Inquiry Question 4

Begin to collect evidence and data  and come to the next session ready to share your preliminary findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge i.e. using your baseline student data and evidence.

I have collected evidence on the individual students on my class - blog post here.

I have collected historical data of Year 13 students doing NCEA Level 3 Design and Visual Communication - blog post here

Also, as part of my personal goals this year, I am looking at mindset as a barrier to learning - blog post about my goals here

As part of this, I have been lucky to have received input from Pippa Lawler from Mint Education. She gave me a growth mindset model questionnaire to do with students to see where their thinking is now and where it is later when I have done some work with them about this.

I gave these questions to my students today. Here are the results.

Copy of the questionnaire here.

Key competency - THINKING SKILLS

Key Competency - RELATING TO OTHERS

Key Competency - UNDERSTANDING LANGUAGE, SYMBOLS AND TEXT

Key Competency - SELF-ORGANISATION AND MANAGEMENT

Key Competency- PARTICIPATING AND CONTRIBUTING

Challenges

Expectations

3 things that I am hoping to achieve are...7 responses

Credits, confidence in presenting, learn new aspects relative to design.

E endorse, Completion in work, Schloarship

Endorsement, UE and Get skinny with a six pack n get bulkier

Credits, Knowledge & better skills

Better Drawing skills, Find what media i like the most, and get all my assessment done.

Drawing, searching and painting

Excellent endorsement, university rank score, money.

2 things that I am most worried about are....7 responses

Level of achievement may not be suitable to me, and having to miss out on 10 days of school work when I'm out for Spirit Of Adventure.

My laziness/distraction, not achieving my goal

not achieving it and dying

Getting feedback & not finishing on time

My confidence in drawing and my drawing it's self

Working

failing, not reaching the rank score

1 thing that is most important to me in this course is...7 responses

It will help me develop the skills and knowledge I need for what I want to become in the future.

Scholarship

Growth

Getting familiar with the topic and it's physical attributes

Getting better at drawing.

Doing graphics

Passing

Building success

3 things that will help me to be successful and achieve in this class are...7 responses

Guidelines, detailed information, friends/classmates.

listening, doing my work, asking for help

Discipline, Dedication and Sacrifice

My teacher, my work ethic & my support from my friends ahah

You do to learn, you keep going to learn and you live and learn.

Focus, listen,pay attention

Listening, positive mindset, encourgment

2 things that teachers need to know to understand me are...7 responses

I'm a quiet achiever, I can observe and learn

i am easily distracted, but i try my best

Takes time to understand, I work hard if you stay on me

I get distracted easily when tired

when im not good at the particular topic i shy away from it

my confidence in drawing and my lack of responsibility.

Reapeting it again

nothing, nothing

1 thing that is most important to my learning is..7 responses

My chromebook

succeeding in difficult times

Getting Something out of it

Passing and enjoying the subject while im at it

To appreciate my own drawing

Working

passing

Inquiry Question 3

Explain why you judge this to be the most important and catalytic issue of learning for this group of learners this year (In chemistry, a catalytic substance one  which increases the speed of a chemical reaction).

The students need to get ready for their presentations which will happen at regular intervals throughout the year. Their work needs to be ready to be put on show and their analysis needs to be done so they can talk about it. I am hoping that this will give them the impetus to keep their work up to date as they all need to hit deadlines throughout the year to enable this to happen.
As they are preparing their analysis to present to the rest of the class they know that they are going to have an instant audience, not just themselves and the teacher. They will be comparing themselves to the rest of the class during this process and they can draw ideas and inspiration from each other as they go. They are going to support each other with questions face to face that need to be answered straight away, not having the luxury of being online and time available to think. The act of questioning each other is also higher level, extended abstract thinking too as they have to understand what is being presented and apply to to their own thinking in order to ask questions that are meaningful and pull out more detail.

Inquiry Question 2

Describe how and why you have selected this challenge of student learning. Locate your inquiry in the context of patterns of student learning in Manaiakalani overall. 

Last year, my inquiry was about written literacy with my Year 11 students. We concentrated on analysis of their design work so that the achievement level could be increased. Blog post about the results of this here.
It is literacy that enables the students to gain those higher levels as it is the quality and depth of their analysis writing that enables this.
I want to put what I learned last year into practice with the rest of my classes but especially my Year 13 class. I also want to expand on this to verbal literacy as i want them to be able to talk about their work in front of the rest of the class. It they can analyse their work then present this to the rest of the class in a way that is clear and in depth, it will help with their understanding. They then get to react to questions from the group.
This is how they will be expected to present their work if they do any kind of design course once they leave school. Critiques in front of the rest of the class are fairly standard.
The skills I hope they get from this year are :-

• Analysis
• Written literacy
• Verbal literacy
• Listening skills
• Questioning
• Reacting to questions
• Presenting to a group

As they are Year 13, I hope they can then take these skills into any interviews for courses, jobs, apprenticeships etc that they might go to.

The reality of my class is that I have some students who have done NCEA level 1 and 2 DVC with me and some students who have not done any graphics since Year 10. As this is the case, the students lack confidence in their work and themselves. They literally say to me “miss i can’t draw” as soon as they come in the room. I want to work on helping them get over this deficit way of thinking as this stops them from progressing.

Inquiry Question 1

Summarise the challenge of student learning you plan to focus on in this inquiry. Be as clear and specific as you can about the evidence you have about this to date.


The group that I am focussing on is my Year 13 class. They are doing NCEA Level 3 Design and Visual Communication this year.

This chart shows the pass rate for the internal DVC standard that we have done since the standards were changed. Apart from 2016 (when I only had 3 students), the rate is low for an internal standard and most of the achievement is at achieved level with only a handful of merits.

I want to focus on this group as I want the overall pass rate to be higher and for the standard of work completed to be at a higher level. I also want to get them to work at a faster rate to keep up to date and complete all the work set. The work being incomplete is another reason for the poor pass rate.


This chart shows the pass rate for the external standard.
After 2014, and two years of zero percent pass rate, I visited another school to talk to the teacher there about how she approached the external. I have had some progress and some higher achievement levels, at merit, but it is still not good enough overall.

Some initial data about my inquiry group

Appraisal Meeting 1 - Goal Setting

Date of meeting - Thursday 28th February with HOD Technology, Hinerau Anderson

Goal Setting Document

Individual Goal 1.

(Maori Achievement)

By the end of term 3 2019

I am…

Working with my Year 13 students on their literacy skills both written and verbal.

So that…

Their project work is complete and of a high standard.

Blog post regarding breakdown of inquiry group

Blog post about inquiry breakdown

Link to Goal 1 Worksheet.

Individual Goal 2.

By the end of term 3 2019

I am…

Going to work with the students on having a positive mindset towards their work

So that…

They feel better and more confident about completing their design work.

Link to Goal 2 Worksheet

Inquiry

Focus -

Link to Inquiry worksheet.

Blog post about inquiry breakdown

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

Inquiry Group - Baseline presentation

Today my inquiry group of Year 13 students (plus one year12) did their first presentation. They did this with no structure or content from me except for the example that I did in front of them yesterday, I wanted to see what they are like with no input and support so I can see where their improvements are over the year.












I then gave them some instant feedback straight after their presentations. I was proud of them today as they got up and did it even though they found it hard and embarrassing.  On an interesting side note, the Year 12 student who is doing Level 3 this year went through my inquiry  work with me last year where my focus was on literacy and describing /analysing work. He did a much better "base line" than the rest of the class who are in Year 13.

Preparing for our first presentation to the class

My Year 13 inquiry group have reached a stage in their project work where they have completed (ish) their observational drawings and are ready to move on to making models of the observed forms. This is an ideal point to have a go at a first presentation.
This is also a good point to get some "baseline" information from their first presentation.

• I have told them they are going to present. 
• We decided today what order this is going to happen over this week.
• I did an exemplar presentation with my drawings today to give them an idea what to do.

I have not given them any support structure for their first one on purpose so I can see what improvements they make over the year with the support I plan on giving them as part of my inquiry.

Here is my example presentation today :-

We also sorted out the Google Plus Community today (slightly delayed due to network upgrades). The students are now in the Level 3 community and I uploaded my example video there so they can rewatch it to prepare for their presentation this week. I have also got my example Google Site up to date so the students know what should be on theirs by now. These are the first steps to what I hope will be the support the students need to keep up to date and on track this year. Student site links are here

Teariki	Site Link
Vaifoa	Site Link
Antonio	Site Link
Martha	Site Link
Jayden	Site Link
Sella	Site Link
Princess	site
Apii	Site Link

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.

Breaking down my inquiry for 2019

This year, the focus for my inquiry is my Year 13 class. I will be looking at ways to keep them all up to date with their design work and produce work of a better standard.

Year 13 Observational Drawing.

My Year 13 class have to do the work for the external assessment first as it leads into the first internal design project. This external work starts with observational drawing and they had to pick their own starting points for this.
I showed them some examples that I had produced to show them the kind of thing I was looking for in terms of detail, notes and media use.

Our media experiments from the first week of term have been really useful as I want them to use a variety of different media in their observational studies. So far, they have used drawing pencil and coloured pencil. Some have painted, used soft pastels and black pens.
According to the time plan (we are on the third week shown in the green), we have another week of this work so it gives them plenty of time to try out different media and explore different views and images of their chosen subject.

Then the students have their first experience of presenting their work to the rest of the class. This will be next week and I promised to do an example for them at the start of next week so they have time to think about it and prepare.

Here are their observational drawings so far. As you can see there is a vast array of abilities shown here. Some of the class have not done any graphics work since they were in Year 10 and are a little worried about this but are trying hard.