Inquiry Question 3 - Tools, Measures and Approaches

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.

My Design and Visual Communication classes at Level 1 and Level 2 are all mixed ability and mixed experience in DVC. 

The students in the Year 11 class mostly had me for Graphics in Year 10, but a few of them did not have any Graphics experience in Year 10.

In the Year 12 class, there are 27 students and only 8 of them did DVC at Level 1 last year. 

It is because of this very mixed reality of my classes that I want to focus on how to SUPPORT my students in any way possible, both in the class and in any forced home situation that might arise.

I want the students to feel like they know what they need to do and how to do it at all times. The main hub for this support will be the class site, but the manner that will take will be experimented on and action will be taken on student feedback throughout the process.

At the moment, the students lack of confidence causes them to come to a halt in the project process too often. They work well when I am with them but I notice that they stop as soon as I walk away to work with another student. My idea of putting enough support on the class site is obviously not enough if it can't help them when they are stuck.

I always seem to choose an inquiry where it is difficult to get hard facts and figures throughout the process and only really have the NCEA results as the "measured" point. I will need to try and build in check points where I can compare the results that students are achieving throughout the year and see if there is any difference in how fast they are being achieved to previous years. Students voice will also be absolutely key to this inquiry as there is no point in me pushing something that they won't use or is no help.

Link to Google Drawing

Manaiakalani Teacher Only Day - My Presentation on using SOLO and Google Drawings.

 Here is my presentation for the Manaiakalani Teacher Only Day about using SOLO Taxonomy and Google Drawings.

Manaiakalani Teacher Only Day

 Today is the last day of term and the whole cluster is spending it together in Professional Development at Glen Taylor School.

The day started with a great keynote by Dr Rae Si'ilata and Kyla Hansell

Are we teaching in a negative language manner. Helping them succeed in English but loosing their own language?

Privilege the native speaker. Highlight the speakers of the language in the classroom.

Integrating the communicative modes - listening, reading, viewing - input channels - speaking, writing, presenting - output channels - the 6 need to be integrated.

ESOL - English For speakers of other languages - it is NOT A PERSON - adding english not replacing their native language.

Ideas learnt in one language can be transferred. Prior knowledge in English only is too limited.

Make meaning in stronger language and cultural world view.

You don't need to know the language - you need to be willing to share the power.

Treat the language varieties, used in context, with respect.

Meaning focussed learning.

Online content - all in English.



I went to two presentation over the day.

Argumentation Boards

Discussion - using their prior knowledge

Unpack the vocab to understand the prompt.

Scaffolded resources and reading - guided reading - lots of element of choice to decide what to look at and read. Taking notes while they read and watch. Maybe scaffold the notes with questions etc.

Output could be an essay, paragraph, screencastify of themselves talking. It does need to be an open debate - small groups/ whole class.

They need to pick a side so they don't end up just agreeing with each other.

They can be easily added to a scheme of work - it is not a huge different thing to do - use it as a hook to a topic.

The prior knowledge section is important as it gives all students a voice to say what they know.

Setting up talk rules - you are arguing against ideas not people.

Link to presentation here to see speaker notes and links

Getting the talk going in reading

Talk shows understanding and level of understanding.

Talking while reading helps them to unpack the text by listening to the thoughts of others.

The best way to communicate is through talk.

Thinking critically is needed more and more as the students get older. Bringing in talk when they are very young will help build this. Play based learning / talk moves / personal interests etc

We all talk while reading with students, but we need to spotlight specific strategies.

Reading to - students can focus on thinking critically rather than worrying about the reading.

Shared reading - support with the decoding - listen and enjoy - there can be a teacher focus while the reading is going on to highlight certain things.

Guided reading - explicit teaching strategies for reading. Rewindable elements so they can look back and remember parts they have forgotten. Use students rewindable items as well as the teachers.

Independent reading - own choice of reading. Good way of upping the reading milage for students.

Question matrix - thinking widely when reading a text.

Link to presentation here to see speaker notes and links

CosPlay Club - Session 1

 I have been talking all this term with one of my Year 12 students about starting a cosplay club. I go to Armageddon Expo every year and for the past few years have been making / assembling costumes to go in. We put out a Google Form and I was amazed at the response. 27 students put there names down.

We had our first meeting today after school. I brought in all the things that I have made and bought over time and showed them, and I showed them photographs of me at Armageddon wearing what I made / bought.

What I want them to think about between now and the next session, which will be after the holidays now, is what they want to make then we can start planning when we start term 2. Lots of ideas already, showing me pictures of characters I have never heard of before!

I wanted a bit of a hands on experience this session so we made small wrist gauntlets out of EVA foam. I have been putting together some how to videos and starting to collect resources on my class site. Link here This will slowly grow over time as we learn more stuff. I found us some videos about working with EVA foam.

I had a bit of a play with some EVA foam yesterday after watching the videos. I soon found where the mistakes could be made - bad cutting, rough engraved lines, squeezing too tight when shaping it with heat and having massive thumb prints left in it!!

Here are my trials.

We had fun today talking about what we might make and having a go with the EVA foam for the first time. I had 18 come today which is not too bad considering I had some say they couldn't make the first one due to Polyfest practice.

CORE Education - Mentoring PD - Session 4

 

Coding Prep for my Y8 class

 I started teaching coding with my own class (not team teaching), last year. My two Y7 classes played with the mBot robots (sorry, we WORKED really hard, no playing *cough*). When we went into lock down last year (twice), my lovely class were still coding with me via Google Meet and they were sending me the code to check on my mBot at home. Crazy, crazy lessons. 

Blog posts with Digital Technologies as a label,  

Blog posts with Distance Learning as a label,  

link to particular blog post about coding the robots in lockdown

Those lovely teams are now in Y8, so we are moving on with our coding. We have done some refresher work from last year (as it was last year and I only see them once a week) and now are moving on. My Dunn wants us to try using a Microbit to code, so I took one home over the long Easter weekend to play with. (*cough*.. work with). There is a simulator on the Microbit coding website with some great step by step activities. I decided to use the TInkercad Microbit simulator though, as it is in the electronic circuits section and we can connect the microbit up to lots of external components and control them them.  I used the learning activities from the microbit site, worked my way through them and then made screencast videos myself as I did the activities on Tinkercad.  Another good reason to use Tinkercad is that I can put my students into a class and they can use the programme without having to make an account themselves. I had used this feature last year with my Intermediate graphics class last year on lock down and it was great and really easy. Blog post here

Link to coding section on my class site.

I have given the coding section on my class site a bit of a spruce up, sorting into sections ( we also had a go at coding the drones round an obstacle course last year  - what chaos that was!!)

I have put a section on for the microbit coding page as well as Tinkercad so the students can have a go at both when they are confident (they don't need a log in for the microbit one, but I cant spy on them either).

On the Tinkercad Coding page on my class site, there are 2 sections, Codeblocks and the Microbit Simulator.

We all had a go with designing with codeblocks to get them confident in using Tinkercad. It also gives them another place to use there great coding knowledge.

On the Microbit Simulator page, I have split it into some Basic Skills, for them to get used to coding and using the simulator. We went through these together last week and then the videos are there for when they forget what I said in the class and look back on it again when they are out of the class. 

Then there is a start at some activities. The first one is to make the simulator play Rock, Paper, Scissors. The students flew through all the skills and were soon on challenging each other with Rock, Paper, Scissors. I had coded the one microbit we have so far with that code so they could play it with a real microbit too.

We are ordering and getting a class set over the end of term holidays s they can all have a go with putting their code on a microbit when we get back in Term 2.

The great thing about the simulator on Tinkercad, is that if we have to go back into lock down, the students can get their code ready at home, check it out on the simulator that it works then load it up when we get back into the class room.

This also fits with my inquiry this year. Even though the intermediates are not part of my inquiry, this way of working, using rewindable learning style videos, is very much part of what I am doing this year.

At the end of the lesson this week, the students had discovered between them that they could make animation on the little 5 x 5 LED screen of the microbit.

Here is a screen. recording of one of them that they made.