Manaiakalani Google Class OnAir Lesson 11 - Design Analysis of Each Others Work

See the whole Class OnAir team here

Direct Instruction

Direct instruction was given to the whole group round the front table where we analysed the first example together as a class. A photograph had been taken of one students' design development drawing and projected onto the board for us all to see. The teacher asked analysis questions and the class called out their answers to the whole group. The questions concentrated around the multistructural and relational parts of SOLO structure.
Direct instruction then transferred to individual help and questioning where needed throughout the exercise.

This video show the direct instruction at the start of the session.

This video shows some of the ongoing lesson.

Detailed Lesson Plan

Lesson Topic :- Design Analysis Exercises
Year Group :-  Focus on Year 12  (but includes Year 11 and 13 in the same lesson)
Learning Outcome	The students will be able to use the analysis skills learned in the previous session on each other’s design work.
Success Criteria Using SOLO	Uni structural Multi structural Relational Extended abstract Students can identify the main parts of a design. Students can describe and list the design elements, properties, use and materials used in a design. Students can explain and compare elements of a design idea to show how they work together and the effects that they have. Students can evaluate the work of others and reflect on where design decisions have been made and generalise on why they were made.
Links with the New Zealand Curriculum	Level 2 Curriculum Level: 7 Learning Area: Technology Strand: Design and Visual Communication Achievement Objective: Outcome development and evaluation Critically analyse their own and others’ outcomes and evaluative practices to inform the development of ideas for feasible outcomes. Undertake a critical evaluation that is informed by ongoing experimentation and functional modelling, stakeholder feedback, and trialling in the physical and social environments. Use the information gained to select, justify, and develop an outcome. Evaluate this outcome’s fitness for purpose against the brief. Justify the evaluation, using feedback from stakeholders and demonstrating a critical understanding of the issue. Achievement Standard: AS91342
Key Competencies	Thinking - analysing the design based on the specific question. Using language, symbols, and texts - writing the analysis is full sentences. Managing self - keeping on task and following the RISE values for their work. Participating and contributing - making sure they write their own feedback on each example for others to see and read. Making sure they remember their RISE values when commenting on each other’s work. Relating to others - responding to the comments of others in a positive way.
Prior knowledge	The students have been drawing their design developments for their Product Design project. We have been doing analysis exercises together on the class Google Plus Communities.
Lesson Sequence	Session Outline Student Activity Teacher Activity Sit round the front desk to get activity instructions. Give suggestions verbally when doing the example group analysis all together. Listen to feedback from the teacher about the example design and how to use the words / structure from the previous exercise. Photograph one piece of work from a student’s sketchbook and upload it to the class community to use as an example. Moderate / facilitate the discussion about the design that is uploaded. Ensure the students are aware of The describing words document Making sure they are respectful to each other when commenting on each other’s work Using the same format that we used in the previous exercise Photograph an example out of everyone’s sketchbook and upload them to all three Google Plus Communities. Roam the room while the students do the activity to have one to one conversations and help where needed. Monitor the comments coming through to ensure respect is ongoing. Look at each of the design development drawings posted into the community. Think about the SOLO structured questions we are using to analyse the work. Read through the supplied document about describing words and scan them to see if they can use any of them. Write analysis notes in the comment sections under the photographs of each student’s design development. Remember their RISE values when commenting on each other’s work.
Resources	Photographs / scans from the sketch books of the students of their current work. Google Plus Communities Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Document - Describing Words
Next Steps	The students now need to start analysing their own design work. They can use this feedback from others to start them off if they want to.
Reflection and Analysis
	What went well? The students were really respectful of each other’s work and provided some useful feedback. They used the same format as the exercise that we did as it was the next day so it was fresh in their mind. Some scanning of the vocabulary links was done and helped the students who did do it. They are getting better at giving suggestions when we sit together as a whole group at the start of the lesson - no answer is a wrong answer! What needs work? They seem to still be a bit shy at writing their thoughts in the comment section under the pictures. I told them to just do word lists or bullet points. Focus on the analysis not the sentences. Again it is the English structure that is holding them back in confidence. I need to provide sentence starters in future to give them the confidence to just put their thoughts down and not worry about anything else.

Student Work

Class Google Plus Communities

Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

Building up the design analysis in stages.

My seniors (Year 11, 12 and 13) Design and Visual Communication students are at the point where they need to do written analysis of their own design work.
This is always the difficult part for us so I have made it the focus for my Manaiakalani Class OnAir work this term.
So far, we have done exercises together on the class Google Plus Communities of common products that they are familiar with - Link to lesson post here.
Our next step was to take photographs of the design development work that the class has been working on and put that up into the community and analyse each other's work. There is no lesson link to this at the time of writing as I am still putting it together for Class OnAir. I have been working with students using the Google Plus Communities since doing my year with the Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher programme in 2014, where I focussed on blended learning. The students told me then that it was easier to analyse someone else's' work than their own.
This week, we are working on step three of this process where I am going to put up a product at the start of each lesson and we are going to verbally analyse it all together.
We had out first go at this today. I put up a simple product, a shape sorter, and we all sat round the front talking about the design decisions that has been made for that product. I wanted them to talk about it together so that the pressure of writing sentences about it was taken off them and they could concentrate on the analysis.
After the session, which was very short, 10 minutes maximum, they got back to their individual design development work. I wrote up what they said onto a shared Google Drawing and put it into the class communities for them to look back on if they needed to. My plan is to do this at the start of each lesson for the next couple of weeks so they get used analysing and hopefully increasing the depth of the analysis each time we do it.
I coloured their replies on the drawing in relation to the SOLO taxonomy posters we have in every class room at school.
I then spent the session talking to the students on an individual basis, helping them with their analysis work on their design by asking them questions that they had to answer themselves.

Here are their replies today :-



Here is the SOLO Poster information that it corresponds to :-

It's nice to have visitors ...

This week, one of my colleagues, +Georgia Dougherty asked of she could come and observe one of my lessons.  The only time we could match up was Thursday morning when I had one of my Intermediate classes for a double period.
It was really good seeing the reaction of the students as Georgia was going round talking to them. They had not met her before but they were really nice and open and sharing. I think this says a lot about our cluster of schools and the fact that there is a regular stream of visitors and the students are used to talking about what they are doing and the how and why of what they are doing.

What goes on in your own classroom becomes the "normal" for you and I am always impressed when I go into the rooms of others about how focussed and on to it the classes are. This seems to contrast a lot with my room sometimes, which seems like noisy chaos! This always seems to be more apparent when someone comes to visit or observe me. I was hyper aware during Georgia's visit about the noise, the mess, the movement round the room, the focus. We were doing a few different things, finishing work, checking it off on a class sheet, doing design work and cutting out design work on the laser cutter. There seemed to be kids and mess everywhere. This does not bother me at all normally but I found myself apologising for it when I had a visitor. I need to get over feeling like this as it is what goes on in any normal classroom, depending n what they are doing and we mange to "get stuff done" in amongst all the mess.

I think it is part of that fear we have as teachers that people are judging us harshly about what we are doing in our classes. NCEA pressure does not help this fear or the fear of trying new things.
This became an interesting topic on a PD day yesterday - EducampAKL. I was working in a group on the first session and the talk got round to why teachers don't share very much. One person in the group brought up that it was about the school board owning any work that teachers produce, so unless you have their say so, then you can't share it. This was a very fair point but I honestly think that fear is a big part of it too. I have worked for a few years now as a support person in school, helping teachers with their online work and I see this for myself.

As teachers, we need to get over all of this and share everything we do. Why sit for hours producing resources that someone already has? Why do we feel nervous when someone sees the reality of our classrooms? What goes on in a teacher's room and how they do it can really help someone else.
So I need to stop worrying so much when people come in.  We are working hard and mess cleans up.

Here is Georgia's blog post about her visit.

Nice to meet you...

Today was going to be the last time I had my Year 9 group as the Technology rotation is due to move round again. We took photographs of their finished boxes that they have made in Year 9 woodwork and they were busy putting the photographs on their blogs. While we were doing that, they got to looking at old blog posts and ended up quite far back in time. This is the really good thing about them still working on the same blogs that they have used all through primary and intermediate school.
So the activity then turned into looking at old photographs of the students on their blogs and seeing how cute they were in Year 5!!
It occurred to me that this would be a good introductory task when I get my new group. I am always looking for new ways to "meet" a new rotation group.
I knew that I had a couple of old photographs of me on my account so I showed the students today my last photograph from school, which is the whole "Upper 6th" in 1986. They had the task of trying to find me!! After laughing at the 80's hairstyles, they managed to find me.

I then showed them one of my favourite photos of me with my Dad when I was about 13. It was a really fun way to end the rotation.

Another activity that occurred to me during the lesson was while one of the girls was drawing on the board. She was writing the names of everyone in the class in a different font in a square.

I thought this would be a really good introduction activity too, and being a graphics teacher, it is nice and visual.

July CoL Meeting - The Good the Bad and The Ugly....

Today, in our CoL meeting, we had to analyse at what we were doing and share in our inquiry groups. Our groups for this meeting were based around the Achievement Challenges so we could compare what was gong well and what wasn't with colleagues working on the same goal.

Out main feedback session to each other was to highlight parts of our inquiries that was a success and which parts failed and where they can be improved.

This was my main feedback about this :-

The working together as small groups worked really well and they had a lot more confidence with their research. 

What is not going well is that now they think they can help each other with their drawings. This would be ok but it has branched into them doing it for each other rather than helping!!
I am trying to model how to help each other like this by doing drawing work with individuals and letting them do it the same way but not letting them have mine.

I was surprised when we worked together on a design analysis exercise that the hard bit was the describing. After talking to other teachers, I realised that this was due to lack of vocabulary. This has led me to put together the beginnings of a vocabulary collection especially for describing design work - link here

We all worked on a Google Drawing to plan our feedback first, so we could structure it correctly.

The outcome of this for me is that I have organised to go and visit +Kyla Hansell  ( her blog is here ) to talk about the students working in groups and how she does it.

Manaiakalani Google Class OnAir Lesson 10 - Design Analysis Exercise

See the whole Class OnAir team here



Direct Instruction

Direct instruction was given to the whole class where we talked through an example analysis of an existing product - a skateboard.
The focus was on the first parts of SOLO, the multistructural and relational elements so we can build up analysis skills slowly.
We were all grouped around the front table so we could hear the suggestions from others and see what was on the board clearly.


This video show the direct instruction at the start of the session.

This is a small part of the ongoing lesson from the day.
It shows the teacher giving suggestions and support as the lesson is going on to help the students with ideas of what to write on their analysis.

Student feedback.

Detailed Lesson Plan

Lesson Topic :- Design Analysis Exercises
Year Group :-  Year 12  (but includes Year 11 and 13 in the same lesson)
Learning Outcome	The students will understand the format and questions that we are going to use for the analysis of their own design work. The students will be able to break down the analysis of design work and write this analysis in a clear way.
Success Criteria Using SOLO	Uni structural Multi structural Relational Extended abstract Students can identify the main parts of a design. Students can describe and list the design elements, properties, use and materials used in a design. Students can explain and compare elements of a design idea to show how they work together and the effects that they have. Students can evaluate the work of others and reflect on where design decisions have been made and generalise on why they were made.
Links with the New Zealand Curriculum	Level 2 Curriculum Level: 7 Learning Area: Technology Strand: Design and Visual Communication Achievement Objective: Outcome development and evaluation Critically analyse their own and others’ outcomes and evaluative practices to inform the development of ideas for feasible outcomes. Undertake a critical evaluation that is informed by ongoing experimentation and functional modelling, stakeholder feedback, and trialling in the physical and social environments. Use the information gained to select, justify, and develop an outcome. Evaluate this outcome’s fitness for purpose against the brief. Justify the evaluation, using feedback from stakeholders and demonstrating a critical understanding of the issue. Achievement Standard: AS91342
Key Competencies	Thinking - analysing the design based on the specific question. Using language, symbols, and texts - writing the analysis is full sentences. Managing self - keeping on task and following the RISE values for their work. Participating and contributing - making sure they write their own feedback on each example for others to see and read. Relating to others - responding to the comments of others in a positive way.
Prior knowledge	The students have been drawing their design developments and are ready to analyse these drawings in terms of design elements, how they will be used / ergonomics / safety, materials and what their client wanted.
Lesson Sequence	Session Outline Student Activity Teacher Activity Students come together round the front desk to listen to instructions and guideline for the exercises today. Have a go answering some example questions all together as a group or listen to the answers from others and the guidance of the teacher. Sitting with the students at the front table, going over how the exercise is going to run Look at the individual images on the class community Answer the specific question attached to that image in the comment section Answer in full sentences. Put an answer on all of the images. Read the responses from everyone else. Facilitate a couple of whole class examples where the students can put their hands up to answer. Roam the class while the students are thinking about their first answer and give suggestions to help them out. Put up the images and questions on the community as they go so there are new ones available as they finish. Police / monitor / give verbal feedback to  the responses on the community as they come in. Look at the pictures that are posted on the Google Plus Community and think about the analysis questions that are linked to the individual images. Answer the small analysis steps / questions that are on the individual images in their own minds Share their thoughts about the answers to the questions in the Google Plus community by typing them up as clear sentences under the images in the comment sections. Read everyone else’s answers to compare with their own.
Resources	Design Analysis Template Images for analysis exercises Analysis Questions Google Plus Community
Next Steps	Analyse the work of others in the class based on a structured format. Use these skills to start to analyse their own design ideas and write it up.
Reflection and Analysis
	What went well? My decision to have the students working on their own notes but together in the class google plus community worked really well as they could see what each other was typing into the note sections under the images. This gave them more confidence to type what they were thinking and to have a quick look for ideas if they were stuck. It was good to see them all having a go and not being shy about putting their ideas on the community for everyone to see. It was good to see them building the complexity of their answers as they went through the exercises as the questions moved up the SOLO levels. They were giving good verbal feedback to me and the rest of the class both at the start of the lesson and during the lesson as I was helping them as the lesson went along. What still needs work? What came apparent to me as we were working was that the students were having difficulties with describing. This was not the area that I expected the difficulties to start and was a real eye opener to the importance of having a wide vocabulary. Their lack of vocabulary was really holding them back in terms of describing what they were seeing in the design work. To move ahead with this in the future, I have put this document together which is a collection of website links which have describing words for any particular focus. Link here for document I intend to make this available to the students before we move into the next stage of these design analysis exercises.

Student Work

Class Google Plus Communities

Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

Describe it to me....

With my NCEA Level 1, 2 and 3 Design and Visual Communication classes today, we were doing some exercises to prepare them for design analysis of their own work. This is always a weak point in our work so I am continuously trying to find ways to structure this to make it easier for the students to understand.
I had prepared a Google Drawing with a SOLO taxonomy structured layout of a series of questions. Link here
I decided that this was a little too much to start off with, so we were working today on a question at a time on images of products that they were familiar with. We were also doing this all together in the class Google Plus Communities so they could see what each other was writing about the products and get ideas if they were stuck. Link to the Level 2 Community here.
What I found interesting today, was where the students got stuck with the work.  They were having issues with the describing of the products that I put up for them. They had to describe things like the shape, the texture, the colour etc. This was not the area that I expected them to get stuck on.
I have had a chat with other teachers about this, in the Social Studies and English departments, and have realised that the problem is a lack of vocabulary that the students are using on a regular basis. This is really holding them back when it comes to the simple part of design analysis where they have to describe the product. This is even before they get to the higher order thinking of analysis where they have to think about why design decisions have been made and what effect these decisions have had.

To help them with this in the future, I have started putting together a list of sites that are loaded with describing words for any particular focus. I am going to share this document with the students so they can browse through the sites and be exposed to the words that are on there. I am going to make them look through themselves to find appropriate words for the things they are trying to describe.
Link to document here

Links to Describing Words

Shape

Words used to describe the shape of objects

List of Descriptive Words and Adjectives for Shapes & Patterns

Geometrical shapes

Texture

400 Words to Describe Texture

Descriptive Words for Texture

Adjectives to Describe Texture

Size

List of Adjectives to Describe Size

Synonyms for size

Form

3D OBJECTS (PRISMS, CYLINDERS, CONES, SPHERES)

Colour

General words used to describe colours

Words used to describe specific colours

Over 1000 Ways to Describe Colors