Manaiakalani Class OnAir Lesson 6 - The game with no rules

Link to Manaiakalani Class OnAir to see the whole team.

Direct Instruction

The students are given very minimal instructions about how to play a game and no questions are answered. They are not told what we are doing or why we are doing it. They have to slowly evolve the rules of the game over time by either adding a rule or changing one that is there. Each run of the game is 2 minutes before a change is made.

These are the brief instructions given at the start of the activity. You may want to turn your sound down as the rain on the shelter we were under is really loud. I have put subtitles on the video.

This shows a couple of examples of when the rules were added to or changed during the progress of the game.

This shows how the game evolved over time with the rule changes and additions.


This video shows the teacher instruction at the start of the second lesson of this activity where we were reflecting on what happened during the game the previous day.

Class Site Content

This is the rules and game play that the students came up with during the process.

This is the equipment that we had ready to use - not all of it was used as it depended on the rules and game play that the students came up with.

Learner Generated Content

This padlet is the feedback that I received from the questions :-

• How did you feel when I wouldn't tell you why we were doing the activity?
• How did it make you feel when you did not know all the rules before you started?
• What did you think when I would not answer any of your questions?
• How did you feel when you did not agree with the rules that others were making?
• How did you feel when you had a great idea for a rule but your name did not come out of the bag?
• How do you feel when we do Design development? Is there anything that is the same as how you felt yesterday?

Student Feedback





Link to lesson plan document here

Lesson Topic :- Switch or Adapt Game / The Game with no Rules
Year Group :-  Year 11
Learning Outcome	To make the students think about their feelings while playing this game with no rules and compare that to how they feel when they do design developments.
Success Criteria Using SOLO	Uni structural Multi structural Relational Extended abstract Students follow the instructions given by the rest of their team and the other teams. Students can start to combine the game rules to play the game in a better way. Students can analyse what is going on in the game and use this information to change or make rules that solve problems. Students can reflect on what happened during the game and analyse their feelings. They can think about these feelings and predict how the design development process makes them feel in relation to this.
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 - coming up with rules for the game. Linking what they are doing to design development. Using language, symbols, and texts - writing out their game rules for the rest of the class to see. Managing self - focussing on the activity as it has no set structure. Participating and contributing - following rules made by other people. Relating to others - working as a team.
Prior knowledge	The students have started the design development process for their chair design project. They have also done a little design development in the previous poster project.
Lesson Sequence	Session Outline The students slowly build a game over time using small steps. They then think about how they were feeling during this process and try and relate it to the design development process. Student Activity Teacher Activity Listen to the teacher instructions. Listen to each other’s ideas. Listen and use the rules of the other teams. Give the first part of the small instructions. Give the rest of the instructions in small amounts as needed. Split into 3 teams The game must use a ball Each team must write a game rule of one of the wipe clean boards. Time the game rotations to two minutes each time. Encourage teamwork. Don’t answer any questions. Use the rules that are being decided on by the teams to slowly build a game that has teams and a ball, plus any other equipment that they want to use. Play the game as a team against the other teams. Think about how they felt during the process of the game and not knowing what they were doing beforehand. Make a shared padlet with their thoughts. Share their thoughts / answers to the set questions about how they felt and how they can compare how they felt doing the game with how they feel doing design development. Read everyone else’s responses.
Resources	Small wipe on / off boards. Dry wipe pens Game ball Team colours Hockey sticks Counters Hoops Cones Timing device (stop watch, mobile phone ...)
Next Steps	Next Lesson Continue with the design development that they are on with and reflect back on what they were feeling while playing the game. Further in this project Design development is a big part of any project, so I want them to think about how they are feeling during the process to see why they are getting upset and frustrated with it when they have to come up with more ideas and change the ideas they already have.
Reflection and Analysis
	What went well. Lesson Content :- There was definitely enough for the students to do as it took nearly the whole double period. The double period gave them enough time to discuss things as a team and together and work things out without being rushed. Student Understanding :- The best question came at the end of the game session. “Miss, what was the point of playing a game with no rules?”. They made a good start on understanding why we did this in the second session where we were analysing their feelings and linking it to design development. Student Outcomes :- The answers on the padlet were great. I wanted them to be frustrated with the process and most of them were. It was a really interesting insight into how they approach things. It ranged from :- Frustrated for the whole time Being confused but going with it Loving the challenge of not knowing What still needs work. Lesson Delivery :- I need to book / sort out the venue in a more organised way before the lesson and check the weather! Student Understanding :- Should  have thought about groupings myself and not let the students do it? I noticed that students who thought in similar ways put themselves together. Could a more inclusive outcome have happened if I had placed stronger and weaker students together in teams ? How would I work this out? Other Comments. What came out of this activity was a really interesting insight in how the students think away from the subject. I need to think about how I can use this information in more ways in the lesson as well as design development,

Reflection on School Goal 2

Goal 2 Literacy and Numeracy

That 80% of Year 9 & 10 students are reading at or above the expected Curriculum Level.
That 70% of Year 9 & 10 students are writing at or above the expected Curriculum Level.
That 70% of Year 9 & 10 students are achieving in Mathematics at or above the expected Curriculum Level.

That 90% of Year 11 students will achieve NCEA Literacy.
That 80% of Year 11 students will achieve NCEA Numeracy.

So far this year, I have been using a lot of SOLO Taxonomy structured work for both junior and senior classes. I feel that this supports the students with slowly increasing the level of complexity of their writing and analysis.

Examples : - 

The research section of my Year 10 portable speaker project

Evaluation of the first Level 1 project

Comparison of two design eras at Level 2

I have also been focussing on literacy strategies as part of my inquiry for the CoL.

Here is my inquiry breakdown in regards to that :-

The link to the literacy label on my blog for this work is here.

This has also been my focus for my Manaiakalani Class OnAir work this year.

The link to this work is here.

Description Burgers

I have been doing product analysis exercises with my Year 11 students all together on the board. What I want to move on to is using sentences rather than stand alone words and comments. We have been reading the exemplars from the NZQA website about the standard we are working on so the students have more of an idea about what the expectations are.
I have been putting together lots of useable worksheets and activities about using SOLO Taxonomy for a while now so I thought I would adapt one of those to use.

I have a blank description burger on a Google Drawing that I thought we could adapt and use for product descriptions. I adapted this burger drawing from one that is in The Writing Book.
I used this to make an example to show the students and take them through the process.

After talking to Cheryl (the school's specialist classroom teacher) about my plan and showing her my initial scribbles on paper,  she gave me some great links and ideas that I could include.
One of these was this document, the Q-matrix, with focus questions.

I used this to help me put together this support document for the students, where they could take questions from here to help them when doing their own burgers.

I put all of this support material into the class Google Plus Community so it was easily accessible. I also supplied 3 simple images that they could choose from for their descriptions if they had trouble deciding on one for themselves. As usual, too much time was spent on this decision than the important parts of the task!

Today was a single period, so the students have not quite completed their burgers. When I see them next, they will finish them off then make short videos on the class iPads, explaining their burger so they are verbalising their analysis and descriptions as well as typing them.

Here is a video of the start of the lesson where I was going through my example.

Here is a short clip of the students getting underway with this exercise.

Manaiakalani Class OnAir Lesson 5 - Reading NZQA Exemplars

Link to Manaiakalani Class OnAir to see the whole team.

Direct Instruction 

The direct instruction was split into sections on two different lessons. We looked at the NZQA exemplars for the standard we are working on at the moment.

In this session, we read the exemplars for AS91067 all together and compared what the writing for Not Achieved through to Excellence looks like.

In this session, the instructions are about highlighting the texts to show where sections are. Describing words, reasons why and decisions and links to the architect's work. Here, the students are brought back together again to talk about looking for where information is shown together in the text rather than in individual pieces. This video shows some of the ongoing lesson with the students talking about what they were finding in the texts they were reading through.

Lesson Topic :- Reading the NZQA Exemplars
Year Group :-  Year 11
Learning Outcome	To be able to read through one of the exemplars from the NZQA website and pull out ad understand some of the key information.
Success Criteria Using SOLO	Uni structural Multi structural Relational Extended abstract Students can IDENTIFY the describing words in the exemplars. Students can DESCRIBE how the achievement levels are different to each other. Students can EXPLAIN how the achievement levels increase in complexity. They can ANALYSE the design reasons given in the examples. Students REFLECT on how the written examples show the links to the work of the architect and EVALUATE how this influence is shown in the drawings.
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 - looking for differences in the achievement levels of the examples. Understanding and looking for examples of description words, reasons and architect links. Using language, symbols, and texts - reading examples from NZQA Managing self - listening when the teacher is reading to the whole class and working in a small team in a constructive way. Participating and contributing - giving feedback as a whole class and in small groups. Relating to others - listening to the opinions of others in the class and their groups.
Prior knowledge	The students have made a start designing their own seating designs based on the work of the architect of their choice. They have a lot of information about their chosen architect from the previous standard.
Lesson Sequence	Session Outline Students will be first reading through exemplars from the NZQA website and then picking out key elements from them. Student Activity Teacher Activity Sit round the front table all together with own paper copy of exemplars. Read through them while listening to the teacher read them outloud. Read the exemplars through with the whole class. Encourage feedback from the students about the differences they see in the writing of the different levels of achievement. Roam as they work in their small groups. Encourage and question to stimulate conversation about what they are highlighting. Use highlighter pens to focus on describing words used in the exemplars. Look for reasons why decisions were made in the design work. Look for and highlight any links to influence to the architect’s work. Share ideas as a whole class about the differences they see in the levels of achievement in the exemplars. Work together in small teams and discuss what to highlight on the examples.
Resources	Targeted exemplars in a folder in Google Drive - print these out, one for each student. Highlighter pens
Next Steps	Next Lesson We will be continuing with our own design work over the next couple of lessons. Further in this project We will be using what we have learned from the exemplars to write notes with our own work. We will then read each other’s work in the same way that we have read the online exemplars.
Reflection and Analysis
	What went well. Lesson Content :- Having the exemplars prepared and printed worked well and really got the students to focus on them Lesson Pacing :- I think splitting the tasks between two lessons was a good idea as it meant not spending too much of one single lesson doing this and the students were more focussed in the shorter sessions. Lesson Delivery :- I have not read to my class before so this was a totally new thing for me. I enjoyed it more than I thought. This was helped by the nice reaction of the class. What still needs work. Student Understanding :- The were not always clear about when they were reading reasons why design decisions were made. This is definitely something I need to spend more time with them on. Student Outcomes :- There was not as much talking between the students as I wanted to happen during the highlighting exercise. Hopefully when we do more of this and with our own work, there will be more talk. Other Comments. Having the exemplars printed out from the whole project made it easier to focus in on particular designs. Typing them out for the students also helped as they did not have to try and read the handwriting on the examples. This made it much easier for them to compare the achievement levels.

Planning for Teaching and Learning

At the moment, the principal and other members of the senior management team are meeting with all of the Heads of Department to keep a constant overview on how things are going across all of the departments in terms of student achievement.
As a result of this, the Technology Department was complimented today on our pedagogy tables. When I asked the principal which tables she was referencing, it was the work in the Department Portfolio that we did as the beginning of the year.

This is my section that I filled in about DVC. I have copied this from the department portfolio and I have not linked to everyone's sections as that is their own work.

The review section is normally done at the end of the year, but I thought seeing as it had been highlighted, I would see where i am up to at this point of the year.

1b. Planning for Teaching and Learning

Teaching and Learning Strategies : The Keys – Effective Pedagogy

Design & Visual Communication (DVC) - Graphics : Ferguson

Click image to link to document

Culturally Responsive and Relational Pedagogy - Session 2

Reading - The Writing Book

I have just started working through my copy of The Writing Book, by Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey.

I am in one of the first sections of the book where they are breaking down a modelled approach to writing. They are balancing the level of teacher support and structure to the level of independent student writing.

It is split into what the teacher does, what the teacher does with the whole class and smaller groups then what the students do by themselves.

Modelled writing

They are keen that you plan what you are going to say here, which I don't think will match with how I do things. I am more of a "wing it at the time", kind of presenter on the day ( but I am organised with what I present about !! ). What I liked though, was the planning to make sure you are covering the criteria of the specific task.

Also, they are wanting you to let the students know what the criteria are that the piece of writing is aimed towards.

My questions on my pink sticky note - when we I do the product analysis activities all together with my Year 11 class, should I have one completed (about a different product) to show them before we start so they know what we are aiming for. I do this when I an doing drawing activities - I always do the activity first and have these examples that I have done to show them before we start. Why did I think it would be any different for writing?



Shared Writing

I was pleased when I read through this section as it seems to fit quite nicely in what we do when we sit round the front desk and do product analysis all together.
I started doing this last year as an experiment and am continuing with it this year 

What I need to include more of when we are doing this is the actual structure of how to write the sentences. Do one example and instead of just allowing them to shout out the words and disjointed parts, get them to say exactly what we are going to write in a more structured way. It will take longer but it will be worth it.

I need to look more into "think, pair, share" to see if I can use it to any advantage.






Guided Writing

My thoughts here, when I am focussing on my Year 11 group, is "chunking" up the analysis and helping small groups / tables of students with each chunk. I can do this while they are working on their drawings. We can look at more analysis examples in smaller groups, talking about them together.
These chunks are based on the SOLO levels that we follow when working all together on the analysis.

• Identify and label
• Describe and list
• Explain and analyse
• Evaluate

Independent Writing

This is what i want them to do when they apply what we have been doing all together on their own design work. Now i am thinking that the exercise time might be extended into them having more products to analyse like this but on their own as practice.

I liked what I read about "peer check" as this is what I saw happening in Robyn anderson's classroom when I went to visit last term. Blog post here.


Just reading this small section at the start of this book has given me loads to think about and do so I will definitely be spending time working my way through this book.

Design Development

Today, I was talking to my Year 8 class about design development. It is a part of the design process that students always have problems with. They do one or two design then do not want to do any more. They say they "like" the one they have done and want that one. They are scared of doing any more that they might not like. They are basically scared of failing. Students always want everything on their design sheets to be "perfect". I showed them some of the my design development example sheets that I have done for my senior classes and explain there is always designs you really like, some ok ones and lots you think are terrible. This is normal.

We then moved on to how the students take on their sports training.

• They do skills training to get better at the main game
• They don't go out there and immediately think they should be great at it without giving it time and effort.
• They listen to advice about how to improve and do those things.
• They practice ... again and again and again.
• They don't think that time spent on these skills and training as wasted time.
• When they fail, they try again till they get better.

I then drew a quick concept design on the board and said we were going to treat that design like me going out on the rugby field with a ball.

• I will be hopeless, I can't kick straight, throw very well or run very far.
• I will need training, skills, practice and someone to show me how to improve.

This first design idea needs training too...

• It needs to improve
• It needs them to tell it how to improve - they are it's trainer
• It needs to practice and get better slowly
• It needs to repeat in order to improve

The students have been learning how to use TinkerCad to design stands for mobile phones that can be 3D printed. I want them to develop the design they have done on Tinkercad and do changes and improvements. Screen shots need to be taken while they do this to record the changes made and these screen shots put onto a Google slide presentation.

This is my example ... I started with a very basic idea which was a block with a slot in it - it needed serious training!!!
The last slide here shows an addition from Thingiverse. The students know about this website so I wanted to show that they could use things from there as long as they combine it with ideas and builds of their own and not just use something straight from there.

Here are two examples from today, which shows how the students are starting to change little elements of their design at a time and see what the effects are. (I have made copies of the students work so I can remove the names)

STEAM Education Summit 2018

I went with members of the Technology, Maths and Science departments to the Conferenz STEAM Education Summit at the Crown plaza in Auckland over the last two days.
Link to the summit information here.

Link to my notes here - these are as I wrote them at the time with no editing.

Link to folder of photos taken of the presentations here.

CoL Meeting Week 1 Term 2

Language in Abundance
Dr Jannie van Hees

Language is the elevated tool that humans use to make meaning of life.
Language is used in a combination of spoken and print.
Do we just get students to talk? Effective dialogue is important but it is much more than that.
Print and the construction of words in print, gives students the chance to have contact with much more complex language structures.

Teachers have to create the opportunities to tighten the ability to learn. Are we ensuring the learning potential is there in a heightened way?
The students need to do this too as well as the teachers.

Get the balance right about what the students know and feeding them new stuff.

Flourishing learning potential

1 - Optimising learning and interactional conditions.
2 - Elaborative style pedagogical responses.
3 - Scaffolding learners to become effective conversationalists.
4 - Planning Preparing Providing language acquisition potential.


Peer sharing with a framework of talk.
Think about what is going on and share with another person what you know.

The learner has to take responsibility too - it is not a one way street.
Can students take responsibility for each others learning and not just the teacher. Can they contribute to each other not just for the teacher.

Elasticity of the brain - ability to look at things from different angles.

60 / 40 % of gifting to extracting information
Work in the space that is just beyond their known.
Notice and focus - catch what you can.
Try and get a transcript of videos that the students watch as they tend to miss a lot of the vocabulary and grammar and ideas if they just listen.
Multi-model / foregrounding the text by providing the transcripts.

Inquiry; -metrics for on-trackness
Dr Aaron Wilson
collecting or recording information and reflections on your changed practices, and adaptations you are making along the way, and the importance of having checkpoints where you do formative assessments and collect student voice to see if things seem to be getting the kinds of outcomes you’re aiming for.

Get the students to help record the effects of the teaching changes. Student voice etc.

Make the recording of changes regular so you can track what is happening and if changes are happening. This small times between can make it easier to know that it is the changes to your teaching that is making the change and not all the other factors that affect the students.

Clearly show an audience what you did differently so they can judge the effect it has had and whether what you did made it happen.

Take note of the little shifts that happen day to day as it happens so you don’t forget anything later for evidence.

Culturally Responsive and Relational Pedagogy - Session 1

Culturally Responsive and Relational Pedagogy with Ngahuia Lott - Session 1