Presenting at the Manaiakalani Boards Forum

Last night, I was asked to be one of 6 teachers to present at the Manaiakalani Boards Forum. These 6 teachers represented the 6 achievement challenges for the Community of Learning.
What was really interesting while listening to the other presentations by my colleagues, was the fact that similar challenges to student learning were becoming apparent in inquiries across the cluster. One of these that stood out the most was literacy and vocabulary in all areas. This is definitely something that the future of my inquiry will be focussing on.

We had to put together presentation display boards for the board members to look at. These boards outlined our inquiry to date.

We then took turns to stand and explain our inquiries to the board forum.

This is the slide deck that I presented about for my inquiry.

Literacy in Action

I was lucky today to visit Panmure Bridge School to watch +Robyn Anderson with her class. She very kindly offered to be teaching a maths class when I visited so I could watch how she approached literacy and vocabulary in a subject other than English.
I have just started working on literacy strategies in my inquiry as I have realised that this is holding them back in progressing in the SOLO levels and are unable to move onto analysis. I have been working with the English Department on some strategy ideas and was delighted to be invited to visit Robyn's Year 7 and 8 group to see what they do.




My key take outs from this session are ...

• Make the new vocabulary words the focus before they even know the meaning of them. Let them get used to what they look and sound like.
• Working in groups to encourage talking and sharing the new learning.
• Making the students use the word straight after researching the meaning, so they see it in context and are not worrying about writing and typing it up with a definition that they are copying and pasting.
• Short, fast paced activities that kept their interest and encouraged competition and group / team work.

Here are the notes I made at the time, during the lesson (unedited) :-

Key words are written up on the board

To recognise the different types of angles

They met angles for the first time a couple of days ago and are now going to learn some maths language to do with these angles.

New words are introduced

All angles have a name like the students do.

The correct name for elements is important.

Recap what they already know together - they all call out the words they know together when asked questions.

Challenge - working in teams - find out the names of angles.

Move to work in groups of 4.

This is a brand new topic to them today so there is a lot of teacher support at this point.

 Words are given to the class that are new. The teacher says the words to the class.

Class are given time to say the words to each other.

The vowels are taken out of the words and the class are to say the words to each other again.

The teacher then points to words on the list and the students say them all together.

Class to set an online timer.

See how long it takes for them to each say all of the words in the list - using the words with the vowels missing.

The class are mostly ESOL so this activity was a fun one to get them used to the new words. Seeing what they look like and sound like. They raced each other saying the words while timing get each other.

Next challenge is 15 minutes and they have to find what the words mean.

They then have to label the diagrams with the correct name. They have not been told what the new words mean yet.

The class are to put the new words on post it notes and stick them on the board next to where they think they are to go on the angle diagrams.

Working in small teams - they don’t all have to work on the same word at the same time.

The students do not have to write the definition anywhere for this activity, so they don’t have that pressure of writing or getting the wrong definition from the dictionary.

They have to talk in their groups and decide which word goes with which diagram.

The teacher physically takes herself away from the students so they are encouraged to talk together about the problem.

The students have also drawn the angles in their books and are adding labels to them there too so they have this to refer to afterwards. They go through the angle answers together at the end of the activity and the students label the drawings in their books with the correct names.

Definitions are written with the labels so the students are clear what each one is after their own research.

The teacher is encouraging the students to let all of the team join in.

The key words about line types at the start have been repeated about 6 times during the session with the teacher demonstrating different types of line with pens and rulers and getting the students to shout them out.

This is happening while they are learning the new words about angles.

The students then got out protractors and could see the angles and degrees for themselves and compared them to the definitions.

Summary exercise - in a set number of words summaries one of the angles they have learned about.

They can compare one with another one so they can see the difference.

25 summary to explain.

They were given research and preparation time.

Then given times to make the 25 word summary.

Students given options on how to present their summaries - online how they want, paper and pens - whatever they are more comfortable with to show what they have learned.

This is not pretty work - it is working notes so they don’t have to spend time making it look pretty - the content is the key.

Working together to create the summary means they have to talk and collaborate.

The class are paused while putting together the summary to emphasize the need to use the correct vocabulary and words. Use the new technical words they have used in context.

Lots of conversations about the best way to summarise what they have been learning.

Product Analysis with Year 10

I have had a certain amount of success recently by doing product analysis with my seniors all together as a class, where we talk about the products. Class OnAir lesson about this here.
I thought that we would try this together with my Year 10 class. I have been planning literacy strategies for this class based on SOLO taxonomy and in collaboration with the English Department. Blog post here.
So far, this class has looked at different types of portable speaker and read a description. We have started some design ideas of the front of the speaker (drawing in 2D). What we need to move on to is analysing their design ideas.
The plan for today is to do a group activity first. We will all sit together and analyse the example I have put together. They just need to say their answers in front of the whole group, with no typing for them at this point. They need to listen to each other and share their ideas verbally.

Link to this Google drawing here

Then, I want to move on to them analysing their own work. I want them to choose 2 of their design ideas, which I will photograph and share in the Class Google Plus Community. The students will have to get their photographs and put them into this template.

Link to document here

I have made an example of what to do with this template with a drawing of my own that I photographed from the board when we were doing design ideas. (This is why the drawing is not great and not in colour!!) I will go through this example with the class so they can see what I did and why.
Link here

Priority Students - Is there any shift?

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


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

First Group (Term 2)

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

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

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

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

Second Group (Term 3)

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

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

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

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

Plan for moving forward

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

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

Student 1 - Talk BCATs and Maths teachers

Student 2 - Talk to maths teacher

Student 3 - Talk to BCATs teacher

Student 4 - Talk to Maths and Auto

Student 5 - Talk to Physics and Music

Manaiakalani Hui 2017 - CoL Presentation

Today was the annual Manaiakalani Hui.
Part of this was the was inquiry presentations from the CoL teachers. We has set up together under our Achievement Challenge banners and the visitors to the hui had to come round with their Bingo cards to ask about one of the Manaiakalani labels from the inquiry structure. After getting information about one of the labels, they got a stamp on their card.
I was with my colleagues under the banner for Achievement Challenge 1 - Raise Māori student achievement through the development of cultural visibility and responsive practices across the pathway as measured against National Standards and agreed targets for reading Years 1-10 and NCEA years 11-13.


Here is the presentation that I had running that gives a general overview of what I have been doing, but most of my time was spent with people looking at my blog, in particular at posts related to the label they were wanting information about.
Most of the chat today was about my recent blog posts about how my inquiry has changed to include literacy and vocabulary. There was also a lot of interest shown in how I am using SOLO, the resources I have made and especially the visual self assessment structures that I have put together with the SOLO activities.
Thanks to +Fiona Grant for the above photo

Using SOLO Hexagons to assess prior vocabulary knowledge.

I had my new Year 9 class for a double period today. We have started our clock design project and all we have done so far is to collect images of different types of clock.
What we moved onto today was a kind of pretest (without them knowing that's what it was) to see where they are in their vocabulary knowledge. We used SOLO hexagons to write down everything they could see in their collection of clock images. We then grouped them together in groups of their own choice and they had to explain why they had put the groups together.
The students worked in pairs for the activity and we all had a go together at the start, with them calling out suggestions to the whole class.

This gave me a lot of insight into the variation of the knowledge around the class. One student came up with the word "analogue" and "digital" with no prompting while others struggled to know what the hands of the clock were called.

I hope that starting early with the vocabulary like this, it will help them later when we start to describe their design ideas.

Here is the work we did today ....

Planning for Literacy

My inquiry for this year was mainly focussed on using SOLO taxonomy to improve the depth of analysis of design work. As we have worked through this I have come to realise that a major stumbling block for my students is their lack of vocabulary skills. This is stopping them from confidently managing the describe element of product analysis. I mention this in a post about my inquiry spiral here and we have been working on building some skills during the class onair lessons here.

My next step was to have a long discussion with members of the English department to plan some strategies. The first thing that we discussed was getting the students to do more READING about design and pulling out the key words and terms that have been used. This was an interesting approach to me as I would not have thought of getting them to read more before we do our own writing.

I have a new Year 10 group on the Technology junior rotations, and this new class have low literacy levels. I still want to do the same project that the rest of my Year 10 groups have done (we design a portable speaker to be 3D printed), so I thought this would be a prefect opportunity to try out some literacy strategies. What I learn form working some strategies with this group, I can build into my planning for NCEA next year (and Jump Start next term).

The work I have started putting together is on a Google Drawing that the students can make a copy of and work on. The description of the product is mostly taken from the Harvey Norman website with a few additions from me.
After another chat with the English department about this today, I have included a table where they take out the vocabulary, write what they think it means and then use Dictionary.com to find the definition.
I will see how this goes today and then tweak and adjust this to improve the plan.

Link to the Google Drawing here...

Update - after the lesson

For a first try doing this, I felt it didn't go too badly. They students were focused on what they had to do and tried hard with the activity. It involved me doing quite a bit of one to one work with the students, talking over their individual work with them as they were doing it. This is a good thing, as more one to one time is premium in a classroom.
I am including a couple of screen shots of student work on the day.
Where I need to focus is making sure the students read the definitions they are finding on Dictionary.com, not just copying and pasting the first thing they find as some of them don't match what we need. Ongoing feedback down the side of the work in comments helped them in the lesson so this needs to happen more often. It did not put them off when I was correcting them with what they had put on their sheets.

Manaiakalani Google Class OnAir Lesson 12 - Design Analysis Each Day

See the whole Class OnAir team here

Direct Instruction

Direct instruction for this activity involved the students being round the front desk all together for the first 5 - 10 minutes of each lesson.
On the board each day, a picture of a different product is displayed for the class to talk about.
The questions are given verbally by the teacher and the class talk about the answers to these questions. There is no writing or typing involved from the students. They have to make suggestions them selves or listen to the input from others in the class.

These videos show the direct instruction at the start of each lesson. We spend 5-10 minutes analysing a different product each day. These videos are not all of our sessions, just the first few. As the videos progress, the students find it more difficult and this is a good thing as we are analysing deeper. The first video is shown here and the other three are links that show analysis of different products and at different depths of thinking.

These were the products that were discussed by the students each day.

This feedback is from some of the Year 11 group. We had gone through what I was going to ask them and they had practised what they wanted to say. Then when we filmed, they forgot some of the plan. It appears like I am leading them a little but I am just reminding them of what they had already decided they wanted to say.

Detailed Lesson Plan

Lesson Topic :- Product Design Analysis Team Work
Year Group :-  Year 11, 12 and 13
Learning Outcome	The students will be able to analyse existing products in increasing amounts of depth. The students will be able to give their ideas and opinions in front of the rest of the group. The students will listen and understand the ideas and opinions of others in the class.
Success Criteria Using SOLO	These have not changed much in the last two lessons as we are still doing design analysis exercises which incorporate the same skills and levels in SOLO. The focus of this work has been changing and the depth that we have been doing it has been increasing. Uni structural Multi structural Relational Extended abstract Students can identify the main parts of a design. Students can describe and list the design elements, properties, use and materials used in a design. Students can explain and compare elements of a design idea to show how they work together and the effects that they have. Students can evaluate the work of others and reflect on where design decisions have been made and generalise on why they were made.
Links with the New Zealand Curriculum	Level 2 Curriculum Level: 7 Learning Area: Technology Strand: Design and Visual Communication Achievement Objective: Outcome development and evaluation Critically analyse their own and others’ outcomes and evaluative practices to inform the development of ideas for feasible outcomes. Undertake a critical evaluation that is informed by ongoing experimentation and functional modelling, stakeholder feedback, and trialling in the physical and social environments. Use the information gained to select, justify, and develop an outcome. Evaluate this outcome’s fitness for purpose against the brief. Justify the evaluation, using feedback from stakeholders and demonstrating a critical understanding of the issue. Achievement Standard: AS91342
Key Competencies	Thinking - analysing the design based on a specific question or focus. Using language, symbols, and texts - talking about their ideas for the analysis. Managing self - Using the RISE values when doing this work as a whole group. Participating and contributing - Giving suggestions to the whole group. Listening to the suggestions of others. Relating to others - responding to the ideas of others in a positive way.
Prior knowledge	The students have been drawing their design developments for their Product Design project. We have been doing analysis exercises together on the class Google Plus Communities. We have been talking about and using analysis focussed vocabulary. We have made a start on analysing their own design development work.
Lesson Sequence	Session Outline The point of these short sessions is to spend 5 -10 minutes all together at the start of each lesson to verbally analyse a product. The product will be different each day. The focus questions for the analysis will start in the unistructural and multistructural levels of SOLO and slowly build in complexity each day and each product. The outcome is hopefully the students will be less worried about analysis as we are doing it regularly all together and showing the depth that is  needed. Student Activity Teacher Activity The students sit round the front table for 5-10 minutes at the start of each lesson. They look at a different product each day and analyse what they see. Project the product to analyse that day on the main board. Ask the focussing questions for the product that day. What shapes can you see? What forms can you see? What colours / textures can you see? What materials have been use? What properties do the materials have that make it suitable? How is the design used? How is is been designed to be safe? Record the answers that the students have given on a Google Drawing with the picture of the product and share this on the class communities for the students to refer to afterwards. Think about what they are looking at in terms of what questions the teacher is asking them. The focus for the product each day will be different, with an increasing level of depth, so they need to make sure they concentrate on the day’s product and analysis focus. The students are doing this exercise every day verbally, so they need to speak in front of the rest of the group and listen to what everyone else has to input.
Resources	Selection of images of products. Google Plus Communities Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Document - Describing Words
Next Steps	Students need to analyse their own design development work as they produce it. They need to go into enough depth so it is obvious what design decisions were made and why they were made.
Reflection and Analysis
	What went well. We have been doing this exercise everyday for a week at the time of writing this. The students have got used to what we are doing and understand why we are doing it. They come round the front table at the start of the lessons without too much nagging as they are coming in expecting to do the analysis exercise together. They are giving input to the sessions well and are listening to each other in a respectful way. We have been going into greater depth on each product analysis that we have done, and while the students have quite often struggled with the questions that I have been asking them, they have not given up and have offered suggestions. What still needs work. As I have realised recently that there is an issue with vocabulary, I should have been writing up the keywords the students were suggesting as they were doing it instead of afterwards. This would maybe have given these words more importance. We need to try and move the depth of the answers into the extended abstract area of SOLO, as we have not done this yet, so this will mean some modelling from me so they know what I want them to do.

Student Work

Class Google Plus Communities

Level 1

Level 2

Level 3