Reflecting on Department Goal 1 - Share

Department Goal 1

Share to be undertaken using the following:
Year 7-9 Blogs
Year 10 Google+
Seniors

Reflection on ‘Share’ Opportunities in Term 1 for students taking Design and Visual Communication. 

Share to be undertaken using the following:

Year 7-9 Blogs 

Year 10 Google+

Seniors

The following are examples of various ‘Share’ Opportunities in Term 1 for students taking Design and Visual Communication:

Year 7+8

My Year 7 and 8 students from the intermediates have been pretty regular bloggers about what we do in DVC. We have not done this every week though so I need to keep up with that. The students have used photographs of their 3D and 2D work and embedded their drive documents onto their blogs.

Year 9+10

I have not got into the habit of getting my Year 9 and 10 students to blog or use a community this term so that is definitely a goal for me for the second tech rotation going into term 2.

NCEA Level 1, 2 and 3

We share into the class Google Plus Communities so that everyone can see all of the work that is produced by everyone else.

Level 1 Level 2 Level 3

We embed our drive documents and also put photographs of 3D work and scans of drawings so everything is included here.

Impact of ‘Share’ Opportunities in Design and Visual Communication for Students

For the seniors, it is good for them to share within the communities as it helps support them knowing what to do. This is especially important for those students who are new to the subject. What is also good about the communities is that I have used the same ones for about 5-6 years so the students can scroll back and see work from previous years.

Year 11 Product Analysis

Last year, I tried doing a product analysis activity at the start of each lesson for a period of time with my Year 12 class. There is a blog post about it here.
This went well so I have added it into my inquiry plan for my Year 11 group for this year. I have written about my short term plan for the class here.

We started this today, and I put a simple product up on the screen for the whole class to discuss together. I split the question up into SOLO levels and colour coded what the students said appropriately to these levels.

The class were a bit shy about doing this for the first time today, but I hope they will get more confident about it as we go, as my plan is to do this all together as a whole class at the start of each lesson for quite some time. Link to Google Drawing here.

I then shared this Google Drawing into the class Google Plus Community so they can refer back to it and remind themselves what we did.

I hope that this makes the language of describing and explaining products and design work becomes what they use in a more natural manner. This then will feed into the analysis that they have to do about their own design work.

Camera Toolkit for Manaiakalani Class OnAir

This is the short toolkit I prepared to show the basics of using the new camera for Manaiakalani Class OnAir and some basics on photography. Link to presentation

2017 Case Studies Feedback

Literacy Plan - "What Am I?" Game

As part of my short term plan (blog post here), till the end of term, my target group of Year 11 students are going to be looking at describing products and objects, as a whole class, in pairs and individually. This will be in the form of talking and writing.
I want my students to get comfortable with describing what they see as they are not at the moment. This will build the foundation for moving into the higher areas of SOLO Taxonomy of explaining and analysing and this will allow them access to merit and excellence achievement at NCEA.
After the long Easter weekend, the plan is for the whole class to sit together at the start of each lesson and do description activities all together for 5-10 minutes. This will be in the from of talking about products shown on the screen with me doing the typing about what the class are saying. I did this for a Manaiakalani Class OnAir lesson last year and it worked out really well, so I want to do more of it this year.  Blog post here.
I then want the students to get into pairs and play the "What Am I?" game.
I have made cards with images of products / things on them. There is also a question card for each pair. One student pulls a card at random from the pile and looks at the picture on it without showing their partner. Their partner has to ask the questions on the question card and try and guess what the object is from their team member's answers. I am considering making the questions points related, so they get more points for quicker correct guesses. This will hopefully then put the emphasis on detailed answers from their partner who is doing the describing.
This session will be recorded for Class OnAir so I will be able to analyse how this went.
Link to resources.

Baseline (ish) Writing Task

After doing my inquiry breakdown, I received feedback about how to start and how to measure any change.

We were told in our CoL meeting that we needed to be able to monitor, track and measure any changes in smaller steps rather than waiting till the end of a project to see how the students have done.

In light of that, I have been thinking of tasks we can be doing till the end of term. This will then lead us into our design analysis of the chair designs we are doing next.

Today, the class did the first part in the yellow box.

I shared the following template with them and told them that they were not to ask each other about it and I would not be answering any questions.

Here are the samples that the students did today.
This will be my starting point for tracking any changes in the students writing in my subject.
(I have made copies and changed the file names)

Student 1 Sample

Student 2 Sample

Student 3 Sample

Student 4 Sample

Student 5 Sample

Student 6 Sample

Student 7 Sample

Student 8 Sample

Student 9 Sample

Student 10 Sample

Student 11 Sample

Student 12 Sample

Student 13 Sample

Student 14 Sample

Breaking my Inquiry Down ...

After the CoL meeting this week and listening to Rebecca from Woolf Fisher talk about how to structure our inquiries so that each step is clear and it is obvious what is being done, how it is being done and how it will be measured, I have tried to break apart my inquiry into the steps needed.
Blog post about my main take outs from this meeting here.

I put together my thoughts about my inquiry using a Google Drawing and sent it to +Rebecca Jesson for feedback and suggestions.  The feedback I got back was very helpful in tidying up the right hand side of the diagram and clarifying how and what it will look like in practice.

This is my first version that I sent for feedback :-



This is the feedback I received with questions to answer so it is clearer :-

Measurable Outcome

• Comparison of before, during and after writing samples. what aspects would you expect your changed teaching to impact on, how?

• How they respond to questions, verbally and in writing, during the ongoing lessons. How would this relate to the writing? What would you look for?

• Google Plus community use and how they respond to each others posts - analysis and feedback to each other. What would you look for in here? How would it relate to the NCEA breakdowns? Would this be similar to the verbal things you look for?

• NCEA standard breakdowns - how are they approaching the different levels (A,M,E) Again, what would you look for in here? How would it relate to the other assessments? How does it relate to the conversations?

• NCEA standard assessments (same questions)

This is my current version where I have added the "what does this look like" column
Link to drawing here.

This has been an extremely useful exercise as it has started to really nail down in my own mind what I am trying to achieve this year ( I say started, as I have called this diagram Number 1. I am sure there will be changes and improvements and more versions as more feedback and suggestions come in from others and as I try things myself).


Edit / Addition on 25th March

After feedback from +Anne Sinclair, I have added another column next to the intervention box for possibilities of what tasks could look like. I feel like this could be a never ending list as I keep thinking of things to try.

Feedback received :-

A thought I had was around what you are doing in terms of your pedagogy and practice to foster and enrich the vocab acquisition. What may engage them at a deeper level other than just exercises. Can you think of other strategies which may challenge them more and push them to speak, act, write, question, query, challenge each other.  I think you are going to get a lot more ’talk’ happening in a social context like working in teams or pairs.

Addition to the diagram

CoL Meeting - Main Take Outs and Task List

We had our second CoL meeting of the term today. We had presentations from :

Meta Analysis of Inquiries

Dr Rebecca Jesson, Woolf Fisher Research Centre

“WFRC will analyse data and evidence from teachers’ inquiries to identified Learn Create Share practices likely to contribute to accelerated progress for students.”

and

Language Acquisition & Development as the Inquiry Lens into your subject/level

Dr Jannie van Hees

I have isolated my main take outs from these presentations in the slides above. 

This has led to this task list to be focussing on and questions to answer.

My Inquiry 

• What chain of events am I wanting to put into place going from the achievement challenge, through the measurable outcomes, to the interventions that I want to try? 
• How am I going to measure the plan? - both short term and long term. 
• What will be the starting point for the measure? 
• What interventions do I want to try? 
• Why am I doing these? 
• What am I hoping to achieve with these interventions? 

Moving forward with Literacy 

• Make the vocabulary that I want the students to learn obvious and connected to the context. 
• Making sure the students use the new vocabulary in multiple ways and multiple times. 
• Linking back to what they already know. 
• New ways of approaching the vocabulary work to make the students focus and notice. 

Reflection on School Goal 1

Goal 1 Maori Achievement

To raise Maori student achievement and cultural visibility. 

That 85% of Maori students will achieve NCEA Level 2.

My NCEA DVC Level 2 class of 14 students has 31% Maori students in it. 

Last year, I had experimented with some of the tasks being done together in small groups. This was a successful experiment and I received some very good feedback from the students in regard to this.

Mahi tahi and manakitanga are elements that I started the year wanting to include a lot more of. They gave the students last year support and more confidence in their project work.

So far this year my Year 12 students have all joined the class Google Plus Community and have been doing elements of the first project,  AS91627, in small groups of two or three. They have been helping each other with the collection of information and it has been a "no man left behind" situation. They have then felt more confident when they have had to produce the individual evidence for the standard. This standard is almost complete at this point and I will feedback on the credit outcomes and what the students thought about it when they have finished.

Manaiakalani Class OnAir Lesson 3 - Making Design Elements in 3D in order to Describe Them

Link to Manaiakalani Class OnAir to see the whole team.

Direct Instruction

The students were introduced to the idea of using plasticine to visualise the design elements of their chosen designers in 3D.

They will then record themselves describing the form and how it applies to the style of their designer.

Lesson Topic :- Recognising design elements in the work of the chosen designer.
Year Group :-  11
Learning Outcome	To be able to recognise design elements in the work of their chosen designer and explain what these elements are.
Success Criteria Using SOLO	Uni structural Multi structural Relational Extended abstract Make a plasticine form that visually identifies the design elements they can see in their architect’s work. Make a plasticine form based on the design elements they can see in their architect’s work. Describe the form that they have made in plasticine. Describe the form that they have made in plasticine and clearly explain the link to their architect’s work in the analysis of the form they have made. Evaluate the design element that they have looked at in plasticine and generalise how they have simplified it in their explanation.
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 at the work of their designer and understanding the elements that will represent form. Using language, symbols, and texts - Representing design elements in simplified ways in 3D using plasticine. Managing self - Staying on task with both the internet and plasticine there tempting them away! Participating and contributing - sharing their idea sand work with the rest of the class. Relating to others - responding well to others when they share their work.
Prior knowledge	The students have been collecting images and information about their chosen designer for a few weeks for the first project. They have a visual knowledge of their designer. They now need to start picking apart what they know.
Lesson Sequence	Session Outline The students will be focussing on the word “FORM” and visualising how they see form in the work of their chosen designer in 3D by using plasticine. They will then record themselves describing their plasticine models and how they are connected to the design elements of theri designer. Student Activity Teacher Activity Listen to teacher instructions. Ask question if needed Look at architect work on a Google image search and have these in front of them as they work. Look for examples of “form” in their designer’s work. Introducing how to use the plasticine to the whole class. Making sure all the students have enough resources to make a start. Helping / supporting where needed on a one to one or small group basis as the lesson progresses. Uploading completed videos to the class community. Focus on the word “form” - don’t add texture or pattern or any surface details. Make the forms that they see in the images of buildings in plasticine. Use the iPads to make a recording showing the plasticine forms. Record their voices describing what their form looks like. Explain how their form links to the design elements of their chosen architect. Add the videos onto the class Google Plus Community so they can each see and hear each other’s recordings. Offer feedback on the recordings if they feel that more could be added to the descriptions.
Resources	Chromebooks. Plasticine. Modelling tools. Ipads. Link to class site
Next Steps	Next Lesson More  work will be needed on this activity as it takes more than 1 session to complete this work. Further in this project The students will use the videos and photographs of these forms as the starting points for their seating designs.
Reflection and Analysis
	What went well. Lesson Content :- the students seemed to enjoy making the design element of form rather than just draw it. There was enough content even though it is quite a simple activity. Lesson Pacing :- this task has taken a few lessons but this was panned for so it has not affected anything else. Lesson Delivery :- I tried to keep the time down of me talking to them about the task altogether this time. I have done more one to one talking as they were working on their models. Student Understanding :- some students made some  good, very simplified forms were being made which is exactly what I wanted them to get out of the exercise. Their ability to simplify down what they are seeing will help them to use this knowledge to design a different product with these forms as they are no longer seeing the forms as buildings. Student Outcomes :- the descriptions videos are short but they have made the students think about their models and what is the main thing that they are seeing. What still needs work. Lesson Delivery :- I should have had a few pictures of buildings in front of me when I was demonstrating so I could have shown the students how I was getting the form I was making and what I was and was not including. This would have helped with the issues in understanding (next section) Student Understanding :- some of the students did not get the idea that they were pulling out simple forms from the buildings and they made 3D plasticine models of whole buildings, sometimes with windows and everything. Student Outcomes :- there is not examples from all of the students yet as the speed of completing the work was very slow in some cases. These students found it difficult to stay on task. Other Comments. This was quite successful as a task to analyse form. I could give the students a choice of videoing their work or photographing it and writing the descriptions for those who do not enjoy making a video about their work. For those who have difficulties putting into words what they are seeing, it was good to see their understanding being shown by what they were making in 3D.

These are 4 brief examples of description videos produced by students about their models.

What am I leaning from AsTTLe marking PD?

I have had another short session of going through an exemplar from the AsTTle marking moderation that the English Department have been working through. I had help making my way through each section of an exemplar, seeing what level I thought it was for each of the sections and comparing it to the supplied examples for that particular level. We looked above and below to see where it was sitting.
While I am not doing this with the intention of ever being responsible for any ACTUAL AsTTle marking, it is proving a very valuable experience in understanding what criteria the students have to fulfil in their writing in order to gain a level.

How can I use what I am learning?

Ideas - We can discuss ideas for the topic as a whole class or in small teams before they start to write.  We can put all our ideas together on shared docs or drawings. This can then support the students in their individual writing that they have to do and make sure that they are covering a range of ideas in their work. I have been building a lot more team work into tasks recently so this will fit in well with what I have already started doing.
How this fits in with SOLO taxonomy? - this fits in the multistructural level where the students are using information from multiple sources.

Structure and language - most of the time, the writing styles that my students are doing are description, analysis and reflection. In SOLO, this takes us from multistructural to relational through to extended abstract, depending on the depth that they do it.
I need to give them a support structure to write to where they can lay out their ideas, show development of the ideas and give reasons why. Some of the ideas that I got from my visit to Robyn's class will help here. Link to blog post about this here.
Guiding them to start with an introduction and end with a conclusion.

Organisation - Giving them a structure to write to to provide an organisation will help them get their thoughts in a meaningful order. Using some of my SOLO thinking charts will be a starting point here for my own planning but I need to make topic specific support material for the students to use. The more they use structures like this in their projects, they will get more used to writing this way as a normal thing. Guiding them to use paragraphs to layout their ideas so what they are saying is clear.

Vocabulary - I have been working on building more activities around subject specific vocabulary and I will continue with this as a high priority. The students need to hear and use the words on a regular basis if they are to get used to using them in their work.

Sentence structure - Having exemplars for them to read will be helpful here so they can see how to construct what they are saying and how to say it. I can get the project exemplars for them to look at from the NZQA website. This will keep it in the same context as they are working. We can also use the peer checking ideas that I saw being used in Robyn's classroom.
Going through exercises together to describe and analyse other products will help them to practice before doing this in their own projects.

Punctuation - The main punctuation that my students will use is the basic ones - full stops, capital letters, question marks, quotation marks, commas etc. Peer marking will help this as will ongoing feedback from the teacher as the project is progressing. These are things that can be corrected as the project goes along so it is not left till the end.

Spelling - My students get the choice of writing in their sketchbooks or typing up on the chrome books, so spelling is very dependent on these two things at the moment. The auto underline / correction of Google Docs is helpful when online. more use of the subject specific terms will get them used to spelling them. Having them available / viewable on the classroom walls will help too.

Explanation Writing - Analysis of Structure.

Today I was lucky to get the chance to visit Panmure Bridge School, where Mrs Robyn Anderson +Robyn Anderson  was taking her class of Year 7 students through a literacy task.

To get ready for the activity, the students were moving the furniture around. They have obviously done this before and are used to the set up.

They have been given a print out of a piece of writing. They all have their own. 

They are all placed so they can see the screen with the instructions on it.

Explanation Writing

They are going to focus on what they did correctly. They are only looking at the good stuff. Robyn says that it is her job to pick out the bits that need work and to help them with those parts.

Learning intention

To structure and write an explanation that tells your reader what you need them to know.

Notes from observing the lesson

The class say all the words really quickly to get used to the sound of them.

They are then asked which words they already know. What are they. Linking to what they already know. Where will they find the words in writing. Which parts of writing will they find the specific writing elements?

Tell your partner one thing that they don’t know from the list. Does anyone want to share one with the whole class? The teacher goes over these and explains what they mean.

The class then say the words to each other again really fast.

Repetition.

The teacher goes over / reminds the students what the writing task was that they have already done and they are going to analyze today.

She goes over what some of the students covered in their writing - what content they had included.

They then read their own explanation.

All the tasks are done in small chunks at a time so they can follow and learn the sequence and the skills.

One by one - the items are gone through. TIIC - this is written under their work and they are going to check these things off. Robyn explained to the students that this TIIC idea was one that she took from Mr Rob Wiseman  from Point England School in one of his Class OnAir lessons.

If they have got any of these things they are at the “practicing” stage and will improve but the teacher doesn’t need to start form the beginning with that element.

Now they swap with a partner and they check each other’s work and do double ticks on the TIIC list.

Information - the bulk of the information - needs paragraph structures. This was the most tricky part, so they work with a partner to pick out these elements.

They work on the printed out work with highlighter pens for each of the structural elements in the information.

The class work in pairs while the teacher goes round and helps individually where needed. Some need more support with these elements than others.

They are looking at their own work and working out which are the writing areas that they need to work on.

The class look at their own work first, so they can see the value of their own work. Then they look at the exemplars from TKI and they compare their work to the examples. This then helps to group them into what is needed to be focused on.

Good work /  samples are highlighted and read out by the teacher. Cue, embarrassed student!!.... Smiling though.

Work with their partner to talk about what they are finding in their own writing. They then tell the whole class.

This focus lesson is on the structure - the deeper features, and not worrying about the surface features, like spelling.

They have their class DLO on the class site and they navigate to the exemplars in pairs so they can work together.

Robyn explains the TKI exemplars to the students so they know they are the levels for all students in New Zealand that they are comparing their own work to. They are looking at the exemplars from the lowest upwards and seeing if they can work out which one best matches what theirs looks like.

Their teacher wants them to see where they are at for themselves and that they write the same as students throughout the country. She is trying to build self efficacy and self confidence. She is trying to break down the “I can’t do” barriers. Using “you have got” language and not “you haven’t got”.. or “you must have”.

The plan for this class to move forward is to look at the surface features next to clean up the writing. They will again work in teams of two to do this.

How can I apply what I learned today?

• We already look at each other’s design work in the class Google Plus community, so can I get them used to looking at each other’s written work together in pairs?
• I can get the exemplars from the NZQA website for them to use. I will have to pick out the sections that we need and seperate them as their exemplars are whole projects not individual elements.
• I can showcase the framework and structure visually around the room for them to refer to when they need.
• I can supply them with the support structure that they need to use for their writing.
• I can print their written work for them so they can highlight relevant sections to focus on.
• The students can assess themselves against the exemplars to see where they are sitting. They can then plan for improvement themselves too.

Thank you once again to Robyn for letting me come and steal / borrow / use / share ideas with her.

Sharing is good!