Priority Students - Is there any shift?

As part of our PLG groups this afternoon, we looked at the priority students that we had chosen at the start of the year and later on in Term 3. We wanted to look at two things. One was to see if there has been any shift over the year and the second was to see how they are doing in all of their other lessons compared to your own.


We then had to make a plan about what we were going to do next and which teachers we were going to contact in regards to those students.

First Group (Term 2)

First Group	Reason
Student 1	Credits in Maths and BCaTs and none in DVC
Student 2	Credits in Science and Maths but none in DVC
Student 3	DVC is the only lesson she has no credits in

1st May Total
8	Mat-4	Sci-0	Eng-0	Vis-0	BCAT-4
8	Mat-4	Sci-4	Eng-0	Vis-0	Geo-0
14	Mat-4	Sci-4	Eng-3	Vis-0	PE-3

20th Aug Total						29th Aug
22	Mat-11	Sci-0	Eng-0	Vis-0	BCAT-11	Vis-4
39	Mat-11	Sci-8	Eng-3	Vis-7	Geo-10	Vis-10
38	Mat-11	Sci-8	Eng-3	Vis-10	PE-6

	Actions by teacher
Whole class	Vocabulary exercises all together for product analysis.
Student 1	I spoke with his BCATs teacher as he was acheiving and working really well in that class. I visited him in that class too to see how he was working. He was really quiet and focussed. I have been letting him use my laptop as it has the latest version of Photoshop on it so he can finish his project work. I have sat with another group but have activiely monitoring him and "kicking the back of his chair" when he has drifted off task.
Student 2	Lots of one to one help and supplying examples of what she has to do. Not letting her settle for "just getting it finished", but making her focus higher. Working with her to show her how to do skills, sitting with her and doing the skill at the same time as her. She has achieved 10 credits at merit as of 29th August.
Student 3	Working with her one to one with skills and tasks. Sharing excellence examples of NZQA examples and examples from Tamaki College so she can see that excellence is possible in the subject at TC. Letting her work on a different sequence to the rest of the Level 1 group as she is ahead of them.

Second Group (Term 3)

First Group	Reason
Student 1	No credits in DVC
Student 2	No credits in DVC
Student 3	Slow working. Seems to lack motivation
Student 4	Slow working. Attendance issues and no work done at home.
Student 5	Slow working. Lacks motivation. Won't come in the room.

1st May Total
8	Mat-4	Sci-0	Eng-0	Vis-0	BCAT-4
4	Mat-4	Sci-0	Eng-0	Vis-0	Mus-0
8	Eng-0	Mat-0	Aut-0	Vis-4	Art-0
10	Eng-0	Mat-2	BCAT-4	Mus-0	Vis-4
3	Phy-0	Eng-0	Mat-3	Mus-0	Vis-0

20th Aug Total						29th Aug
22	Mat-11	Sci-0	Eng-0	Vis-0	BCAT-11	Vis-4
8	Mat-8	Sci-0	Eng-0	Vis-0	Mus-0
18	Eng-0	Mat-7	Aut-5	Vis-7	Art-0
43	Eng-4	Mat-6	BCAT-22	Mus-4	Vis-7
23	Phy-7	Eng-0	Mat-6	Mus-10	Vis-0

	Actions by teacher
Student 1	I spoke with his BCATs teacher as he was acheiving and working really well in that class. I visited him in that class too to see how he was working. He was really quiet and focussed. I have been letting him use my laptop as it has the latest version of Photoshop on it so he can finish his project work. I have sat with another group but have activiely monitoring him and "kicking the back of his chair" when he has drifted off task.
Student 2	Have sat with her and shown her how to do things but she will just sit and do nothing. Her attendance is very poor at the moment so nothing is being done at all.
Student 3	Supplies examples of what to do. Sits with him and goes through with him what to do for individual designs (doing at the same time)
Student 4	Make sure I catch up with him when he is in the lesson so he knows where he is and what he should be doing. He has an attendance problem due to working so I dont see him very often.
Student 5	Individual task sheet for her to refer to
	She does not come into the classroom but sits outside.

Plan for moving forward

Continue to give as much one to one help as I can. Make sure the tasks on the class site are the first thing the students look at when they come in.

The following list is which teachers to talk to about the students as they are doing well in their lessons. The conversation needs to revolve around how they are working with those students and if there are any strategies that they are using that work and could be shared.

Student 1 - Talk BCATs and Maths teachers

Student 2 - Talk to maths teacher

Student 3 - Talk to BCATs teacher

Student 4 - Talk to Maths and Auto

Student 5 - Talk to Physics and Music

Describe it to me....

With my NCEA Level 1, 2 and 3 Design and Visual Communication classes today, we were doing some exercises to prepare them for design analysis of their own work. This is always a weak point in our work so I am continuously trying to find ways to structure this to make it easier for the students to understand.
I had prepared a Google Drawing with a SOLO taxonomy structured layout of a series of questions. Link here
I decided that this was a little too much to start off with, so we were working today on a question at a time on images of products that they were familiar with. We were also doing this all together in the class Google Plus Communities so they could see what each other was writing about the products and get ideas if they were stuck. Link to the Level 2 Community here.
What I found interesting today, was where the students got stuck with the work.  They were having issues with the describing of the products that I put up for them. They had to describe things like the shape, the texture, the colour etc. This was not the area that I expected them to get stuck on.
I have had a chat with other teachers about this, in the Social Studies and English departments, and have realised that the problem is a lack of vocabulary that the students are using on a regular basis. This is really holding them back when it comes to the simple part of design analysis where they have to describe the product. This is even before they get to the higher order thinking of analysis where they have to think about why design decisions have been made and what effect these decisions have had.

To help them with this in the future, I have started putting together a list of sites that are loaded with describing words for any particular focus. I am going to share this document with the students so they can browse through the sites and be exposed to the words that are on there. I am going to make them look through themselves to find appropriate words for the things they are trying to describe.
Link to document here

Links to Describing Words

Shape

Words used to describe the shape of objects

List of Descriptive Words and Adjectives for Shapes & Patterns

Geometrical shapes

Texture

400 Words to Describe Texture

Descriptive Words for Texture

Adjectives to Describe Texture

Size

List of Adjectives to Describe Size

Synonyms for size

Form

3D OBJECTS (PRISMS, CYLINDERS, CONES, SPHERES)

Colour

General words used to describe colours

Words used to describe specific colours

Over 1000 Ways to Describe Colors

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.