up.

seegongsik.com/au/y6/human-endeavour/AC9S6H01

Watch for these ideas

Deciding the pair with the biggest count found the right answer, when each patch tells part of the story.
Treating two different counts of one patch as someone being wrong, rather than a reason to look again together.
Thinking that working together only means many hands, and missing checking and the knowledge others bring.

Make it easier, make it bigger

Easier: survey only two kinds of places, sunny and shady, and compare the two.
Bigger: repeat the survey next season, building on today’s map, and say what changed and why.

Answers and look-fors

The next sheet has a model organiser for the Solar System story, the case-study answers, the card key, a model answer for each Year 6 topic, and a quick three-level guide.

Answers · For the teacherModel responses

Answers and look-fors

Organiser: the Solar System story

Who took part	What they added	How it helped
Sky-watchers in many early cultures	long records of where the Sun, Moon and planets appeared	pooled, over many lifetimes
Astronomers in Babylon, Greece, India and the Islamic world	copied, checked and improved the records over centuries	checked, built on earlier work
Tycho Brahe and his helpers, in Denmark	years of the most exact planet positions measured without a telescope	pooled, combined skills
Johannes Kepler	used those records to show that the orbits are ellipses, slightly squashed circles	built on earlier work

1. No one person could watch the sky for centuries, or measure every position alone. 2. Kepler built on Tycho’s records, and both built on centuries of earlier sky records. 3. Mistakes would have gone unchecked, and Kepler could not have found the shape of the orbits.

Case study: the transit of Venus

1. The method compares timings from places far apart, such as Tahiti, Hudson Bay and North Cape: one observer has only one place. 2. Timing was hard, and even observers side by side disagreed by up to 42 seconds, so several observers at each place checked one another (and a cloud over one place would not lose the result). 3. Edmond Halley, who put forward the method more than 50 years before. 4. Pooling: timings from many places were put together. Checking: several observers at each place. Combining skills: astronomers sailed with navigators and ships’ crews who could find a far-off island. Building on earlier work: Halley’s plan.

Reason cards

Card	Heading	Why
A	Pooling	No one could count birds in thousands of places at once.
B	Checking	A result others can repeat is one people can trust.
C	Combining skills	Each group knew one part: the ear, the electronics, or hearing.
D	Checking	Fresh eyes catch errors the writers missed.
E	Pooling	Only a record from many places over many years shows how rainfall changes.
F	Pooling	Timings from places far apart were needed to work out how far away the Sun is.
G	Combining skills	Knowledge of the land and maps from space each show what the other cannot.
H	Checking	A second measurement shows whether the first can be trusted.
I	Pooling	Records over many lifetimes show patterns no one lifetime could.

A card placed under a second heading is fine if the child gives a good reason, such as card F under checking.

What a good answer sounds like

Topic	An advance	Why it took many people, at standard
Habitat Conditions and Survival	Knowing which birds live where across Australia	No one could count birds in thousands of gardens at once, so pooled counts from volunteers show where birds live and how their numbers change.
Earth, Sun and the Day-Night Cycle	The distance to the Sun, from the 1769 transit of Venus	The method needed timings from places far apart, several observers at each place checked one another, and it built on Halley’s plan.
Electrical Circuits and Energy	Solar cells that turn light into electricity	Each team built on the cell designs before it, and labs in many countries tested the new designs before they were trusted.
Reversible and Irreversible Changes	Working out that burning needs oxygen	Antoine Lavoisier, in France, repeated Joseph Priestley’s experiments with a new gas and explained burning as joining with it: oxygen.

A quick three-level guide

Move	Working towards	At standard	Beyond
Explain why it took many	says that many people helped	names how working together helped: pooling, checking, combining skills or building on earlier work	explains why the advance could not have come from one person
Trace who built on whom	lists the people in any order	shows who built on whom and what each added	says what each step kept and what it changed
Weigh sharing	says that sharing is good	gives a reason sharing helps and a cost, such as losing control of the data	uses a real case to show how sharing changed what was found

A child at standard explains how working together helped an advance, by pooling, checking, combining skills or building on earlier work, and why no one person could have done it alone. The idea grows all year, so keep the scaffolds coming back in every science topic.