Thursday, December 5, 2019

Coding the Tamaki College mBot Christmas choir - Part 2

Last week the students had a go at team coding a choir. Blog post here.
To make sure we are all on the same code today, I had a go my self at getting two mBots to sing in harmony.

Whaea Trina, one of the Tamaki College music teachers worked out the harmony for me from the original melody.


This week, I sent the code to the students in this format. Link to file here.



They then had to work as a team to work out who was going to be main melody and who was going to be harmony. 



So after adding some suitable coloured lighting effects and then putting the code on extra mBots so they could place them in a Christmas Tree pattern, here is the finished choir.


Saturday, November 30, 2019

Evaluation of the Intervention

Have you used quantitative data?
  1. Reporting on Student Progress
Just saying they have made progress because they have a higher test score or jumped xxx
levels is not enough.


Need to compare to something more than just pre and post test data.
Are the learners in your target group making progress in comparison to... Norm, Data from last year,
other comparative learners in school/cluster?


_______________________________________________________________


This is not an easy thing to report on. The actual results at the end of the project etc are not that
great.
This is the analysis of the internals
This is the analysis of the externals

When comparing what the students in my group did over their other subjects, the externals was a
sticking point for all but one of them,
About half of them achieved most of their internal standards.

Internal results analysis blog post
External results analysis blog post

_______________________________________________________________


A numerical way of presenting data (If you have used quantitative data)  plus
a writing frame to record on your blog


If you did something different, we can learn just as much from inquiries that don’t work.


Have you used Qualitative Data?
Instead of numbers, as above, use rich descriptions, quotes and examples 


Examples from Hana that will be helpful - read the speaker notes on each slide


Don’t forget to ask your learners what made the difference.


_______________________________________________________________


I gave the students a Growth mindset questionnaire at the start of the year and again at the end.
Unfortunately, as the end of the year is a bit of a mad rush to get work completed and sent away
for marking, I did not give them the second one till after they had left. I have a response from one
student.

Growth mindset questionnaire
Start of year response
End of year response

Things to do better next time is to make sure I give these kind of activities to them in a timely manner and give them class time to complete them. Expecting students to log on to their emails after they have left school and respond to them was not acceptable.

I also gave my students a feedback form at the end of the course. Again, I gave it too late and I only received one reply.

Year 13 Feedback

What I learn here is that I need to make it much more explicit as to why we are doing what we are doing and what my inquiry is about.


My Bursts and Bubbles speaking frame



Thursday, November 28, 2019

Coding the Tamaki College mBot Christmas choir - Part 1

Today with my intermediate class who are doing coding, I wanted to do a quick "warm up" do now. This plan failed immediately and it turned into a whole double session on this activity.
We were coding our mBots to sing Jingle bells. I had found an easy version online with no flats or sharps so it could be a "quick activity". Well ... no...

We ended up trying to all code the same  so that we could all push the buttons on the mBots together and have an mBot choir. This then morphed into planning on going into the class next door to carol sing with the mBot choir.

Through no fault of their own, we had technical issues ( hey ho, when don't you when working with tech ), we did not get finished and they were not sounding as alike as was needed for this "concert".
We saved our work with the plan to carol sing at the start of next week.

When they had gone, I had an idea. I have given the music to one of our music teachers and asked them to write a harmony part and plan to get half the class on the original code and half on the harmony part.

I have written the code for the basic part and plan to give it to the students for the start of next week along with the harmony part. We can then get the whole class in the choir working together.

Part two of this blog post will be next week when we give this a try. This could be great or hideous. Either way will be fun.






Monday, November 25, 2019

Jumpstart 2019 - Know my Learners

We have been into Jumpstart for two weeks now.
Here is an overview of the overall achievement of my class in terms of asTTle and PAT tests done over Years 9 and 10.


asTTlePATasTTleasTTlePAT
MathematicsMathematicsReadingWritingReading Comp
Year 9Year 10Year 9Year 10Year 9Year 10Year 9Year 10Year 9Year10
MaleMaori3bStan 4NA4b3a2p3aNANA
MaleNiuean3b3pStan 4Stan 32a4p2bStan 1Stan 2
MaleCI Maori3a4pStan 4Stan 22a4a3a4aStan 4Stan 4
MaleMaori3aStan 3Stan 33b2a2aStan 2Stan 2
FemaleMaori4b4pStan 4Stan 44p5p4p4pStan 5Stan 5
FemaleMaoriNA3p1pNA
FemaleMaori


Maori students - DVC 2020

asTTlePATasTTleasTTlePAT
MathematicsMathematicsReadingWritingReading Comp
Year 9Year 10Year 9Year 10Year 9Year 10Year 9Year 10Year 9Year10
MaleMaori3bStan 4NA4b3a2p3aNANA
MaleMaori3aStan 3Stan 33b2a2aStan 2Stan 2
FemaleMaori4b4pStan 4Stan 44p5p4p4pStan 5Stan 5
FemaleMaoriNA3p1pNA
FemaleMaori

Ethnic breakdown of class