Letter to my students

Dear students,

We know that you worked really, REALLY hard on this assignment. We know you agonised over your fair test, striving to write a testable question, to identify independent and dependent and control variables. We know you were thinking about how to make the best use of what you learnt in your last science unit to do it *just right.* (We even know when you fudged your results - because you left it too late or the plants didn't grow the way you thought they should or you only bought enough materials to do one repetition.) 

We realise that for many of you, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures are not something you are familiar with; but it's important so you took the time to learn more and to find connections with your topic wherever you could. Ditto sustainability. 

We know you spent a lot of time poring over the syllabus, trying to figure out which concepts to address and which skills were relevant for which Stage. We appreciate the effort you put into identifying alternative science conceptions. We recognise that you put considerable effort into creating and drawing and finding images that would engage students while also helping them understand science concepts. We get that it took time to prune your text down to fit the word limit so that every single word was important. We can see where you searched long and hard for relevant resources and worked to decipher APA6 formatting when compiling your reference lists. 

We accept that putting all of this together into a picture book required a HUGE effort.

You may not realise it yet, but we know that your effort was worth it. We know you will have learnt a lot about a great many things. 

         "But," we hear you say, "if I have come so far, why do I feel that there is still so much to learn?"

(Spoiler alert: teaching will always be this way.)

We want you to do well! 

This is why we have taken such time and effort to give you feedback: to help you recognise the things you did well and to identify the places where you fell short - or fell over. We want you to know yourself and to know what to fix, where to go next and even when to start again. 

Just as you learned a lot from making the book, we hope that you will learn from our comments. 

Be open to our feedback. It's far more important than your mark because it shows you how to grow.

We believe in you. 

We trust in your ability to work hard and to learn from your mistakes. We know you are capable of great things because already we can see how far you have come. 

No matter what happened in the first part of this assignment, know that we are eager to see you share your thinking with others in Part 2. They too know how hard this was, they know what you've been through and can't wait to see your work. Know also that each of you has something to offer your fellow students that they need to hear. 

We can't wait to see how you will continue to build your understanding of science and how to teach it. 

You've got this. 

We know you do.