Reading for Identification in DVC

 My Year 11 DVC class are currently starting their seating designs. They have already looked at their design influence (the has to look at either Frank Gehry, Frank Lloyd Wright or Antoni Gaudi - Link to planning here ). They now have to think about their second design influence, which has to be Māori inspired. We looked at Matariki as a starting point for this influence and I gave them this presentation to start them off on their research.

After they had done their general reading, they had to decide on one star in the Matariki cluster and find the story of that star / character. This story was to be copied and pasted onto a Google doc and then they had to read it and highlight where something was mentioned that they could then find as an image.

They then had to find images to go with the story and put it all on the same doc ready for printing.

This is my example.

After their document was printed out, the students had to cut everything out and arrange it on a page in the sketchbooks.

We kept the highlighted areas on the written sections as it made clear the parts of the story that they were focusing on.

From here, the students have been drawing the images from their research. I think that drawing the images and not just using them to look at for inspiration, gives a greater insight into the shapes and forms as you are making stronger connections in the brain by physically working with them.

What we are on with now is design development. The students have their initial sketches based on the design elements of their chosen designer. They now have to take those initial ideas and use the drawings from their Matariki stories to inspire how the development goes.

Year 11 Visual Art Trip to Auckland Museum - Planning for AS91912

 My Year 11 Visual Art class are currently working on AS91912. So far, we have looked at the school Taonga and have done some research and sketches to do with that. Blog post here

We have recently been on a class trip to the Auckland Museum marae. We had a great guided tour around the marae in the museum, where he told us all about the history of that marae, whose it was, why it was built and why it was there in the museum. We were also given the opportunity to have a go at weaving tukutuku.

After the guided tour, we had another hour looking at all the artefacts and sitting and drawing some of them. This was the first experience for the students of drawing while there are other people / members of the public walking round being able to see what they were doing. I was very proud of how well they coped with this as this can be quite a confronting experience.

Since getting back to the classroom, we have been focussed on getting 2 sketchbook pages completed to record this work.

The planning for this is on the class website here.

I have updated the sketchbook pages tracking page with my examples so the students know where they should be up to.

I have also started the assessment page with the presentation template that the students are going to use to submit their completed work. Everything has to be submitted digitally this year so we will have to be very careful to take good quality photographs.

Here is my example so the students are clear what they have to do with their work when it is completed.

As the students use Workspaces for the rest of their classwork in other subjects, I have made a workspace for them to record their evidence onto. I will use this one workspace for all 3 standards this year as they all have to be submitted digitally. Link to workspace page

Visual Art Planning - AS91912

 The theme for our work on this standard is Taonga. I am going to be breaking this down into these sections

1. School Taonga
2. Personal Taonga
3. Maori Taonga

We have started on school taonga first as we are lucky to have a sculpture out the front of the school and a school marae. We started this standard bt drawing these first so I could get the students drawing straight away as they start level 1 Visual Art.

We sat outside, in the shade under the trees, drawing the main sculpture in front of the school.

As a class we have broken down what we see as a taonga. We spoke about what is at school and the students came up with the ideas on the diagram, We then spoke about what could be included in the personal list and thype of thing they could use. When they write this one up they have to bulk out the idea with how it applies to them.

We were then lucky to have a visit from Mrs Moore who is one of our deputy principals. One of the things that she is in charge of is the school archive. She came and spoke to us about all the things around the school that we treasure.

This presentation shows the notes that were made while Mrs Moore was talking and the images we looked at at the same time.

Pages that we have worked on so far are included here in this presentation. This standard is a research based standard but I want them to include some drawings too.

The first job was to present the diagrams in a clear way, with details of what they are thinking about for their personal taonga.

The students then had to cut out the photos and there drawings and arrange them into a double page spread in their A3 sketchbook. Then they had to decide which notes to use to annotate the images.

Here is the link to my Visual Art class site - this is DEFINITELY a work in progress as this is completely new this year.

I have been putting photographs of my sketchbook pages on this page so the students can have access to my examples all the time. I have been working on them at the same time as them so they can see the progress.

Our next steps are -

1. Visit to the Auckland Museum where we are getting a guided tour round the marae and then time to draw in the artefact exhibition.
2. Taking / finding pictures of personal taonga and doing some drawings from them
3. Printing patterns from our own cultures that can be used as page backgrounds.
4. Analysis of how these areas of research intersect to where we are personally.

These will all be translated into more pages in our A3 sketchbooks ready for the 8 pages we need for this assessment.

Feedback to Big Ideas Planning

 I have been using a Big Ideas planning template to think about the first project my year 11 students will be doing with the new NCEA Level 1 DVC standards when we get back to school. Link to blog post here.

I had a great online email, Google comments conversation with Pip Osborne (NCEA Implementation Facilitator), where she looked through my planning and gave me some really useful feedback.

These are the comments from my original planning doc. Link to altered planning doc

This is the information that I was sent with examples of student work using Maori Myths as the influence.

"Here is the examples of student work where they took the Māori Myth on a journey. They are all just aspects of the projects but might help as exemplars. They were all excellence endorsement students just FYI – except the Tane Mahuta example, that was an achieved."

Link to doc

Year 11 Planning 2024 - Big Ideas Planning

 2024 is the year we have to start to work on the new standards for NCEA Level 1. We had a great session in the Technology department at the end of the year with AIMHI technology support, Alison Fowkes. 

I had been looking at the new standards and reading the support material for a while and had decided which of the sample course outlines I am gong to use to support my planning. 

I printed this out and noted my thoughts all over it - link to presentation - this print off was part way through last year and there have been changes to the version that is now on the website. This does not bother me too much as it is a guide not a script.

I then converted this into an overall year view of what is to happen when. There is not details of content on this version, it is just to see where I am slotting everything into the year. Link to document

When we had our AIMHI support day, I showed my overall year planning. Alison shared a template that could be used to think about the "Big Ideas" to make sure that everything is covered within a project idea. I converted this template from paper into a Google Drawing - link to template here

I then used this to think about the Big Ideas for the first project of the year which will be designing seating.

Link to planning document

TOD - Planning for DVC NCEA Level 1 2024

 Today we were given time on Teacher only Day to plan for next year when the new NCEA Level 1 standards start.

Prior to the day, I had found some useful links and saved them onto Google Keep

Design and Visual Communication
https://ncea.education.govt.nz/technology/design-and-visual-communication?view=assessment

Materials and Processing Technologies
https://ncea.education.govt.nz/technology/materials-and-processing-technology?view=assessment

Electronics - Level 2 Unit Standards
https://www.nzqa.govt.nz/framework/explore/domain-full.do?frameworkId=278802

Understanding NCEA Changes
https://ncea.education.govt.nz/understanding-how-ncea-requirements-are-changing#:~:text=guidance%20as%20well.-,In%202024%3A,a%20new%2060%2Dcredit%20qualification

I has also prepared the standards into breakdown sheets similar to how I have them on my class site at the moment.

Year 11 2023 example - AS91067 - where it is on the class site

I always find making these sheets extremely useful as it makes sure that I am preparing work up to excellence level. As this is the case, I thought this would be a good thing to do with the new standards.

Here are the prepared documents.

DVC Level 1.1 9000 (internal)

DVC Level 1.2 9001 (internal)

DVC Level 1.3 9002 (external)

DVC Level 1.4 9003 (external)

Before I could start these, I looked at the 3 suggested course outlines that are on the website. I printed these off so that I could read them properly and decided to look in depth at two of them. 

Link to Annotated Course Outline 1

Link to Annotated Course Outline 2

My next steps are to choose one of the course outlines, make sure it is adapted and suited to me and my students and then fill in the standard breakdown sheets with the types of activities that we could do next year.

The course will consist of the two internal standards and one of the external standards for a total of 15 credits for the year. 

The students do 5 Level 1 courses over the year so this will give them a potential of 75 credits, where they will only need 60 to pass NCEA Level 1.

Describing the problem

During our CoL meeting today, we were asked to not try to come up with an answer for our inquiry yet but to try and focus in on what the problem is. We were also asked to not think too widely as the problem becomes unmanageable. We need to be more specific with a particular problem that is happening with our students so that we have the possibility of doing some thing positive to solve it.

While I was listening today and thinking about my inquiry the word INERTIA came into my head.

I felt that this really summed up my problem. When I am working with a student or a small group, I am the force that is acting on them and they get along really well.

As soon as I move away from them to help some one else, that force is removed and they stop moving forward.

My inquiry problem ...

• How can I keep the inertia of moving forward going on without me being there as the applied force. 
• How can I make the path smoother so that a movement that has started can keep going.
• How can the movement start if I am not there to apply the force in the first place? (eg, in a lock down)

Inquiry Question 2 - Inquiry Focus

 From what you know already about your classes and your school’s profile and leadership goals for the year, share a possible inquiry focus.

My inquiry is based on accelerating student achievement through differentiated, multi-modal learning via the subject website.

I have been thinking about how to combine all that I have learned through previous inquiries, in CoL, Class onAir and Innovative Teacher 2014 and 2015

Historically, what has been happening in my class is that I do a lot of one to one work with students and while that is happening, there is a lot of nothing going on with the rest of the class. They lack confidence to continue on their own so drift off to doing not a lot.

My style of teaching is whole class demonstrating then on to one to one help where it is needed. 

The make up of my senior classes is always mixed. Mixed NCEA level, mixed experience in the subject (NCEA Level 2 and Level 3 students who haven't done it before) and mixed ability within all of that.

My thoughts were around creating an environment with my class site that will support the students to continue with their work in a self motivating way. They need to be able to get on with the work without the teacher being there next to them the whole time. This will be good both in the class and if they have to work from home ( for example, during any lock down experience again).

I want the site to make the students feel they have the confidence to know what they have to do, how to do it and where to go to get help. 

Initial Plan

Ways that I am thinking at the moment that I could use ...

• A layout that is easy to understand and follow
• Examples made so they can see what they are aiming for
• Step by steps either in screen shot form or screen cast video form
• Everything in one place so they know where to go for whatever they need
• Links sent through from calendar invites so this becomes the normal place to find the day to day instructions - this also lets them see what has been done in previous lessons
• Structure and templates available for written analysis based on literacy and SOLO research over the past few years
• Allowing group work to happen during some tasks to build confidence
• Developing a positive mindset

Goals

This addresses the school goals in this blog post here in the section where I was talking to the Deputy Principal

1) Maori achievement

2) numeracy and literacy

3) student well being

4) teacher wellbeing.

Inquiry Question 1 - Inquiry Focus

 Brainstorming student inquiry foci - Collaborate with your school’s leadership team and colleagues to identify areas where your inquiry will make a powerful contribution to wider school and cluster goals.

My Initial thoughts

My general idea is to use what I have learned from previous inquiries, class on air and innovative teacher and combine them with my class site in a way that can support students in a much more comprehensive way than it does at the moment. 

At them moment in my class, I spend a lot of time helping students one to one as their projects are very different and so they need individual help. While this is happening, the rest of the class are not necessarily doing what they should be doing and staying on task. This has an overall effect on how much work is completed and how long everything takes.

I have instructions and examples on my class site, but I feel it is not substantial enough to fully support students to work through tasks in a more independent way in the class and this became extremely apparent during last year and into this year and the lock downs we have gone through.

Collaborating

I have spoken to 3 members of Middle Management and Senior Management about my initial inquiry thoughts.

Below is an outline of what they said as i was explaining what I thought my inquiry could be this year.

HOD Technology

• Differentiated Learning - pace, depth, multi modal
• Enabling student centred learning
• Pedagogical - allowing students to achieve, accelerating student achievement through differentiated learning.
• The depth comes through from those students who are hitting the higher levels. Achievement is accelerated both within a level and over different levels.
• It is very teacher dependent at the moment which means that if the teacher is not there, the work stops.

Deputy Principal

• The school goals are based around : 1) Maori achievement,  2) numeracy and literacy, 3) student well being, 4) teacher wellbeing.
• Are you identifying Māori students in the classes - is there things in the website that link to them? Partnership, participation, protection
• Partnership - are the students working in partnership with you or each other during the project work?
• Participation - How are they able to participate with the work and how can they put themselves in it ?
• Protection - how is their identity as Māori able to come through in how they are doing the work?
• Literacy has been built in from the previous work done that you have done.
• The work is accessible at school and at home. Multi faceted work which is a bonus. Having the support available at all times without the teacher. They always know where to get help.
• A resource to build on once it has been set up. It can be improved as time goes on but there is peace of mind that the work is all there. Work can easily be set for a reliever if the teacher is not there or if we go back into another lock down.

Executive Dean

• Meeting the learning styles of all students - visual, kinaesthetic, listening.
• Developing on prior knowledge skills and consolidating new learning.
• Non threatening learning style - can approach it how they like.

After having these talks I am able to state what my inquiry will be in a more concise way.

My inquiry is based on accelerating student achievement through differentiated, multi-modal learning via the subject website.

Know your students - Ethnicity - NCEA 2021

 

Māori Perspective - Student Interview 1

I have started going to visit the classrooms of all the Māori teachers at school to observe how they approach teaching. First visit link here, and I have a few more to do over this week.

To start to get a student perspective, I had a great conversation with a couple of my Year 12 Māori students today. I explained to them how teachers are expected to do an inquiry and how gearing your teaching towards Māori students was an expectation in the teaching standards.

So far they have been taught by three seperate Māori teachers and all of them have been female.
They have recently discovered they are related to one of the newer Māori members of staff. They feel this will not affect how they interact as they do not know each other and they are not taught by this teacher. So far they have compared Pepehas.

When they have these staff members, there is a general use of more Te Reo Māori in the classroom and they feel more confident about using it in general conversation.

When I asked them if the Māori staff members had different / higher / seperate expectations of them, their behaviour or their achievement and they said that they had not noticed a real difference and it was more personal to the teacher rather than the ethnicity.

I told them how as teachers we are advised to work on a good relationship with students. They totally agreed with this and told me they generally enjoyed the talk and stories that their teachers give them. They also advised teachers to "read the room" at times and not force the relationship path if it is sometimes not wanted.

These two students today are also very active out of school and are taught by Maori teachers in these activities too. They feel these teachers motivate them really well as they are really enthusiastic about what they are doing. These teachers speak Te Reo Māori a lot to the whole group they are teaching, encouraging the non Māori students to join in.

They came to Auckland about 5 years ago from a smaller town in New Zealand and have noticed a definite difference in the expectations from the teachers.
More information was given to me about this part of our talk and I was shocked.

What do they want more of?
They want teachers and students to support Māori activities more, like the Kapa Haka.
They want the Māori students to acknowledge their culture more as they feel like some students hide from it.

I loved my talk with these two students today. They were really open and helpful with all of my questions and appreciated when I told them what I was doing and why.

I absolutely have plans to talk to more of my Māori students to get their insights too.

Classroom Observation 1 - Ms George

Ms George

Year 8 English p

Observed actions in the class

Lines up outside.

Talks to them about what they think happens in English.

Asks for input and students call out their answers.

She tells them all the kinds of things they do in English and they seem surprised at all the different things they get to do.

Shout out examples.

Gets them to work in pairs but also gives them a choice to work by themselves if they would prefer.

Does an example on the board - makes them feel confident by not caring about the quality of her drawing on the board.

Allows them to talk together before they start the task so they can plan together.

The talk is productive and they start to plan who is doing what in the teams.

Some time given to work, then more input, walking round, individual inout, answering questions.

Encouragement for individuals and tables.

Sitting with them discussing their day quietly with individual and pairs.

Time limits given for work to be completed.

Class working in groups, stalking and working. Talk is about the work and what is on the walls of the classroom as this is the first time they have seen it.

Everyone looks at everyone else’s work.

Everyone guesses what the nursery rhyme is from all the other groups.

Getting them to remember what they have learned in other sessions today.




Questions after the class

Do you think that the Maori students in the class behave differently for you being a Maori female teacher?

Yes. It is not something that I can put my finger on and they probably couldn’t either. It is an inbuilt thing in them that they just do and they respond to me in a certain way,

I say their names correctly from the start.

I relate to them in a way that non Maori teachers can’t do.

I have positive relationships with students who are more troublesome for other staff members.

This does not mean I get more work out of them sometimes but I do not have the behavioural issues at all.


What differences do you see in how you teach to how you see other non Maori staff teach.

I give them time in the lesson to settle in, especially after interval and lunch time, instead of launching straight into class work.

I interact with them a lot. We talk and chat while the lesson is going on. I am approachable to them so they feel like they can talk to me.

There are set routines that they settle into and just get on with it without much nagging.

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.