Design Talking with Intermediates

Today with my Intermediate Technology class, I decided to approach the start of the designing process in a different way.
We are going to design toys and games that make you think and the first activity that we did was to look at existing products to see what you could buy at the moment. Example blog post here showing what we did. ( I am putting everything we do in the Y9 and Intermediate classes on tis sample blog so they can refer to it to keep them on track and to catch up if they need to - blog post here )

I put them into pairs today and we put a list on the board of games that they play on paper
hangman, noughts and crosses, connect the dots, pictionary and battleships.
Each team had to choose a couple of them and spend some time playing them together.
There was lots of giggling, checking for things online and shouts of "i won"!
I then asked them to have a discussion with each other and come up with ways to make the games they have just played 3D. The ideas had to be able to be played with physical pieces that you move around and not drawn on paper. they could make notes and draw as they talked.



I loved walking round and listening to them. They were so focussed with the task they were asked to do. As a graphics teacher, I LOVED the ideas being drawn, talked about, scribbled out, changed, argued over. laughed about ... They were not bothered about being fussy over their paper work, it was all about the idea and working it out. This is EXACTLY what designing is supposed to be about. Where do they start to get so fussy that every sheet of work has to be perfect? My seniors drive me crazy over this, to the point where I have to physically restrain them from tearing pages from their sketchbooks! How can I encourage my seniors to be more like these teams this morning? Totally focussed on the ideas and not overthinking everything and stressing. We can clean up drawing styles and skills later.

We then sat together round the front table and shared ideas.
I wrote these ideas up on the board and asked questions to get them to think further.

It was a very productive session doing design work as teams. 

Questions for me ....

How can I build more team work into the design process

How can I get my senior students to work like these teams today? 

If you have any ideas while reading this I would really welcome some feedback in the comments.

Jumpstart - Task One

I met my new NCEA Level 1 class yesterday for the Jumpstart session at the end of the year. We did some drawing skills yesterday and so today for the first double period of the course we made a start on Task One of the project. Link here to the Jumpstart project site.

The first task is to make a mood board of our theme for the project which is Steampunk.  My plan was to have the students work in pairs or small teams to do the mood boards as they are all collecting images to do with the same theme it may as well be a team activity. We decided to do this as a whole group today and make one big mood board.

The students researched lots of different images to illustrate Steampunk and sent them to me to print. They then cut them out and started assembling them on the mood board. The board itself was three large pieces of cardboard taped together so it can stand up. They can then have that up in the class room as they are working on their design ideas to be inspired by the shapes, colours and textures.

It was good to see them all working together as a team (one of them didn't want to be in the team photograph ) and feel like they accomplished something so early in the project.

We had some time left at the end of the session so we had a play with the gears to prepare ourselves for the next task.

Culturally Responsive and Relational Pedagogy - Session 3

Culturally Responsive and Relational Pedagogy - Session 2

Culturally Responsive and Relational Pedagogy - Session 1

Culturally Responsive and Relational Pedagogy with Ngahuia Lott - Session 1

Using MyMaps for Year 11 Information Collection

My Year 11 group are on with their poster designs and are at the stage where they are collecting the information about their chosen architect and their work. We started with the usual method of using a Google Doc to collect the information and cite the sources. I decided to let them work in small teams of two or three to do this, depending on which architect they chose.
It then occurred to me that this would be a good opportunity to use the MyMaps option on Google Maps. I made an example of a Frank Gehry map to show them what I wanted to do with the application.




To introduce them to using the application, I made a map and shared it with the whole class for them to add two pins each. One pin was where they live now and one pin was where their family is from. I started off by adding my two pins, one in Glen Innes and one in England, and showed them how to add pictures of the place.
The students then added their pins and images.
It was a really good whanaungatanga as we were learning lots about each other and the students were leaning over and saying things like "is that where you live?" .. "is that where you're from?" .. "wow that's really pretty"...
There are a couple of "stray" pins on the map when one or two students decided to pin places like the Fukushima Nuclear Plant. Teenagers!





A couple of my students have made a start on their architect maps, and they are finding it interesting seeing where these buildings are as well as find the information about them to add to the map.

Another thing I have suggested they do, and some of them have started, is use Google Street View to see the buildings in place next to the other buildings on the street. This helps them to understand the effect these designs have on their surroundings. This was something that they have just started but are really enjoying.

Here is an example of a student produced map, about Antoni Gaudi.

Describe with Year 10

My Year 10 class have started their design project and need to do some product analysis of existing products. To help them with this I decided to do some literacy exercises with them today.

I put all of the resources they needed for this on the class site. I have made a space especially for literacy like I have with my Year 11 group. I plan to do this for all year groups to hopefully emphasise the importance of these literacy exercises that we will be doing.

The class had to get into groups of 2 or 3 so they could support each other through this activity and work together.
They had to make a copy of the Google Slide and share it with members of the team.

We were focussing in on the multistructural part of SOLO Taxonomy, so by indicating the poster in my room, we had a discussion about using the word "black" for a colour was just labelling / identifying the colour not describing it. So that was not in the correct SOLO area.

The students worked well on this and tried hard with everything. Here is a selection of the work that they produced today. Interesting discussions / arguments were breaking out with different opinions that were being solved by some searching  / research on the internet.

After that, I gave out paper and pencils and we reversed the activity. I was shouting out words that they had to quickly draw illustrations for. The focus was not on the quality of their drawing skills at this point as I wanted them to concentrate on the words.  I used words like "furry, spikey, humongous, metallic, square, cuboid, sphere". If they did not know what a word meant, they were not allowed to ask me, they had to research on the internet quickly. We also discussed words that could be seen in different ways like "flat". Some students saw the paper they were drawing on. Some saw the road outside the classroom. Some saw a singing voice could be flat.  I then got them to fill in boxes on a Google Drawing to give me some feedback about what they thought about working in teams and what they thought about doing literacy in Graphics.
Describing the objects was difficult because i got confused with shape and form

I think it was easy to work with my group because you don’t have to do all the work

It was algds working in a group because we got to choose who we wanted to work with which made it easy to talk about our ideas.Plus we work more better with friends then with others.

I think that working in a group has helped many students because they get more help and not only that working on literacy work during graphics has helped us not only for this option but also for our main subjects such as english.

I think the other group was copying us and they think they slick because they think they gots aways. 

My group was alguds cause we make the discussion and talk about the shape.

It was good working in a group because you have other people in your group to contribute their ideas.

My thoughts about working in a group was a good choice because you have one another to help you out and this activity was easy to work on in my group because my team and I are scholars.

Team work at NCEA

After experimenting a little with some team work at Level 2 NCEA last year, I got some positive feedback from the students about it. There is some student voice about the first Level 2 standard from last year here.

As part of my inquiry this year, I want to do a lot of literacy strategies to enable the students to achieve at merit and excellence. Within this work, I want to build a lot more group work into the tasks that I set them.
This will give them ~

• confidence
• the ability to help and support each other
• the chance to talk within their teams about the task
• the chance assign roles within the group / team for themselves

When I tried this last year, I received feedback from the internal moderation process which was really good and helpful. That was to make sure that it is really obvious within the group work which part was completed by each student. This is to make sure that their submission for NCEA is clear and their own work.

I am aiming to do this in a couple of ways. When they are working on practical activities together, they will fill in the spreadsheet and indicate what they did on any given day working as the team. When they are working on shared documents online, they are going to colour code their own work in some way, either by using the highlighter feature or by the note feature.

So far it is going well.
When I asked them today what they thought about working in teams for NCEA ~

• It is different to last year
• It is different to the other NCEA classes
• We like it
• It's great

We had a great conversation today about who in the group was the watcher, the bossy one, the neat freak, the organiser, the quiet get on with it one, the loud front man ... they were all pointing at each other claiming it was others in the team.

So far so good.

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.

End of Term 2 - Credit Check for DVC

Here is where were are up to at the end of Term 2 in terms of credits in NCEA Design and Visual Communication.


AS91969 - Level 1
This standard is the first thing that we do and it is rather disappointing that there are still 3 students sitting on Not Achieved at this point due to not completing the work.
We are having some catch up time for 3 days in the holidays so hopefully this will change quite soon.
The excellence and the merit credits is very pleasing for those two students who worked very hard.

For the school goal for at least 50% of Maori students to pass, it breaks down like this :-
Total of 5 Maori students - 60% pass rate
2 at Not Achieved due to not finishing yet.
1 at achieved
1 at merit
1 at excellence

Here is the overall picture for the standard :-




AS91967 - Level 1
This standard is still underway.
There is one student who has completed this so far an that is at an excellence standard.


AS91966 - Level 1
This standard is underway through all of the projects as it is the rendering standard.
One student has completed enough work so far for it to be assessed and this is at an excellence standard.



AS91354 - Level 2
This standard is the first one that we completed this year. The two Not Achieved results were from those two students not attending enough to complete the work. I need to make sure that the information and instructions on the class site are clear enough for students to work through in their own time if they are not at school.
The 5 results at merit is very pleasing as this is the first time that we have tried this standard in DVC as it is a Generic Technology standard.


For the school goal for at least 50% of Maori students to pass, it breaks down like this :-
Total of 4 Maori students - 50% pass rate
2 at Not Achieved due to not finishing the work.
2 at achieved


Here is the overall picture for the standard :-



AS91340 - Level 2
This is a research project about a chosen design era. I am extremely pleased with the level of Merit achievements this year. The new thing that I tried with the Year 12 students was having them work in pairs or small teams on research elements. I did this in response to the Kia Eke Panuku work that we have been doing about students responding well to working together. This seems to have had a good effect on the students work where they collect research together then use it to write their own notes.

For the school goal for at least 50% of Maori students to pass, it breaks down like this :-
Total of 3 Maori students - 33% pass rate
2 at Not Achieved due to not finishing the work.
1 at merit


Here is the overall picture for the standard :-




Level 3
Due to the fact that we start the year by working on the external - AS91627 - Initiate design ideas through exploration, we start the product design project quite late in Term 1.
We are currently working on - AS91630 - Resolve a product design through Graphics practice - which is not completed yet. We are nearly at the point of producing the final design so it should be finished quite early in term 3.
The results for Level 3 for my course always look terrible for most of the year, then they all seem to go in at once. We are a little behind where we should be according to the year plan, but I am not too worried yet.