I'm making a start on analysing early this year. I am going to try and do it standard by standard as we go along this year instead of trying to do it all in one go after the event. What we did during a project is then fresh in my mind and we can keep doing any good bits and bin any bad bits... that's the plan anyway..
I had 17 Year 12 students work through that standard. and the overall breakdowns are here....
I am happy with three things with these results :-
- The overall level of passing the standard is 88%, which is comfortably over the government and school target for Year 12.
- There is a good number of students who achieved this standard at Merit level, so the quality of the work is improving.
- This was the first time I have offered this standard on the NCEA Level 2 DVC course as this is a Generic Technology standard. After receiving feedback about the set up of the standard from the HOD Technology and the teacher who moderated the standard for me, I feel like I hit the spot with the planning.
How does attendance factor?
The two students who have got Not Achieved and attendances of 62% and 69%.
The students who received Merits, had attendances between 89 -100%.
The students who received an Achieved grade float about between the two.
What have I done differently?
I tried to include some pair / small group work in the standard. I have not done this at NCEA before but decided to try it after working through Kia Eke Panuku PD last year. I was nervous about doing this as I did not want to risk the student's chances of achieving when the project work has to be their own work. I feel like I have hit a balance with the group work where we used it as a support / starting point for the students own individual work. The students liked working this way and I have received positive feedback from them about it.
Is there achievement difference in the 2 different groups of Year 12 students?
I see my Year 12 students in two groups. One lot comes when I have Year 11 and Year 13 at the same time (a group of 12 students for that standard in a total class size of 29).
The other group comes when I have Year 13 at the same time (a group of 5 students in a total class size of 15).
Interesting things to note from this comparison :-
- The smaller group had a 100% pass rate
- The lager group had a bigger % of higher quality achievement (at merit)
- The merits achieved in the larger class were all from students who did NCEA Level 1 DVC with me last year.
What to take forward into the next standard ( which we have already started)
- Supportive group work where It will fit.
- Making sure I sit with each student when it is time to put work on their portfolio sites to make sure they know what they are doing. After making lists, doing examples, doing a site example and going though it with them as a whole, a lot of them still got confused so missed the deadline for silly reasons like not collating all of their work on their site.
- Much more time needs to be given on the written elements of the course and more structure here so they understand what they need to do - I received feedback from the students that one of my Google Drawing activities was not as clear as it should have been.
- The students enjoyed being able to record their analysis when I gave them chance to either on the phone, to do and audio recording, or on the iPad to do a video recording. I will be allowing them to do more of this as it is so easy to include onto their portfolio sites and there is nothing in the standards that says it has to be written down all the time.
