Visual Planning

My inquiry this year included this last part :-

The measurable outcome ...

This is targeted towards achieving the school focus of  16+ credits at Level 1 and 14+ credits at Level 2 and 3 for each subject that the students take.
This work is also to enable more access to merit and excellence levels on the NCEA DVC standards.

To this end, I have started planning for next year.

The option choices have started coming in from the students for next year and I am delighted to hear that I am getting and option line that has Level 1 DVC by itself without sharing with Level 2 or 3. This means that I will get my Year 1 group by themselves next year. FANTASTIC news. 

With this in mind, I have tried to plan a year where we focus on a course in depth and with the quality and time allocations needed to get to merit / excellence.

I decided to do my initial planning visually using an iPad app called Mindnode.

I worked out what credits were on offer for each of the standards I wanted to cover, so what time allocation they needed in order to to work.

I work on 10 weeks for each of terms 1, 2 and 3 then another 3 weeks on term 4 before the work gets sent away. So that gives me a total of 33 weeks. 

The figures are worked out on 10 hours per credit and 50 minute lessons 6 times a week.

I have done the same for Level 2 and Level 3.

The difference here is that there is a technology standard in each one that is being covered at the same time as the DVC standard. As most of the work completed in the project covers both standards, I have not given the full 60 hours for them separately, but added time onto that project from the Technology standard so that all elements have time to be covered. (AS91356 and AS91610).

Another difference with the Level 3 course is that the external work is taught explicitly and separately and leads into a design project.(unlike Level 1 and 2 where the work they are doing already in the projects is sent away to be marked for the externals I have chosen to include).

This Level 3 external is what we do first, at the start of the year, as it leads into the first project. So this work needs to be included in the year's time allowance.