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.

Lock down video help for NCEA classes

 Last year, while we were on lockdown, I trialled making screencast videos for my seniors to explain step by step how to complete tasks. Link to blog post

I know that the students used these videos as I load them as unlisted on YouTube so the video viewing stats are from where i have shared it.

As part of my inquiry this year, I am planning on seeing how effective using rewindable videos are in my mixed level / mixed ability senior classes.

Thanks to two lock downs before March, this has been forced a little earlier than the initial plan.

Examples are here of what I have put together so far for my Y11 and Y12 students. In both classes I have a mix of students who have done graphics and some who haven't. These links go to my class website.

Year 11 Design Elements

Year 11 Types of Seating

Year 12 Image Collection Research

Year 12 Design Elements

Year 12 Timeline

Year 12 Compare and Contrast

Considering that we are in the middle of the second lockdown this year already, the class spreadsheets are not looking too bad. (I have screenshot them without the names for privacy)

Intermediate Technology - With No Contact

 We have gone onto a week long Level 3 lock down in Auckland this week. Last week was the first time we saw our Intermediate classes for technology this year and now we won't see them this week. When we were on lockdown last year, our Intermediate classes got all of their links to our class sites and work from a central hub site so it was easy for the Intermediate teachers to send to the students at home. 

For this week, we will not be seeing them on an online meet so our work needs to be easy to access and understand with no input from the technology teacher. Their class teacher will be giving the students the hub site link to access at home and out work needs to go straight from there.

I have decided to give them work that we would be doing anyway in the project, just not yet if things were normal. We are designing and making models of pop up books in Graphics and one of the things the students need to do is think about different themes for their book. This is an easy task to do online on a Google Drawing and the students all know how to use them. I have included a short help video, just to go over the task in a screen cast and to show them a quick tip to get images with transparent backgrounds.

Link to page on class site

Know your students - Ethnicity - NCEA 2021

 

My Mahi PD

 

CORE Education - Mentoring PD - Session 1

 

Bursts and Bubbles 2020

 

Bursts and bubbles: Karen Ferguson

The aspect of student learning my inquiry focused on this year was having all of my class working at scholarship level to try and improve the standard of work of the whole class. This then shifted to be how to support them in terms of mindset and feeling like they can complete the work.

I identified this as my focus when I noticed that I would have four of my target Year 13 students who were capable of trying for a scholarship this year. They would still be in the normal Year 13 class so I started to wonder if the quality of work for the whole class would improve if they all worked at this higher level. It would involve a lot of mindset work to underpin this new standard of working. This became especially important after lockdown.

To build a rich picture of my students’ learning I used their previous NCEA results and student voice through a Google Form. 

The main patterns of student learning I identified in the profiling phase were that even at Year 13, only a couple of them had any confidence in their work. When we did a mindset profiling activity, quite a few of them were not in a growth mindset at all in the way they thought.

My profiling of my own teaching showed that I have strengths in being open to trying new things and not being precious about how we approach anything.My students would likely make more progress if I developed positive self talk for myself. When my teaching was observed it became clear that I am always being negative about myself and I can’t expect my students to have a positive mindset if I am not modelling that in my own behaviour.

The changes I made in my teaching were getting training sessions right at the start of the year for both me and my students. We all worked to the same high standard throughout the year.I also got my students to monitor my self talk and pull me up on it if they heard me saying anything negative. A few of them were really good about doing that and were very supportive about it.We did mindset activities and games throughout the year with games where you lose a lot and team activities.

The literature that helped me decide what changes to make were books about Mindset - Carol Dweck, Mary Cay Ricci, Daniel Willingham.

Expertise that has helped me has come from PD sessions with Pippa Lawler, a Technology teaching expert. I have had help in house at Tamaki College from the head of PE talking about Mindset and from Mele and Gene helping me to let the students analyse their work in their native languages.

The easiest things for me to change were the structure of the course and work. This is easy for me as I am always open to change and trying to make things better. 

The hardest things for me to change were how the students saw themselves and their work. It is really hard to get someone to feel more confident about themselves and it takes more time than just a few months. 

Some changes I made along the way was a totally different way of structuring projects and building in time during the week for mindset.

Overall I would rate the changes in student learning as a good start. 

 The evidence for my rating is that there was a definite change in the quality of the work being produced and if we start earlier, like Year 11, and work like this consistently, there will be a change in outcome at Year 13.

The most important learning I made about getting the whole class to work at the highest level we can was that they really got what we were trying to do and tried hard. 

The most important learning I made about inquiry was letting the students know what we were trying to do and why. They really stepped up to the challenge. 

 Some learnings that would be relevant to other teachers are to aim for high levels for all students and let them know what you are doing and why. Build in time for mindset and support.

Monitoring evidence, Sharing and Interrogation

I do not have specific, measurable data at this point to share about my students. The work that we do at NCEA Level 3 takes sooooo long to complete that I will not know till the end of this year and the beginning of next year when the results come in. My feedback for this check point is qualitative rather than quantitative. 

At the start of the year, the whole class and I had a great training day, with my scholarship group staying for the whole day. Blog post here.

My approach for the whole class after that was to always prepare work that was to the highest standard I could to try and up the quality / standard of the work for the whole class. Blog posts about this preparation here.

What I have observed in the students -

They did not shy away from the challenge. They all responded well to aiming high.

One of my students is now confident in drawing in 3D for his design ideas. He has been with me since Year 10 and has always lacked confidence and got me to draw with him so he could copy. It has always taken him a few tries. This year, he has had a real breakthrough with this and we celebrated with fist bumps when he showed me 3D drawn work that he had done with no input from me at all. I know this one has been a really slow grower but it was so worth the look on his face when he cracked it. This has further underlined for me the importance of not worrying that the effects of an inquiry be seen after that short space of time of less than a year. It takes time for effects to come through and be embedded in how the students work.

When lockdown happened, the focus of my work with the students was on supporting them feel confident about their work and how they were doing. My blog posts about distance learning and how we did it in my subject are here. I felt that this was a more important direction to go in as everything else would come from that.

While we were on lockdown, I started making support videos for my inquiry class (the Year 13 students) to help them work through the design brief activities. I did this so they could work through the design brief activity in small chunks, that had videos and talked through examples at each stage. Blog post about it here.

When we got back to the class in person, I asked the class how they were finding the help videos. Were they helpful at all? Were they using them?. I got a mixed response at the time. 

"I didn't really watch the videos, but the examples are useful"

"I watched the first video. It was ok"

"They were useful. No they weren't too long. Yes I could understand what you were saying"

When we got to the end of this part of the work and there were no more videos, I started getting different comments from the students.

"Is there any more videos miss?

"I've just watched the last video miss, did you make any more?"

So I think that the videos were more useful than we originally thought and they gave them more support than we thought, which is good as that is what I was aiming for.

When I had my lesson observed for patterns of behaviour in myself, blog post here, it became clear that I needed to lead from the front in terms of self talk and thinking positively. I asked my students to monitor me on that and they were good to their word and 2 or 3 of them are really good at picking me up when I do negative self talk - "miss, remember" ... "miss, don't be negative remember" ... "that was a bit harsh miss". It has got to a point where I have received unasked for feedback from my HOD about this where she has noticed that I am a lot less negative about myself when I am talking, which is great. I still need A LOT of work on this but it is a good start. I will get next year's students on board with this straight away and we will monitor each other as the year goes on. I can't expect my student to be positive about themselves if I am not modelling it myself.

 

CoL Interview Questions

What achievement challenge are you considering as an area of focus in 2021 and why?

Include in your WHY both evidence and your own passion/expertise

 

Achievement Challenge 1

 

I have focussed on this achievement challenge for the last 4 years doing my CoL inquiries and the

work that I have done with my inquiry groups has been of a benefit to all of my students. Things that I

have focussed on and will definitely be continuing with include :-

 

• All of my planning is based around SOLO taxonomy, which helps structure the analysis notes that

we have to write about the design work

• The literacy work has been of enormous help in all of my classes and I have been able to use the

expertise of colleagues in other departments and other schools.

• My work on mindset has been a really interesting journey, which has lead me into some useful

readings and we have done some classroom activities that have been outside of our comfort zone.

• Working towards scholarship has been a great process which has really shown me the value of

aiming so high with all of the class.

• Making support material for the students on lockdown has made me realise that I need to adapt

my class site so that it supports the students more and gives them confidence to know what they are doing.

 

I am wanting to try and put this all together on the class site where I can use what I have learned over

the last few years so the students have a highly structured and supportive platform and feel they always

know what they are doing, where they are and where they can go for help. 

 

 

 

What learnings from the 2017 - 2020 CoL teacher inquiries have informed or inspired your thinking.

 

As well as the things I have listed above, that I have done, I find visiting the classrooms of my

Intermediate colleagues is always incredibly useful. I get to see how they structure their planning, their

lessons, their students and see how the students approach the work after all that planning. 

Example here

 

 

 

How would your work support Manaiakalani pedagogy and  kaupapa?

 

Learn, Create, Share has been there on my blog all through the last 4 years of being a CoL teacher,

my two years of Class on Air and my two years of Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher. I always share

everything I do, plan and put together for my classes. This year, with the planning for the scholarship classes,

I have been putting all of my planning on my blog, including all of the resources, learning outcomes,

materials and equipment and examples. This came about after listening in CoL meetings where we talked

about “can someone take this and use it?”

 

 

 

Which elements of the extensive Manaiakalani research findings inform or challenge you as

you think about this?

 

I will continue to always include work on literacy - reading and writing in anything that I do as an inquiry.

This is constantly brought up by the research findings and by the inquiries from my fellow CoL teachers. 

It is always a shock for my students who think that by choosing Graphics, they will draw all the time and

then they find themselves writing quite a lot. I have started including reading links in my new Year 9 project

this term. This is definitely something that I want to include more of  to target my students towards specific

reading that will help and stretch them. 

 

 

 

How would you like to be supported in 2021 as you undertake this inquiry?

 

I have had so much help in all my inquiries in the past from colleagues in other departments at

Tamaki College and from other schools. I would like to visit more schools and more classrooms and I

would like some help in order to do that so it becomes a natural “swapping of skills and ideas”. 

 

 

 

How would you plan to support your colleagues in your school with THEIR inquiries and/or

teaching in the area you are exploring?

 

I always write up what I am doing on my blog so this will continue.

I have presented to the school, the cluster and the wider teaching community at various times over

the years. I have been involved in supporting the Technology department teachers recently in creating

their own literacy posters for their rooms like I have in mine.

 

Making Masks

 This week I have been making masks for the students. I asked the principal if I could get some fabric use the department sewing machine.  After a couple of days of testing construction and sizes, production started on Wednesday. I had chosen two really pretty fabrics, backed with black so they are reversible.

I had read some research on different types of mask and the best ones for people to wear are double layered cotton, that are well fitted round the face, so that was what my testing was aimed at achieving.

This is the fabric and the final masks.

Here is where I got up to by the end of the week. Their only payment was a photograph of them wearing the mask. Word is getting round and they are starting to ask me for them now. It is good to see them wearing them. 

Lockdown - Take 2

 We are in the second lockdown and teaching from home. As part of our department planning we have just had to fill in what changes we have made to our lesson planning to cope with the teaching from home situation and what we intend to do when we get back to being onsite.

Here is my section from that document. There are more specific details under the table.

Ferguson Year 13 - Based on what I learnt from the previous lockdown, I will focus on materials research and existing product analysis  for my Year 13 students during the next two weeks. This work can be done completely online. I only had 3 / 4 of my Y13 students come online last time so this research work can be done without me.  When we are back onsite, I will focus on the design development work that has already been started for my learners.  Year 12 - Based on what I learnt from the previous lockdown, I will focus on materials research and existing product analysis for my Year 12 students during the next two weeks This work can be done completely online. I only had 1 of my Y12 students come online last time so this research work can be done without me.  When we are back onsite, I will focus on the design development work that has already been started for my learners. Year 11 - Based on what I learnt from the previous lockdown, I will focus on materials research for my Year 11 students during the next two weeks. I had 3 regulars last time so this work can be done without me.. When we are back onsite, I will focus on getting the laser cutter fixed so they can finish their first project and they can continue development work for the designs for their second project. for my learners.  Year 10 - Based on what I learnt from the previous lockdown, I will focus on Tinkercad skills, so they can use these skills for their design ideas when we start the project,  for my Year 10 students during the next two weeks.  When we are back onsite, I will focus on starting ideas for the product design project for my learners.  Year 9 - Based on what I learnt from the previous lockdown, I will focus on coming up with ways that they can continue with the plan online,  for my Year 9 students during the next two weeks.  When we are back onsite, I will focus on starting design ideas based on their work in SOS and Health,  for my learners.  Year 7 and 8 - Based on what I learnt from the previous lockdown, I will focus on short activities that can be completed in a half short timeslot, for my Year 7 and 8 students during the next two weeks.  When we are back onsite, I will focus on starting the new work for the new rotation,  for my learners.

The details of this are as follows.

Year 12 and Year 13

The Year 12 and Year 13 class have been working on materials research in the class as part of their design development work. We have started reading about different materials together and I put a few examples of different materials on the class site so they could read in their own time too. Link here

When we went on lockdown again, I shared this template with them to collect their information onto. We also chatted individually about their designs so we could look for specific material suggestions online. These were then added to the materials research page.

These students also need to look at existing products as part of their design development work. I shared a variety of templates with them, all based on SOLO taxonomy. 

Product Analysis
Describe ........  Describe Self Assessment
Analyse Map ........  Analyse Map Self Assessment

I have tried to offer work to them that can be done without my input so they can get on with it even if they can not come to the scheduled meets.

Year 11

The Year 11 class have just started looking at materials that can be used in their seating design development work. We have been reading about materials together in the class and I have given them the link to the same site page as the Y12 and Y13 students about materials, so they can read and watch at their own pace.

With the students who came online, we have been looking at how different materials can be applied to the specification points they made in their design brief. Example that I worked through online here. I now have this example to give them as well as the information collection template to work through in their own time if they can't come to the scheduled meets.

Year 10

My Year 10 class have just started their new Technology rotation so we had not made a start on the project when we went into lockdown. I have given them the link to the Tinkercad skills instructions on the class site. Link here. They can work through the skills and exercises here and they can then use these skills when we get back into the class and start the product design project. This work can be done in their own time and if they come to the meets they can ask questions and watch me show how to do specific things they need to know.

Year 9

My Year 9 class have just started their new Technology rotation. We had made a start on the project before we went into lockdown so I have been focusing on putting work on the class site that can be completed online but is still definitely part of the project and provides useful skills.

Link here to class site page

Intermediates

My Design class have work that was already set up from the last lockdown and we will be using that again with this new group. Link here The skills they learn here will be used in their product design project when we get back to the classroom.

The coding class can learn the basics of using blocks to code with and can play some of the coding games I have set up on my site. Link here

Adding more reading into project planning

 A couple of weeks ago, we had a "Secondary Connect" PD opportunity (blog post here). The focus was on English and Literacy. When Dr Aaron Wilson was presenting, he was discussing T shaped literacy. 

When I was thinking about this afterward, I realised that I don't actively plan to include reading for my students. All they really do in my lesson is read instructions and some research.

I have my new Year 9 class this week on their new Technology rotation and we are doing a new project based on Graphic Novels. I have decided that this is the perfect opportunity to start planning to include reading.

As of writing this blog post, the class site has two activities on it for these students and I have found readings for them to do and put them on clickable buttons on the project activity pages.

Graphic novel page - Types of Graphic Novel page - Three Act Story page

I will keep this format as I continue to plan for this project. It needs to become the new normal. I can then plan for the "depth" part of the T.

Cluster Create Workshops 2020

 We have just had our second Manaiakalani Cluster Create workshops where the whole cluster comes together to talk about the "create" part of Learn, Create, Share.

The first workshop I went to was Greg's on Pencil Code. This is a great online app for drawing with code.

Here are his resources to teach us some basics.

Coding shapes challenges

Coding angles challenges

I presented for the second round of workshops. Russel and I were showing our team how to code mBots to follow a black line.

Here are my resources for the day. I also included a couple of extra activities at the end just in case.

As you can see, we did well with getting the robots to race round the track.

AS91627 - Starting Concepts - Prep for students

Planning for AS91627 - Producing concept sketches for their chosen product design.
We are moving onto concept ideas. This can be done as drawings on paper or the iPad (Procreate) or as 3M sketch models to help them to visualise their ideas.

We are focussing on the form of their concept ideas first so there is not much colour or details yet.

Resources

Link to blog post planning - Pattern and Texture
Link to blog post planning - Form
Link to blog post planning - Colour and Shape

Link to blog post - Form Development

Link to class site

Link to help page on the class site - includes worked examples and screencasts of explanations

Learning Outcomes

• To produce a wide range of different design concepts that could fulfil the design brief they have written.
• Use a wider variety of media to create their work and rely less on the standard use of drawing pencil and coloured pencil.
• Create 2D and 3D sketches or models to explore different ideas.
• To be able to use the information from the design brief and the needs of the client to guide them in their ideas.

Materials and Equipment

Drawing pencils - only to be used in a support role, not as the main media for the work
Black outliner pens
White pencils

Brown graphics marker pens
White paper, brown paper, coloured sugar papers

Clear acetate for tracing.

Card , glue and scissors

Plasticine and 3D modelling tools

iPads and stylus's with Procreate installed


Form drawings and models in pencil and various media.

Form development drawings and models.
Look at these drawings as a base to find forms to use in the design concepts.

Examples

Initial concepts. A photograph of my hand was traced to provide the ergonome for the drawing.

We are using quite a monochrome approach to the concepts so we can focus on just the form to start with.

This is brown paper, brown marker pen and white pencil.

To see what kind of shapes can be held easily in the hand and how big they could be, I made some sketch models in plasticine and photographed them being held in my hand.

Some of the students have started using the iPads, with an app called Procreate.

This small example is going over a few of the key elements we have been looking at on the app. Using the airbrush pen, the smudger and the eraser. Using the colour picker and layers.

The notes that will go with these concepts will explain how they relate to the design brief. The students then need to take these back to their client to get feedback. The direction they take their design developments will depend on what the client says about their concepts.