Country Flags in the Classroom

 One of the goals that we set as an Art Department this year was part of making the students feel welcome and visible in your classroom. We wanted to put up the country flags for everywhere the students are from in the classes we teach.

Over the weekend, I looked on the school system for all the ethnicities of the students and found the flags representing all the ones that were in the first column - ie the ethnicities that the students identify as. Some had 1 there and some had 2 or 3. I looked for flags for them all. It turned out to be quite a cultural mix.

I put all the found flag images onto a presentation, made a note of which ones I had found and printed them off.

I got two of my boys to help put them up today and they look great. I have already had a very positive response from the students that I have seen today in my room when they have seen the display.

Here is the link to the presentation

Making Hows To's to Learn

My Year 9 students are learning to use Tinkercad in order to 3D model their product design so we can 3D print them at the end of the project.
There are some key things they need to get the hang of in order to make more complex shapes in Tinkercad and one of those is using the workplanes.
They could use the lessons built in to Tinkercad and they could listen to me show them in the class, but I know they will have forgotten what I have said as soon as they move away from me.
With this in mind, I started a DVC "how to" site, and made a start putting some Tinkercad screen casts on it. Link here . Then I thought that the students could make their own how to's that they could refer to when they get stuck with their product design. This would embed the skills more firmly into their heads as they were breaking it down themselves rather than relying on mine.

Today we made our first one. I went through it with them to show them how to do each step, take a screen shot, put it onto a presentation and write an explanation.
Here is my example that I did with them.



I shared this with them so they could refer to it and had the inevitable question - "can we just copy and paste yours miss??" ... errr...no. So I explained to them that the whole point is for them to make the how to as it will make the skills stick in their heads!
Here are links to some of the student work on their blogs.
Fasi Kaharau Leilani
My sample blog post for them to refer to
Our next skill will be combining shapes to create more complex ones. Hopefully doing their own skills rewindables will enable them to create their product design with more confidence. We shall see.

Blogging Exemplars

The way I teach is to do all the things that I expect my classes to do, whether that is drawing, rendering, making 3D models or working online.
This gives me insight into the tasks I am expecting them to do in terms of timescale, quality, difficulty level etc.  This also gives me an example for them to see before they start the task.

While I was explaining to my new Year 9 group about the two blog posts that I wanted them to do about the tasks they had been doing, it occurred to me that I should approach blogging with the students like this too.

With this in mind, I started a new blog today.
Link here

I have put on here the two tasks for my Year 9 class up to now. I have included what I asked them to complete and the labels I asked them to add.

They can find their examples on this blog bu clicking on the Year level in the labels.

I intend to use this same blog for Years 7, 8, 9 and 10 and possibly Year 11 so they will have to be able to find the examples done for them.

Seeing as I have only just started this today, I have no idea if this is going to make any difference at all with the student understanding of the blogging of the tasks in Graphics or if it will support them at all. I will get some student feedback in a couple of weeks to see what they think.

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.

Feedback regarding blogging structure post

I received this email regarding a post structuring the activity of writing a blog post around SOLO taxonomy.
Link to blog post here

Hi Miss.

I am going to use this format for reading responses and possibly some other English standards.

Today I shared it with XXXX and XXXX in our PCT meeting. We were talking about ways to make SOLO more concrete for students. They really liked the way a framework like yours/Carole's takes students from the abstract of SOLO to a scaffolded activity.

Ngā mihi

Technology Department Blogging PD Session

Today, the Technology department staff were lucky to have a presentation from Carol Heka, our food technology teacher. She was explaining how she includes blogging into her planning for her lessons for juniors and intermediates. Her blog post about it is here.
This is part of our department goals this year.

This is the template that was provided today as a starting point. We want to structure what the juniors and intermediate students blog about instead of just putting their work on their blogs with no explanation or analysis.

I took the starting point template and added extra things that I thought would be good for the Graphics lessons.
Link here

The plan now is that we try these out with our students and feedback in our next blogging catch-up session in the department in a couple of weeks time.