Online Research

 There many things that my students have to research about and the main place we do this is the internet. I know from my own research how time consuming it is to find information that is both relevant and useful. Some websites have a bit of what information you are looking for and not all of it so you have to dot about through a selection of sites. I also find the language that is used on websites when you do find them is not always the easiest to understand what they talking about. To help my students while they are doing their research, I have been putting links onto our class website as helpful starting points to save them some time.

Examples here - Year 11 Designers - Year 12 Design Era Hexagons - Materials Research

A website that I use with my students a lot and that I rate very highly is Technology Student.Com. The content on this website is great and written in a way that is easy for students to understand. It is better to get information about types of hardwood, for example, from this website than a website that specialises in wood, as the language used is much more technical on the specialist website that is not relevant or understandable for the use it is needed for in a student project. Also, doing this kind of research is not the main focus of a project and I find that the student s are turned off really quickly if they are finding the research hard or they are not able to understand what they are finding. Copy and paste happens and no understanding is going on.

As much as I love the Technology Student website for its content, I absolutely hate the layout and the navigation. I don't bother going on the main site and searching for something. I normally do a Google search along the lines of "types of softwood technology student" as I know that this will point me to where I need to be.

This year, I have started doing research for my Year 11 Visual Art students too and I find this even harder as the language that is used to talk about artworks and artists is at a much harder / higher level than is easily understood or is needed.

My blogpost about reading about Henri Rousseau.

Marc Milford's blogpost about this same exercise, as he helped me put it together.

With all of this in mind, I have decided his year to start to put together my own website of "stuff" based on the research that I do to find information for the students. What I have got on this website at the time of writing this blogpost is not a lot. I have mainly focussed on starting on materials as that is what my students are needing at this time, but it is a job that will be ongoing and I will plod along with it into the future. I am not expecting this to be a quick thing to put together at all and will work on things that my students are needing at any given time so that it slowly builds up to be something that is useful over time.

Link to website - its hasn't even got a front page yet!!

Link to materials page

Link to wood page

Reading in Visual Art - Understanding the Artists Interpretation

 Our second artist model in Year 11 Visual Art this year is Margaret Aull. We are doing a similar process to when we looked at Henri Rousseau earlier in the year - blog post here - where I am getting the students to fill in a worksheet using a variety of media looking at the artists' work. The reading for the first artist model was an activity practising scanning and predicting - blog post here

The planning for the artist model work is on the class website - Henri Rousseau - Margaret Aull

The reading for Margaret Aull was of a very different style. We were reading her written piece that goes along with her painting " Fiji, Ever Fiji". This work, both the writing and the painting, was Margaret Aull's response to the coup and violence that was happening in Fiji at the time.

The first thing that we did as a class was to watch a YouTube video of the trouble and we had a class discussion about what a coup is and what the violence was about.

I gave the students a big version of the painting and a photocopy of the artist's words. Mr Milford, our literacy specialist, had taken a copy of the work away with him to work on a strategy for the students to understand what was being said. Here are his planning notes.

The students read through the work at the same time as I was reading it out to them - Link to document

We had the students highlight everywhere there was a "noun group" so they could highlight and see where these things were and we could talk about what each one meant. They then highlighted all the action words / verbs in green so they could relate those to what as being said.

We were referring back to the large poster that i have on my classroom wall that has all of these elements highlighted. Link to poster here.

What we are doing with this work now is putting it into our sketchbooks with our media experiments of Margaret Aull work. We had already done a bigger copy when we were practising mixing colours  - blog post here, so we are taking a double page up in our sketchbooks to be able to fit everything in, especially the large piece of written work.

With my example that I always make for the students, I didnt like the clean page so I put painted sections on it before sticking the work down and then splattered paint across everything afterwards.

Here is a picture of Mr Milford working with the students, going over the written work, while I highlighted the words on the screen as we went over them.

I found this a much harder reading activity to do with the students as it was dealing with thoughts and feelings and reactions to events where the normal reading that I do with my students is around facts - materials and processes, dates of things happening etc.

Reading in Visual Art - Scanning and Predicting

 It has got to the point in my Year 11 Visual Art class where we have to start reading about our artist models so information about them can be included in our sketchbooks.

The first artist we have been looking at is Henri Rousseau. We have been looking at his work in terms of experimenting with different media to do copies of sections of the work. 

We started our reading today. In my inquiry last year, I spent a lot of time looking at how to do information transfer with my classes. Marc Milford, our literacy specialist, is keen for students to learn how to scan and predict. He took a text I had found online and made me an example of how to do this. Link to document here I felt a little overwhelmed by the size and content in this document so I had a go at making a lighter one to use today. Link to document

After showing this document to Marc before the lesson today, he felt that it still needed some work so he came to the lesson with an addition to it as I had not included any work on scanning. Link to document

When we started the reading, we had our guest reader from last year, Ms George. The students had to read along and use the table on the document to record any words that they did not understand.

After the reading we talked about those words and we looked up the meanings together and discussed them.

The students then re read the the document and underlined the key words from Marc's document as they read.

Reading for Identification in DVC

 My Year 11 DVC class are currently starting their seating designs. They have already looked at their design influence (the has to look at either Frank Gehry, Frank Lloyd Wright or Antoni Gaudi - Link to planning here ). They now have to think about their second design influence, which has to be Māori inspired. We looked at Matariki as a starting point for this influence and I gave them this presentation to start them off on their research.

After they had done their general reading, they had to decide on one star in the Matariki cluster and find the story of that star / character. This story was to be copied and pasted onto a Google doc and then they had to read it and highlight where something was mentioned that they could then find as an image.

They then had to find images to go with the story and put it all on the same doc ready for printing.

This is my example.

After their document was printed out, the students had to cut everything out and arrange it on a page in the sketchbooks.

We kept the highlighted areas on the written sections as it made clear the parts of the story that they were focusing on.

From here, the students have been drawing the images from their research. I think that drawing the images and not just using them to look at for inspiration, gives a greater insight into the shapes and forms as you are making stronger connections in the brain by physically working with them.

What we are on with now is design development. The students have their initial sketches based on the design elements of their chosen designer. They now have to take those initial ideas and use the drawings from their Matariki stories to inspire how the development goes.

CoL Inquiry Thoughts for 2024

What achievement challenge are you considering as an area of focus in 2024 and why? Include in your WHY both evidence and your own passion/expertise

Achievement Challenge 3 - Lift the achievement in reading for all students.

This was my inquiry focus for this year. I did a lot of learning, research and trialling before working with my inquiry group on the intervention. We focussed on a very particular piece of research to support, which was materials research. This meant that the actual intervention time was quite short. I would like to start next year using what I have learned this year straight away. I can then use this time to work with Marc more to learn more reading support methods. He has talked often this year about skimming and predicting. I want to know from him if this is something we can do with the research we have to do about artists and design eras.

I will be able to try. any new learning next year in two different curriculum areas - Design and Visual Communication and Visual Art.

In both areas, the students need to do a lot of reading about designers, artists and design eras. Their knowledge of these things is then used in their own work so a solid understanding is needed.


What learnings from the 2017 - 2023 CoL teacher inquiries have informed or inspired your thinking.

While listening to Robyn Anderson talk about how she gifts words to her students and they have to use these words in contexts throughout the session, it got me thinking about the very specialised, subject specific words that the students come across in all their subjects at secondary school. I must be quite overwhelming at times when they are coming in to secondary school behind where they should be in terms of words that they know then to have all these really specialised words used in lessons all the time. This has got me wondering how I can think about this in DVC. I had started this year to pull out some of the words that were in a specific reading and we looked at them in advance but I see that i need to be much more purposeful in my use of technical jargon. One of the things that the HOD English said to me at the start of the year was to have a focus on subject specific "jargon"


How would your work support Manaiakalani pedagogy and kaupapa?

There is a Manaiakalani wide focus on literacy,  reading and writing so my inquiry focus would fit in well with this. Trying to have a more cross curricular approach will help the students learn how to apply approaches across all of their subjects and not just think that is an "English" thing.

Which elements of the extensive Manaiakalani research findings inform or challenge you as you think about this?

The first thing that my Year 11 and Year 12 students do when they start DVC is a research project. They have to do a lot of reading. They are coming out of the junior school with lower than the national average PAT and asTTle scores so they are not in a position to cope with the demands of NCEA Level 1 then Level 2. The Manaiakalani research shows the increases that the students have made in Manaiakalani schools compared to non Manaiakalani schools but it is still hard for them. when they get to NCEA below where they should be.


How would you like to be supported in 2024 as you undertake this inquiry?

I would like to be able to work collaboratively with other teachers to create reading activities and could benefit more subjects areas. I am thinking this could be within Tamaki College and across different schools.

How would you plan to support your colleagues in your school with their inquiries and/or teaching in the area you are exploring?

This year, the CoL teachers at Tamaki College have been presenting our inquiry every term to the whole staff. During these sessions, we have been trying to get the staff to think about inquiry in a more open and unthreatening way.

All my planning work goes onto a public website and all my inquiry findings go onto a blog.

Inquiry 2023 - Causal Chain Update

Link to original Google Drawing

This diagram shows the journey from the first thoughts of what the problem is this year, through researching and trialling and then onto trying interventions with my inquiry group.

I feel that this is a good start for me in my journey to support student reading in DVC. There have been improvements in the students confidence when they have to read for research which is great. What I need to do is start this right at the beginning next year, so this support is not just focused on one project area like this year. (research reading for materials)

Inquiry 2023 - Evaluating shifts in Teaching

  Evaluating shifts in teaching

 

Aspect of teaching	Evidence of teaching before intervention	Evidence of teaching after intervention	Judgement about how much you shifted
Reading for research	Collecting resources about materials together in one place on my site so the students can go there to get the information that they need Link to page on class website I would do internet searches for information with the students and if we found something lele that was of use, I would add it to this page for everyone to access. Giving students a template to fill in that has questions to answer about the reading they are doing. These questions are structured around SOLO taxonomy. Link to page on class website With these two aspects, I would let the students read the links that they needed to by them selves and help them individually where needed when they got to the questions.	Information transfer Pulling the relevant information from the internet so it can be focussed on away from distractions. Giving a specific set of questions that are targeted to what information I am wanting the students to get from their reading. Getting the students to apply what they are reading to their particular design problem. Reading with the students Giving words from the reading in advance so they have some vocabulary before they start. Collecting words as we go so we can collate meanings of words we are stuck on. Summary of intervention to date on this blog post for a staff presentation	The main shift within me has been confidence. I feel that I can support the students with their reading in a much more meaningful way. I am now planning for reading within my lessons in a much more structured way. Examples of this are on these links. Blog post - Year 9 Food Blog post - Year 11 materials research Moving forward from this year, I will be able to plan our reading for the start of next year in a much more structured way. Year 11 have to look at designers and Year 12 have to look at design eras. This involves a lot of reading and my learning from this year will enable me to specifically plan for this within my teaching and lesson time.

 

Inquiry 2023 - Reflections and Tweaks

 

• Explain the reflections and tweaks you have made along the way and the reasons why you made these changes. Share your evidence for these decisions.

• What methods have you used to collect information about the tweaks?

• How have you been systematic in that collection?

• What does the information tell you?

• What are you going to do with the information in terms of understanding what needed ‘tweaking’ and why?

The main methods that I have used this year to guide the changes that I have made to made inquiry is student voice. I have asked them verbally, during the course of conversation within the lesson as they are working and  noted down what they were saying. An example of this is on this blog post here, where we had tried two different methods and. I was asking them what they thought of them.

Examples of student voice and how I used it.

"I preferred this week when everyone was working together. It gave me a clear view of the

work and defining the meanings of the words we don’t know." - I kept in time where the whole class is working on words that they pull out of the reading - we find the words and meanings together.

"I liked talking about it together instead of doing the slide but I also wanted to read the

reading myself." - I made sure there was time where we read as a whole class and time where they could go through it in their own time.  Not rushing this was key as there were students who liked one, the other and both so plenty of time to fir it all in was needed.

I have also asked them to fill in a Google form so that I could graph and compare their answers. Blog post here.

Key to asking them for their opinion on what I was trying, was me being open with them at the start of the process. I had made it clear to them what I was trying for my inquiry this year and why. I wanted them to be clear about how I was trying to improve what I was doing with my teaching to make gains for them.

Before I tried any of the intervention with my Year 11 inquiry group, I was working with our literacy specialist and trying things out with my Year 9 food tech class. This was great as it gave me chance to set up a structured piece of reading, get it checked by Mr Milford and then try it out on the Year 9 class. I could then see what worked and what didn't work in terms of the clarity of my planning and I could make changes and use what worked with my Year 11 group. It also gave me more confidence when it came to working with my senior class as this is my first year for focussing in on reading. Blog post - Reading for Planning (Y9).

Main ideas that came from trialling :-

• Having my students match words that are in the reading before they start the main reading activity.
• Using images of what is in the content of the reading
• Pulling the text apart - chunking it - to make each section easier to focus on
• Targeting the questions to each reading section and making them totally relevant to the work that the students are researching for.

Reading by Stealth

 My inquiry this year is about reading. I have been working with the school literacy specialist with designing resources and ways for my senior students to get more out of the reading and research they have to do in DVC. Blog posts about this are on this label. 

I have involved my junior Food Technology classes in this inquiry work as they have to read the recipes and analyse how things went. I hve tried out the techniques and planning on my junior classes first and then tweaked them before using them with my seniors.

Part of what I have been doing with my juniors is what I have nicknamed "stealth reading". I started making videos for the students last year and putting them onto social media (YouTube, Instagram and TikTok) - Link to blog posts about this. I have continued this for my junior and intermediate food classes (Y7, Y8 and Y9). The videos I have been making for them have to fit in the 3 minute deadline for TikTok and I make them with a music background and no talking. I then put all the instructions for the recipes on the screen so they have to read as they are watching.

On the class site, I have all the information that they need and I also put links to the videos on there. These are then emailed out to the students the weekend before the week of the lesson. 

• Example Y7 and Y8 site page - Sweet and Sour chicken
• Example Y9 site page - Chocolate Brownies

I have been keeping track of the videos that I have made on this spreadsheet so that I can find things easily and quickly when I want to shre them to the students. I also have a tab on there keeping track of the views.

I have had some feedback from the students this week.

• Y9 Student 1 - comes into the kitchen and gleefully tells me "I never watch any of the videos you send Miss!!"
• Y9 Student 2 - comes into the kitchen, gets totally ready while the rest of the class are coming in and says to me "Miss, can I start? I have watched your video and know what to do."
• Y8 Students - I always ask if they have watched the videos when they come in. I asked this week if they read the instructions on the screen as they were watching. Mostly yes. A couple of no's.

As far as advertising the Social Media option, as relying on students reading their emails is a little shaky to say the least - I have the links on all the site pages that I have content on. I have links on the front of my class website. I also hav this poster up in my class window.

Inquiry 2023 - Where are we up to?

 As part of the Manaiakalani CoL, we are asked every year to think about a "Causal Chain". Previous year's causal chains can be seen on this link

I have decided to keep revisiting this year's causal chain and use it to check in where we are up to and also use it to log the evidence as we go. I have been including links to specific blog posts along with each step of the chain so I can see how it went this year when I am analysing it. 

Link to original document

Materials Research - Reading 3

My Year 11 inquiry group are currently in the middle of researching different materials that could be used for their design ideas of chairs.

So far we have read about different types of wood - blog post here - I took the information from the original source, chunked it and presented it to the students in a different way. We looked at some of the words from the text so they had some definitions to start them off and then they did information transfer and answered specific questions. They then related what they had read to their own design work. This exercise was done in the class but by themselves, in their own time. 

We next looked at types of metal - blog post here - We read directly from the source material on the internet this time and I read it out to them while they read along at the same time. They had to write down words that they did not know and we looked these up together. 

I asked them for feedback about the two sessions and they liked a mix of the two. So for this session I have tried to combine what we have been doing over the past two weeks. 

• I took words out from the reading to start with so they could have some definitions to start them off.
• I have taken the information form the original source and chunked it.
• Each piece of reading on the presentation has a yellow box on the outside of the slide so they can note down any words they are unsure of.
• The text was read to the class again, but this time it was done by our guest reader.
• We then talked about what words they had noted down.
• The class then had to answer the information transfer questions.
• They then had to relate what we had been reading about to their own designs.

Our guest reader was Ms George. I had been telling her about last week when it was me reading the information about types of metal and trying my hardest to make it sound interesting. She is an extremely experienced teacher of English and has lots of experience reading to classes. She agreed to come and read about plastics to put emphasis and interest into how it was read out.

When Miss George left after the reading, the students gave me feedback that they preferred her reading to mine. I need practice!!

Here are some examples of student work form today. They have had copies made so student names do not appear.

Student 1

Student 2

Student 3

Student 4

Materials Research - Reading 2

 

As part of my inquiry this year I am looking at how I can read in DVC so the students get more meaning out of the research they have to do.

Last week, we started our materials research where I broke the information down for them and presented it on a Google slide. Blog post here.

This week, I sent the students the link to the website - Metals and Alloys. I made sure they all had a piece of paper and a pencil and then I read to them from the website while they read it in front of them. If they came across a word that they did not know, they had to write it on the paper. At the end of the reading, I collected in the papers and scanned them to see where the main problems were in understanding and we Googled meanings and answers together while I wrote the answers on the white board.

I have not read out loud to students for a LONG time. I have been in the classrooms of English teachers when they have been reading to their class. They are able to put emphasis in the reading and use different tones of voice. After this lesson, I was laughing with an English teacher colleague, explaining how I was trying to make information about stainless steel and aluminium sound interesting as I was reading it. 

My Year 11 class already know that I am doing my inquiry with them this year and that I will be trying different things with them that I have not done before. We went over what we did last week and how it was different to what we did this week in regards to their research. I then asked them to write down what they thought about each approach.

Next week, we will be looking at different plastics, so I think a combination of approaches will be tried. I have also had a volunteer to be "guest reader".

Materials Research - Reading Template 1

 My inquiry group Year 11's are up to the point where we need to do research about lots of different materials so they can decide which ones will be best for their designs that they have been busy doing. 

For this template, I decided to take the information away from its source on the internet and present it on a document of my own. I could then control how much information is given at a time to read and I could take it away from all of the distractions that are on a website.

The Tamaki College literacy specialist, Marc Milford, has been working with us for a while about information transfer. I have tried some of this work with my Year 9 Food Tech class, with their recipe planning.

Staff PLD - Reading Skills with Marc

Reading for Planning

Today was the first time trying reading and information transfer with my Year 11 inquiry class.

Here is the template that I made for them.

Link to document

Here are some of the documents from the students today. I have included students who completed the most work today. We had a double period to do this work this afternoon and there was a wide range of completion, from done and completed really well to hardly started. My next step with them is to ask what they thought of this, how easy they found it and if this links to how incomplete some of them are.Student 1Student 2Student 3

CoL Inquiry Thoughts for Next Year

What achievement challenge are you considering as an area of focus in 2023 and why? Include in your WHY both evidence and your own passion/expertise

 Achievement Challenge 3 - Lift the achievement in reading for all students.

 The projects that my senior students have to do involve a lot of literacy work. They don't realize this when they sign up for DVC as they think it is all about drawing. They have to write a lot of analysis of their own work and read a lot to do the required research. To be able to apply what they have learned in their reading to their own designs is where this falls down as we have not been reading for understanding.

As a department, we have started working with Marc Milford, our school literacy specialist, on reading strategies. I had started trying them out a couple of times in my Y9 class, to get them to read the recipe for the following lesson’s practical session. I would put the resources together on the class site and send it out to them to access before the lesson and they would come to the practical session not knowing what they were going to do as they had not read it. Since working with Marc, we have been using the single session on a Friday afternoon to do the reading exercise to prepare for the following week. I have been taking the method from the recipe and breaking it down into an information transfer table as Marc showed us. I have also tried this with my senior classes with one of the materials research activities that they had to do. I combined it with the work on SOLO taxonomy that I have been doing for a long time. 

 Blog post about Year 9 reading information transfer

Blog post about Year 11 and Y13 reading information transfer using SOLO

 

What learnings from the 2017 - 2022 CoL teacher inquiries have informed or inspired your thinking.

 Robyn Anderson’s Reading for Enjoyment this year was great. It took the emphasis off the reading and put the focus onto enjoying what they were doing. 

It got me thinking that if I made the focus of the reading activities a more supported one, then they would get more out of it as it will be fulfilling a purpose and helping their project. I have been guilty of thinking I was being helpful by giving them links of where to do the research and readings but not supporting them in getting the most out of what was there.

 

How would your work support Manaiakalani pedagogy and  kaupapa?

 There is a Manaiakalani wide focus on literacy and especially reading at the moment so I think that it will fit in well, with a slightly different emphasis on reading for research purposes.

Which elements of the extensive Manaiakalani research findings inform or challenge you as you think about this?

 The fact that the students are coming out of Year 10 with a lower than average PAT reading score than the mean / norm for the country does not set them up well for attempting everything that NCEA throws at them. My students coming into Y11 next year will be below where they need to be in terms of their reading ability and understanding so everything that I give them to do in regards to research will be extra demanding for them. The first thing that my Y11 students do is a research standard where there is a lot of reading of information found about a chosen designer. I give them links to read through but this research has made me realize that is not enough support. They will need me to structure how they are reading this information so their understanding of what they are reading grows.

 

How would you like to be supported in 2023 as you undertake this inquiry?

 I always get a huge amount when I visit the classrooms of other teachers in Tamaki College and the classrooms of other schools in the CoL. Watching how literacy elements are approached by specialist teachers, both in the TC English department and intermediate schools. I have visited Robyn Anderson in the past when she was specifically doing literacy elements with her class.

Here are all the blog posts that involve Robyn's class.

The support that I would like would be the ability to visit a wider range of schools and age groups as they go about reading activities.

 

How would you plan to support your colleagues in your school with THEIR inquiries and/or teaching in the area you are exploring?

 All of my inquiry work always goes onto my blog so it is available for anyone to read and access all my resources. We are doing literacy / reading work within the department so my experiments and findings will be shared weekly in the department meetings. Sharing to all staff via emails of blog posts and presentations will be done throughout the year.

Acknowledging that while literacy is not the main focus of the subject it is an integral part of reaching those higher achievement levels. We all need to work together to help the students to realise that literacy / reading / writing is in every aspect of school / work / life.

Verbal Instructions with Mote

After reading the blog post from Robyn Anderson about how she is trying out a Chrome extension called Mote, I thought that this would be a great tool to use as part of my ongoing inquiry. Mu inquiry is based around making my class site a more supportive user experience for the students and this extension will be great for adding short recorded voice explanations. It is great that you can only record a minute and a half as it means you cant ramble on for too long and you have to think about making it short and to the point.

So far, I have had a go at the presentation I have put together for my next cooking session with my Year 9 group. I have recorded myself reading out the ingredients and the method.

I also like that when you embed this presentation into the class site, the links are a single click to hear the audio. Link to where it is on my class site.

This is going to be really useful in terms of literacy as the students can listen to what new Technology terms sound like and can listen to them as often as they need.

Another idea that I have had is to have buttons to different language versions down the side of items of text, instructions etc to help those class members who would benefit from this information in their own language, spoken by a fluent speaker. This will mean me working closely with other members of staff as I did last year when we translated key texts for them. Blog post 1 Blog post 2

Lock down video help for NCEA classes

 Last year, while we were on lockdown, I trialled making screencast videos for my seniors to explain step by step how to complete tasks. Link to blog post

I know that the students used these videos as I load them as unlisted on YouTube so the video viewing stats are from where i have shared it.

As part of my inquiry this year, I am planning on seeing how effective using rewindable videos are in my mixed level / mixed ability senior classes.

Thanks to two lock downs before March, this has been forced a little earlier than the initial plan.

Examples are here of what I have put together so far for my Y11 and Y12 students. In both classes I have a mix of students who have done graphics and some who haven't. These links go to my class website.

Year 11 Design Elements

Year 11 Types of Seating

Year 12 Image Collection Research

Year 12 Design Elements

Year 12 Timeline

Year 12 Compare and Contrast

Considering that we are in the middle of the second lockdown this year already, the class spreadsheets are not looking too bad. (I have screenshot them without the names for privacy)

Starting the Tracking of Change

My last blog post spoke about the need to be able to see if change was happening with my Inquiry group and the need to be able to track that change - link here to blog post

Today we had out first session at trying to do this. The students read through my prepared piece a few times by themselves then they did their recordings.
The plan was to use the Chrome extension mentioned in the last blog post but that plan was soon thrown in the bin when that extension appeared to be blocked on the student Chrome books. (note to self - go see Dev and get it unblocked).
We used my mac book instead. I set it up in my back room and they went out there one at a time to do their recordings.

While they were practicing in the class room, I took a short video as it was very entertaining hearing the repeats and seeing the concentration.

Here is the tracking sheet for this so far ... the girls were not in today. The colours indicate whether I have completed it or not and what I have to catch up on. Link here

Photoshop Design Developments

My Year 13 students are designing sets for a show about Matariki. They have been making models in card and plasticine and drawing in their sketchbooks. Their next step is to develop all this work into cohesive designs for a set and see if all their elements work together.
We are going to do this using Photoshop.
Over the last two days we have done some basic skills like adding an image into photoshop, learning about layers, using the magic wand tool to select and delete a background, using the other select tools to see the different reasons why you would use them, putting sections onto their own layer for editing, replicating layers to get multiple images, putting lettering on the design and filling selections with colour.
They started doing this on found images from the internet to get used to the skills and have some fun.




While they were practicing their skills today, I was photographing their designs from their sketchbooks so they can move on to using their own designs in photoshop.
This has been going really well today and they have made a really good start at some design development work on Photoshop using their own drawings.




I have one student in this class who is in Year 12 and he is doing NCEA Level 3 with the rest of the class. He has a lot of experience at using Photoshop already so has been doing this kind of work over the last couple of weeks.
Here is his first design development.

Year 13 teaching Year 7 and 8

My Year 13 class have visited one of our local primary / intermediate schools this week. Two of them visited Glen Taylor school at the end of last term to talk about effective logo design. Blog post here.

This week the whole class went so they could start to redesign their logos with them.
We had a talk the day before about what we would focus on and how they would do it.
We decided to all work in circles, focus on using guide lines for lettering, simplifying the image of the mountains used and simple font choice.

The Year 13 students did really well. They presented to the whole group of Year 7 and 8 students to start with, asking them questions about what they did during the last visit and reminding them what they talked about.
The Y7 and Y8 students then sat in groups and my senior students worked with groups. They moved around the groups so they could help lots of different students.

On the planning day and as we were travelling there, they were very nervous and two of my students didn't turn up that morning so they could avoid going. The 6 students who went did really really well. Their confidence grew as the students listened to them and followed their instructions as they were demonstrating.

At the end of the session, they didn't want to leave.

Preparing for our first presentation to the class

My Year 13 inquiry group have reached a stage in their project work where they have completed (ish) their observational drawings and are ready to move on to making models of the observed forms. This is an ideal point to have a go at a first presentation.
This is also a good point to get some "baseline" information from their first presentation.

• I have told them they are going to present. 
• We decided today what order this is going to happen over this week.
• I did an exemplar presentation with my drawings today to give them an idea what to do.

I have not given them any support structure for their first one on purpose so I can see what improvements they make over the year with the support I plan on giving them as part of my inquiry.

Here is my example presentation today :-

We also sorted out the Google Plus Community today (slightly delayed due to network upgrades). The students are now in the Level 3 community and I uploaded my example video there so they can rewatch it to prepare for their presentation this week. I have also got my example Google Site up to date so the students know what should be on theirs by now. These are the first steps to what I hope will be the support the students need to keep up to date and on track this year. Student site links are here

Teariki	Site Link
Vaifoa	Site Link
Antonio	Site Link
Martha	Site Link
Jayden	Site Link
Sella	Site Link
Princess	site
Apii	Site Link