A birdhouse in your soul

Tomorrow is Collaborative Science Project (CSP) day at my (Danny's) school. Formerly known as the Group 4 Project, the CSP is something special for us IBDP science teachers. It's designed to address Aim 1 for the course:

develop conceptual understanding that allows connections to be made between different areas of the subject, and to other DP sciences subjects

Since there isn't a lot of clear guidance on how to run the CSP, it has become a bit idiosyncratic around the world. Some schools make it into a day trip off-campus, while others make it a day of science lab work or activities.

We're trying something a bit new at our school this year. In groups of 3, students will design and complete a project that creates something valuable that relates to a small patch of wilderness near our school. A few of the proposals include:

1. Photographing, identifying, and researching the flora in that wild area to create an identification guide for younger science classes.
2. Investigating the species of birds in the area and building a suitable birdhouse.
3. Analyzing the chemical and physical properties of the soil and comparing the conditions to other areas in our region to create a lesson for younger science classes about abiotic factors in ecosystems.
4. Identifying invasive species and creating a walking trail with informative signs that describe the invasive species.

We will finish off the project with 3-minute presentations for the whole group, and of course with the required reflections. It promises to be a fun day, and I can't wait!

On a separate note, we've been working on improving the student side of the website as well as the teacher advice pages, and have just finished with Topic A.4 (previously, we did the same with E.4 and E.5). The student site has mostly-new interactive textbook pages, self-study practice questions, multiple-choice questions and problems that can be assigned, and a topic test. The teacher site has three new pages, each of which has a new slide-deck along with lots of advice and ideas for teaching:

There are some mild formatting changes and re-organization coming over the next 3 months across all the InThinking subject websites, so we're doing our best to make sure this website is an essential tool for September 2026. There's lots more to come, so stick around!

- Danny