Support reading for my Year 13 class

My NCEA Level 3 class are designing a set for their major project this year. The focus will be on Matariki, so for the extra two days away from school they have next week due to Student Achievement Conferences, I have put together some support reading for them.
I have done this in the form of a Google Drawing with hyperlinked images as I really don't like just sharing a load of links (not enough pictures for this Graphics teacher)

Link to the Google Drawing here

Reading activity with Year 12 DVC class

During our staff PD a couple of weeks ago, we had a presentation from our literacy expert, Mr Marc Milford. We went through some reading and understanding activities ourselves in groups.  What Marc then wanted us to do was to put together the main activity for one of our classes with an emphasis on content from our subject areas.

I decided to focus on my Year 12 group, as they have to write their own overview of the design era they are researching. They always have problems with this ands tend to sneak a lot of "copy and paste" in.
I structured the activity around a design era that none of the students had chosen which was the 1970's.
Here is the link to the hand out that was given to the students to work through.

Here is the link to Marc's site that he shared with us that contains the literacy and reading sample activities.

Scanning

Sort the words into the boxes

Style	Materials
Type of product	Description / Describing
Write a one sentence prediction I think this text is about

Marc came down to the class to present the activity to the students, which was great as this was my first time doing this kind of reading content with students, so that gave me more confidence.
The class tried hard with the activity and I thought they focussed on it quite well. Both Marc and I were working with small groups as they got on, explaining modelling what they needed to do.




After talking to March both during and after the activity, it is going to be a good idea to do this type of work a few more times with less scaffolding as we go on. They need to be able to read a text and sort out their own key words to guide a summary write up. We are not there yet but it was a good start.

Year 13 - Measuring the auditorium

My Year 13 class need to know the size of the auditorium, the position of the doors and the size of the stage. They need this information as part of their research before they start doing their set designs.
I first thought that I could get a copy of the technical drawings of the school, but then decided that they needed the experience of measuring.



They were fairly hopeless at it to be honest. 

• Understanding of measuring in mm
• Understanding how to measure something that it longer than the measuring tape
• Understanding all the information that they need to collect.
• Working together to measure and record the information.

We definitely need to do more measuring activities so that when they start working out how big to make their designs and making scale models of them, they have a clearer idea of what to do.

We then sat all together in the classroom afterwards and compared notes. The measurements that they took were added to two diagrams on the whiteboard.

This information has started to be put together on a scale drawing using Adobe Illustrator.

This is the plan view that has been completed.

Year 13 class meeting their client

My NCEA Level 3 Design and Visual Communication class are going to be doing set design as their first major project. It was time to meet with their client this week so they know where to start taking the drawing work they are involved with at the moment.
We had a lesson on Friday where we sat all together and came up with ideas for questions that could be asked. We shared all of these onto one document so the meeting with the client could be a group experience and not an individual thing.

Client Questions for meeting 1

• What do you want us to design?
• Do you have a specific theme that you would like us to work to?
• Who is the target audience?
• Where will the designs be used?
• How big is the area that we need to design for?
• Is there any specific specialised equipment that needs to be taken into account?
• How many different scene transitions will there be for us to design for?
• Will we need to design movable elements?
• Is there anything that you don’t want or don’t like?

Before our client arrived on Monday morning, we sat together with the printed out questions and decided who was asking what. They then had a practice run through. Everyone was expected to contribute to the interview and ask at least one question.

"do we have to memorise these miss?"

No... It is not a memory activity. It is talking with your client face to face and finding out what they need you to do.

They were quite quiet during the interview and not very confident. They told me they were nervous before our client arrived. There were some "pauses" and quiet gaps but on the whole, it went ok. They now have somewhere to start with their project work. I have shared this video with them so they can include it on their project Google sites as evidence for the client meeting.

Inquiry Question 5

Describe the tools/measures/approaches you plan to use to get a more detailed and accurate profile of students’ learning in relation to that challenge. Justify why you chose these approaches and tools.

Link to Google Drawing here

Inquiry Question 4

Begin to collect evidence and data  and come to the next session ready to share your preliminary findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge i.e. using your baseline student data and evidence.

I have collected evidence on the individual students on my class - blog post here.

I have collected historical data of Year 13 students doing NCEA Level 3 Design and Visual Communication - blog post here

Also, as part of my personal goals this year, I am looking at mindset as a barrier to learning - blog post about my goals here

As part of this, I have been lucky to have received input from Pippa Lawler from Mint Education. She gave me a growth mindset model questionnaire to do with students to see where their thinking is now and where it is later when I have done some work with them about this.

I gave these questions to my students today. Here are the results.

Copy of the questionnaire here.

Key competency - THINKING SKILLS

Key Competency - RELATING TO OTHERS

Key Competency - UNDERSTANDING LANGUAGE, SYMBOLS AND TEXT

Key Competency - SELF-ORGANISATION AND MANAGEMENT

Key Competency- PARTICIPATING AND CONTRIBUTING

Challenges

Expectations

3 things that I am hoping to achieve are...7 responses

Credits, confidence in presenting, learn new aspects relative to design.

E endorse, Completion in work, Schloarship

Endorsement, UE and Get skinny with a six pack n get bulkier

Credits, Knowledge & better skills

Better Drawing skills, Find what media i like the most, and get all my assessment done.

Drawing, searching and painting

Excellent endorsement, university rank score, money.

2 things that I am most worried about are....7 responses

Level of achievement may not be suitable to me, and having to miss out on 10 days of school work when I'm out for Spirit Of Adventure.

My laziness/distraction, not achieving my goal

not achieving it and dying

Getting feedback & not finishing on time

My confidence in drawing and my drawing it's self

Working

failing, not reaching the rank score

1 thing that is most important to me in this course is...7 responses

It will help me develop the skills and knowledge I need for what I want to become in the future.

Scholarship

Growth

Getting familiar with the topic and it's physical attributes

Getting better at drawing.

Doing graphics

Passing

Building success

3 things that will help me to be successful and achieve in this class are...7 responses

Guidelines, detailed information, friends/classmates.

listening, doing my work, asking for help

Discipline, Dedication and Sacrifice

My teacher, my work ethic & my support from my friends ahah

You do to learn, you keep going to learn and you live and learn.

Focus, listen,pay attention

Listening, positive mindset, encourgment

2 things that teachers need to know to understand me are...7 responses

I'm a quiet achiever, I can observe and learn

i am easily distracted, but i try my best

Takes time to understand, I work hard if you stay on me

I get distracted easily when tired

when im not good at the particular topic i shy away from it

my confidence in drawing and my lack of responsibility.

Reapeting it again

nothing, nothing

1 thing that is most important to my learning is..7 responses

My chromebook

succeeding in difficult times

Getting Something out of it

Passing and enjoying the subject while im at it

To appreciate my own drawing

Working

passing

Inquiry Question 3

Explain why you judge this to be the most important and catalytic issue of learning for this group of learners this year (In chemistry, a catalytic substance one  which increases the speed of a chemical reaction).

The students need to get ready for their presentations which will happen at regular intervals throughout the year. Their work needs to be ready to be put on show and their analysis needs to be done so they can talk about it. I am hoping that this will give them the impetus to keep their work up to date as they all need to hit deadlines throughout the year to enable this to happen.
As they are preparing their analysis to present to the rest of the class they know that they are going to have an instant audience, not just themselves and the teacher. They will be comparing themselves to the rest of the class during this process and they can draw ideas and inspiration from each other as they go. They are going to support each other with questions face to face that need to be answered straight away, not having the luxury of being online and time available to think. The act of questioning each other is also higher level, extended abstract thinking too as they have to understand what is being presented and apply to to their own thinking in order to ask questions that are meaningful and pull out more detail.

Inquiry Question 2

Describe how and why you have selected this challenge of student learning. Locate your inquiry in the context of patterns of student learning in Manaiakalani overall. 

Last year, my inquiry was about written literacy with my Year 11 students. We concentrated on analysis of their design work so that the achievement level could be increased. Blog post about the results of this here.
It is literacy that enables the students to gain those higher levels as it is the quality and depth of their analysis writing that enables this.
I want to put what I learned last year into practice with the rest of my classes but especially my Year 13 class. I also want to expand on this to verbal literacy as i want them to be able to talk about their work in front of the rest of the class. It they can analyse their work then present this to the rest of the class in a way that is clear and in depth, it will help with their understanding. They then get to react to questions from the group.
This is how they will be expected to present their work if they do any kind of design course once they leave school. Critiques in front of the rest of the class are fairly standard.
The skills I hope they get from this year are :-

• Analysis
• Written literacy
• Verbal literacy
• Listening skills
• Questioning
• Reacting to questions
• Presenting to a group

As they are Year 13, I hope they can then take these skills into any interviews for courses, jobs, apprenticeships etc that they might go to.

The reality of my class is that I have some students who have done NCEA level 1 and 2 DVC with me and some students who have not done any graphics since Year 10. As this is the case, the students lack confidence in their work and themselves. They literally say to me “miss i can’t draw” as soon as they come in the room. I want to work on helping them get over this deficit way of thinking as this stops them from progressing.

Inquiry Question 1

Summarise the challenge of student learning you plan to focus on in this inquiry. Be as clear and specific as you can about the evidence you have about this to date.


The group that I am focussing on is my Year 13 class. They are doing NCEA Level 3 Design and Visual Communication this year.

This chart shows the pass rate for the internal DVC standard that we have done since the standards were changed. Apart from 2016 (when I only had 3 students), the rate is low for an internal standard and most of the achievement is at achieved level with only a handful of merits.

I want to focus on this group as I want the overall pass rate to be higher and for the standard of work completed to be at a higher level. I also want to get them to work at a faster rate to keep up to date and complete all the work set. The work being incomplete is another reason for the poor pass rate.


This chart shows the pass rate for the external standard.
After 2014, and two years of zero percent pass rate, I visited another school to talk to the teacher there about how she approached the external. I have had some progress and some higher achievement levels, at merit, but it is still not good enough overall.

Some initial data about my inquiry group

Appraisal Meeting 1 - Goal Setting

Date of meeting - Thursday 28th February with HOD Technology, Hinerau Anderson

Goal Setting Document

Individual Goal 1.

(Maori Achievement)

By the end of term 3 2019

I am…

Working with my Year 13 students on their literacy skills both written and verbal.

So that…

Their project work is complete and of a high standard.

Blog post regarding breakdown of inquiry group

Blog post about inquiry breakdown

Link to Goal 1 Worksheet.

Individual Goal 2.

By the end of term 3 2019

I am…

Going to work with the students on having a positive mindset towards their work

So that…

They feel better and more confident about completing their design work.

Link to Goal 2 Worksheet

Inquiry

Focus -

Link to Inquiry worksheet.

Blog post about inquiry breakdown

Trying the blogging template with my intermediate classes

As part of our department goals this year we want to get more stuck into blogging with the students.
To help with this, we are having regular PD sessions together to focus on strategies to use in the classroom to support the students to blog about their Technology work.

After out first PD session, I altered the template so I could use it in Graphics ( blog post here ) and out homework was to try the template with our students before the next PD session.

I have given it a go with my 3 intermediate classes this week.
Here are links to some of their posts.

3D Oblique Sketching

3D Oblique Sketching

Graphics/ Tech

3D Sketching

3D Sketching

Graphics design-Clocks

clocks

T1W5 - Technology - Graphics

I projected the template on the whiteboard and I also shared the template directly with the students so they could see it on their screen and refer to it.

After a little confusion when I did this with the first class, where a couple of the students made a copy of the template and started answering the questions on the document rather than their blog, it went quite smoothly.

I need to give them a little more time in the lesson in order to complete the blogging task as they did not all complete it and they finished it up when they got back to their own schools.