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.

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.

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.

Manaiakalani Class OnAir Lesson 13 - Gears

Link to Manaiakalani Class OnAir to see the whole team.

Direct Instruction

We have a set of gears that have been made on the 3D printer so the introduction was about showing them the pieces we have and how to connect them together. There is also a worksheet to refer to for more understanding.

Class Site Content

Link to class site

This is activity 2 on the site.

Learner Generated Content

First Activity
To start with, they had to connect the gears together and see the motion that was created.

Second Activity
The students had to get the movement being transferred from one side of the board to the other.

Third Activity
The challenge was to get the motion transferring from one side of the table to the other, using multiple boards and working as a team.

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Lana

Beyonce

Alizhay

Manaiakalani Class OnAir Lesson 12 - Class Presentations

Link to Manaiakalani Class OnAir to see the whole team.

Link to Extended Lesson Plan Here

Direct Instruction

I took the students through an example of talking about a design development of a mobile phone. I talked about what I had done, why I had done it and the effect the changes had.




Class Site Content
Random number generator

I used the Google random number generator and then put these numbers to where the students names are on Kamar. This list was written on the board so they could see where they were in the sequence.

Google Plus Community

I have put the videos here for the students to access. They can put them on their portfolio sites as evidence of analysis.

Learner Generated Content

Ivan
Talks about the development of his virtual reality headset design.

Tyli

Talks about the development of her virtual sword / cosplay design.

Haarera

Talks about the development of his communication device worn on the wrist.

George

Talks about the development of his hand held game controller design.

Chelsea

Talks about her hologram ring design.

Johnson

Talks about his fitness watch design.

Sean

Talks about his fitness watch design.

Vaifoa

Talking about his gaming ear piece.

Manaiakalani Class OnAir Lesson 11 - Design Development Timelines

Link to Manaiakalani Class OnAir to see the whole team.

Link to Extended Lesson Plan Here

Direct Instruction

The instruction was in two parts, over different lessons. To start with, the students are laying out their design developments in the order that they completed them so you can see the progression that they have gone through.

Then they are answering questions to explain what they did, why they did it and the effect these changes have.

Class Site Content

Link to new class site

Link to old class site

These are the support questions we had on the board during the analysis part of the task.

How will this design fit a person?

How practical is this design?

What could it possibly be made from?

How have I changed this design from the previous one?

What effect has this had on the design?

Learner Generated Content

Manaiakalani Class OnAir Lesson 10 - Ergonomic Design Modelling

Link to Manaiakalani Class OnAir to see the whole team.

Link to Extended Lesson Plan Here


Direct Instruction

This was a short talk about how important anthropometrics and ergonomics are in designing. This was backed up by a small presentation explaining the meaning of the words by breaking them down.

Class Site Content

Link to the class site where there is extra information about anthropometrics and ergonomics and how they are used in design work.

Learner Generated Content

Ongoing Lesson

The students are building their design developments on each other in order to get the size and proportion correct.

Models

These are the starting models that the students have been making. They will take these and develop further after analysing what worked and what did not work.

The photograph is a link to take you to the folder of images.

Manaiakalani Class OnAir Lesson 9 - Starting a New Project - Wearable Tech

Link to Manaiakalani Class OnAir to see the whole team.

Link to Extended Lesson Plan Here

Direct Instruction
This short talk with the students was about looking at how their chosen tech has changed over a timescale of 10+ year so they need to think about how this will affect their designs for the future.

Class Site Content

Introduction to the Topic

Before we had this session we had quite an extensive whole class chat about what wearable tech might be. This video is quite long (20 mins) as it is the whole pre topic chat.

Chat outline on the board

This is the board showing what we were talking about during the introductory chat about the topic.

Learner Generated Content

Vaifoa

Talking about his headphone idea and what will .be different in the future

Sean

Talking about his wearable fitness tech and what needs people will have in the future.

Johnson

Talking about his watch design and why it is looking more like jewellery.

Chelsea

wearable tech that creates holograms for personal communication.

Timelines

These timelines were produced on Google Drawings. The link here is to images of the work produced.

Link to folder

Start of Concept Sketches

Manaiakalani Class OnAir Lesson 8 - Final Chair Designs

Link to Manaiakalani Class OnAir to see the whole team.


Direct Instruction

The instruction to the whole class was quite brief as it was reminding them of all the elements that needed to be included on the their final design sheets. I had prepared the board in advance so they could see the layout I wanted them to follow. The rest of the instruction through the lesson was on a one to one basis depending on the needs of the students.

Here is some of the ongoing lesson

Reflection

This work was a culmination of a much longer series of lessons based around analysis, design and literacy. I feel that the students did well as they were pulling everything together that we have been looking at over my inquiry.

Link to inquiry literacy strategies .

Class Site Content

Link to examples on class site

This is a diagram explaining the input the students have had from my inquiry about subject specific literacy.

Learner Generated Content

Extended Lesson Plan

Lesson Topic :- Final Chair Design Sheet
Year Group :-  Year 11
Learning Outcome	To be able to use all of the skills regarding drawing, rendering and analysis to produce a final chair design presentation sheet.
Success Criteria Using SOLO	Uni structural Multi structural Relational Extended abstract Students draw a 3D final chair design. Students identify the main parts of their design. Students draw a 3D final chair design and can render the design to enhance the 3D qualities using tones. Students can describe their design using noun groups. Students can relate their final chair drawing to the materials it would be made from by using rendering techniques to show those materials. Students can link a statement about their design to a reason by using a linking word. Students can create a design that is inspired by their chosen architect and render it to look 3D, like the material it is made from and position it in space using shadows. Students can reflect on how their design relates to the work of their chosen architect.
Links with the New Zealand Curriculum	NCEA Level 1 - Curriculum Level 6 Outcome development and evaluation Critically analyse their own and others’ outcomes to inform the development of ideas for feasible outcomes. Undertake ongoing experimentation and functional modelling, taking account of stakeholder feedback and trialling in the physical and social environments. Use the information gained to select, justify, and develop a final outcome. Evaluate this outcome’s fitness for purpose against the brief and justify the evaluation, using feedback from stakeholders.
Key Competencies	Thinking - using all the drawing, rendering and literacy strategies we have been working on all together to produce the final design sheet. Using language, symbols, and texts - writing the design analysis and using visual techniques to simulate 3D forms and surface finishes. Managing self - completing a finished final design sheet ready for assessment. Participating and contributing - Relating to others -
Prior knowledge	We have  done a series of literacy exercises to build up to this point. Link to diagram showing flow of activities covered We have done sketching and rendering techniques in 2D and 3D. We have done research about materials. The students have produced design developments in relation to their chosen architect.
Lesson Sequence	Session Outline Student Activity Teacher Activity Sit round the front table and listen to teacher input about how to layout their final design sheet. Prepare the board with layout example. Discuss the potential layout with the students so they know what to include on the their final design sheet. As the lesson is going on, do one to ones chats about their analysis writing, using questions to the students to get them to think and answer. One to one / small group help with rendering skills and detail drawings. Students to work on their individual presentation sheets to show :- Rendered 3D drawing of final chair 2D cross sectional view 2D plan, side and front views Analysis notes using the structure we have worked on Work will be photographed and shared in the class community for all the class to see each other’s work. This is the final work for this project so will be included in their sketchbook of evidence for the freehand sketching external - until them they will be displayed on the classroom walls.
Resources	A2 paper Drawing pencils Coloured pencils Graphics marker pens Pastels Link to examples on class site
Next Steps	Next Lesson This task will take longer than one double period, so it will need time in following lessons to complete everything. Further in this project This is the end of this project, but all of these skills will be used in the next one.
Reflection and Analysis
	What went well. Lesson Content :- The students knew the main bulk of what they have to produce for this activity as it is a continuation of both the project they have been working on and the skills they have been covering. Lesson Pacing :- I knew this was not going to be complete in a double period so the pacing is as expected. Lesson Delivery :- My introduction was uncharacteristically short but I think this is because it was just a sum up of what they already knew. The delivery throughout the lesson worked well on a one to one / small group basis as needed. Student Outcomes :- The outcomes are of a pleasing standard and clearly shows what they have been learning. What still needs work. Student Understanding :- I still have students who were in the lower ability class in Year 10 who are having difficulties understanding what we are doing at the moment. I do not have a specific example for this layout produced, just the individual things on the class site and the layout sketch on the board, so this would probably have helped. Having examples of 3D rendered products for them to refer to would help too as their understanding and visualizing of what their design looks like in 3D is a problem.