How has my inquiry been impacted by COVID19?

Our CoL meeting yesterday was our first one face to face since term 1. We have had Google Meet ones, but they are just not the same. No hugging or eating is involved in a Google Meet version!!

Part of what we discussed yesterday was how our inquiries have been affected by COVID19 and the lockdown situation New Zealand went through.
We were asked the question ...

"How has the Covid-19 period impacted the learners in your focus group? Will you need to make any changes to your Inquiry? "

Since lockdown and after, I have realised what I thought was helpful stuff on my class website is not so helpful after all. It was not set up well enough to enable students to work as independently as I would have liked. This was important during lockdown, both for those students who could come online and work with me but especially for those who couldn't. Since we have got back it is also important as the students are at such a huge variance as to where they are in their design projects.
I started to try and address this with the help videos that I was putting together for my inquiry group for the design brief. Blog posts here and here. This needs to be expanded into all year groups for everything that I am asking them to do.

As my students missed so much and they are at such different stages in their work they have quite large confidence issues. I have noticed this when everything is normal as they come into NCEA Level 3 with no background knowledge, but it is a lot worse at the moment. My focus has definitely shifted into mindset, growth mindset and confidence building. I have been building in activities for them to do, visits from other teachers talking about mindset and I have been doing a lot of reading about it myself. This is turning into a focus which is just as important as the Scholarship work, as nothing will happen if they don't feel like they can achieve it in the first place.

In the Technology Department, we have been asked to identify the learning barriers for our senior students, what strategies we have been trying and what we intend to further try in order to get some achievement happening.
Here is mine for my inquiry group. I have taken the names out.

As you can see, a lot of the problems are related to confidence.

Main Learning Barriers	Other Learning Barriers	Teacher Practice - Strategies and Interventions	Strategy and Intervention to shift achievement by the 18th August 2020
Literacy	Prior / Content Knowledge	I get another student to translate for me when xxx doesn't understand my instructions.	Being nice to Gene Smallwood to see if she will translate some support sheets for me into Filipino. I am offering Wednesday and Thursday after school sessions for terms 3 and 4.
Attendance	Motivation	Board games and support when he comes in. I try and get him to feel part of the group again when i see him. It is hard as he feels xxx not being there and so he avoids coming.	I made help videos and examples for the design brief section of the project for those who could not come online over lockdown. These are available on the class site. I need to make more of these for more of the project as feedback from the students is that they are using them. I am offering Wednesday and Thursday after school sessions for terms 3 and 4.
Attendance	Motivation	Since we lost xxx, xxx has hardly been in at all. I think 'i have seen him 3 times. I try to make him as welcome as I can and get him to join in with the rest of the group with games and warm ups.	I made help videos and examples for the design brief section of the project for those who could not come online over lockdown. These are available on the class site. I need to make more of these for more of the project as feedback from the students is that they are using them. I am offering Wednesday and Thursday after school sessions for terms 3 and 4.
Confidence		xxx likes to know the big picture, so I try and relate everything we do and let him know why and how it connects with the end product. I show him skills one to one and give him time to practice as he lacks confidence in his own drawing skills.	I made help videos and examples for the design brief section of the project for those who could not come online over lockdown. These are available on the class site. I need to make more of these for more of the project as feedback from the students is that they are using them. I am offering Wednesday and Thursday after school sessions for terms 3 and 4.
Attendance	Confidence	I try and use examples and one to one when xxx is in the class to try and remind her where she is up to in the whole project. There are big gaps in between visits to the class.	I made help videos and examples for the design brief section of the project for those who could not come online over lockdown. These are available on the class site. I need to make more of these for more of the project as feedback from the students is that they are using them. I am offering Wednesday and Thursday after school sessions for terms 3 and 4.
Attendance	Time Awareness	I try and use examples and one to one when xxx is in the class to try and remind her where she is up to in the whole project. There are big gaps in between visits to the class.	I made help videos and examples for the design brief section of the project for those who could not come online over lockdown. These are available on the class site. I need to make more of these for more of the project as feedback from the students is that they are using them. I am offering Wednesday and Thursday after school sessions for terms 3 and 4.
In school other commitments	Time Awareness	xxx has not really kept up to date this year at all. She has a lot of extra stuff on and this has affected both her attendance and focus at times. I have examples on hand all the time to show her what she needs to be doing.	I made help videos and examples for the design brief section of the project for those who could not come online over lockdown. These are available on the class site. I need to make more of these for more of the project as feedback from the students is that they are using them. I am offering Wednesday and Thursday after school sessions for terms 3 and 4.
In school other commitments	Time Awareness	xxx has not really kept up to date this year at all. She has a lot of extra stuff on and this has affected both her attendance and focus at times. I have examples on hand all the time to show her what she needs to be doing.	I made help videos and examples for the design brief section of the project for those who could not come online over lockdown. These are available on the class site. I need to make more of these for more of the project as feedback from the students is that they are using them. I am offering Wednesday and Thursday after school sessions for terms 3 and 4.
Too much of a perfectionist		xxx and I have been working on "loosening up" the style this year. He tends to like everything "just so" and he really needs to be looser and produce more design ideas to choose from, whether he likes them or not. He came into the holiday sessions most days.	I made help videos and examples for the design brief section of the project for those who could not come online over lockdown. These are available on the class site. I need to make more of these for more of the project as feedback from the students is that they are using them. I am offering Wednesday and Thursday after school sessions for terms 3 and 4.
Confidence		I have been trying to encourage xxx this year as his 3D drawing has really improved. I remind him what it was like in Y11 and 12 and make him think about how much improvement he has made. He did not take any time off when we lost xxx but he has felt it really badly. I try and give him room to play games with the group to build confidence and togetherness again which he is lacking due to others not coming to school. He came into the holiday sessions once.	I made help videos and examples for the design brief section of the project for those who could not come online over lockdown. These are available on the class site. I need to make more of these for more of the project as feedback from the students is that they are using them. I am offering Wednesday and Thursday after school sessions for terms 3 and 4.
Attendance	Too much of a perfectionist	xxx is another who i have been encouraging to be looser this year. He has responded well and is trying hard to not be such a perfectionist with everything.	I made help videos and examples for the design brief section of the project for those who could not come online over lockdown. These are available on the class site. I need to make more of these for more of the project as feedback from the students is that they are using them. I am offering Wednesday and Thursday after school sessions for terms 3 and 4.
Never here		I have hardly seen xxx all year. I don't think that the 37% that KAMAR is saying is correct. It seems too high.	I made help videos and examples for the design brief section of the project for those who could not come online over lockdown. These are available on the class site. I need to make more of these for more of the project as feedback from the students is that they are using them. I am offering Wednesday and Thursday after school sessions for terms 3 and 4.
Confidence	Prior / Content Knowledge	I try and do examples for / with xxx as he really lacks confidence in his work.	I made help videos and examples for the design brief section of the project for those who could not come online over lockdown. These are available on the class site. I need to make more of these for more of the project as feedback from the students is that they are using them. I am offering Wednesday and Thursday after school sessions for terms 3 and 4.
Attendance	Attitude and time awareness	xxx has terrible attendance this year and she has developed a strange attitude when she is in class. I try to show her the examples we have worked on together each time I see her to remind her what we are doing as there are big gaps between visits.	I made help videos and examples for the design brief section of the project for those who could not come online over lockdown. These are available on the class site. I need to make more of these for more of the project as feedback from the students is that they are using them. I am offering Wednesday and Thursday after school sessions for terms 3 and 4.
Attendance	Confidence	I sit with xxx one to one a lot to show him things specifically related to his own project as he has difficulty translating general skills to what he is doing. A lot of that is related to his lack of confidence in his own work. He came into the holiday sessions a few times.	I made help videos and examples for the design brief section of the project for those who could not come online over lockdown. These are available on the class site. I need to make more of these for more of the project as feedback from the students is that they are using them. I am offering Wednesday and Thursday after school sessions for terms 3 and 4.

Multi Lingual Literacy Support

My Year 11 class is a mixed lot. 4 of them are in Mrs Latu's ESOL class. The 4 girl's drawing is great and they work really hard. The problem was coming up where they had to make sure their written work was up to date and also write analysis of their own design ideas.
Their teacher, Mrs Latu, was very keen to help them complete work in their different classes so they can start clocking the credits in. She has been gong to their Art class and has been coming to DVC to help the girls understand what they have to do. She has also been having them in her own classroom during DVC time for intensives.

A big part of what we have been working on is multi lingual support for the girls. I have been to ask Mrs Moore, our NZQA person, if the notes the girls write have to be in English. In light of this conversation, we decided to make multilingual support for writing available and the girls can write their analysis in their native languages. This can happen as long as Mrs Latu and Ms Fepuleai read the notes and sign off on the external posting envelope.

So, thanks to the efforts of Mrs Latu and Ms Fepuleai, I have my first set of multilingual writing supports for the girls.

Here is the original, based on SOLO taxonomy.

Chair Concepts - Architect Notes

xxx

	Describe The shapes and forms you have used in your designs. The shapes and forms used in the buildings your architect designed. (tip - shape is 2D and form is 3D)
	Explain How you have used the shapes, forms, texture and patterns from your architect have been used in your chair designs. Why you chose the shapes for the design and the effect that has been achieved by using these shapes. Analyse How you have reflected the style of your architect in how you have designed your seating.
	Reflect On which parts of your designs show the style of your architect the best and why.

Examples

I have used ………….. shape / form in this design.

The shapes / forms in my architect’s work are………………..

The ………….. Shape / form is seen on …………….. building

I used ………………………… from the ………………...building as the main inspiration for this design. I chose this shape because it shows ………………………. about my architect’s work.

The style of my architect is ……………………… and I have reflected this in my design by ………………………………….

Here is the Tongan translation version
Here is the Samoan translation version


I have printed out all of these, given them out to who needs what and they are currently using these templates to help them with the notes on their design concepts.

My examples are here. They had to go from looking at the forms used in their chosen architects work to using this information to design seating and chairs.

This is for AS91067 leading into AS91068
Link to class site

What does teaching look like now?

We have been back at school, doing onsite teaching for number of weeks now, post lockdown. Things have changed for me as a teacher. There are definitely some things that I am glad to see the back of and some things that I will be keeping on.

Hapara workspaces were an absolute marvel during lockdown. I had my work sorted onto workspaces for the first time this year as I was sick of loosing track as to where the students were up to and was going to give workspaces a really good try this year to help me with this. Blog post here. I was slow at our school coming to the workspaces party as other staff have been comfortably using them for a number of years and I have been happily picking their brains about the best way to do things. During lockdown, this became a totally different reality. It was no longer testing to see if it made things easier, it was full on “we are using this now” mode.  It was so good to be able to share work so easily with the students this way, it was all set up for those students who like the big picture and I could see students accessing and starting the work even if they weren’t coming online to talk to me during the Google Meets.
I will absolutely be keeping up with using workspaces with any new work that I plan in the future. I also really enjoy making them look pretty!

As some of my students were unable to come online and do work during lockdown, I have been spending a lot of time making help videos for my inquiry group to support them with their project work. Blog post here. When I asked them a few weeks ago if these help sections were of any use and how I could make them more useful.

"I don'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".

Not sparkling feedback, but not bad either. I have received more informal feedback since then. The Year 12 students are asking where their help page is like the Year 13 one. The Year 13 inquiry group are telling me they are up to where the help stops, am I making any more. This makes me think that this has been more helpful than I originally thought so I will definitely be expanding on this idea and try to include support like this in each project. It will be a fair amount of work to prepare but once it is there it will be really worth it. I have been drawing on my experience while doing Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher in 2015, where I looked at designing MOOC style courses. One of my main takeouts from that was short and sharp sections that were on task and to the point. Link to this work here.

Having the table top boxes of drawing equipment has been a yes and no from me. We had to do this when we first came back to keep the social distancing rules in place. Blog post 1 Blog post 2. I have kept them since going back to semi "normal" and I am not sure they are staying. I twitch every time I see how messy and mixed up they are and this is really not something worth getting grumpy over so they will probably not stay much longer. The tables are back in groups though. I absolutely HATED the rows.

Not sweating the small stuff. Hey. We are still in the middle of a huge global happening that doesn't make for great viewing if you watch the news so I am definitely still in the "don't sweat the small stuff" mode and am trying to make the class a good place to be with minimum nagging and maximum support.

What do I want from lockdown to stay? The MUTE BUTTON!!!!

Personal Goals 2020

Goal Number 1

Link to doc

 2020 Individual Goal 1 Worksheet (Maori Achievement)

Mindset label on my blog

By… (time frame)	By the end of term 3
I have/I am…  (present tense) (practice e.g. ‘ing’ verb)	I will have worked on mindset exercises with my Year 12 and Year 13 students
So that… (benefit/outcomes)	so that they feel more confident in themselves and their ability to complete the project work in Design and Visual Communication. Goal 1 Maori Achievement To raise Maori student achievement and cultural visibility.                                                                                                                                                                                              That 85% of Maori students will achieve NCEA Level 2.

SMART Goals	Reflection
Strategic -it should align with your overall position responsibilities and your organisation’s annual goals, not some randomly selected one.	This aligns with the school goal of raising Māori achievement and the school goal for student wellbeing.
Meaningful – if it doesn’t do anything for you, the goal should be re-written and should align to intrinsic motivation.	Working on mindset will help support every aspect of the work that the students do. It will help them have a more positive approach to their work as a whole, while my specific target will be their design work.
Aspirational – where might I see the goal leading me to in my practice that would really make an impact.	I want to start working with students much earlier with mindset activities and after the reading that I have been doing, try and get other teachers on board too so it is a more universal approach.
Risky – how about doing something that is complex, will require you to collaborate and get you outside your comfort zone – but in the understanding that it is the learning that is important, not the achievement of the goal.  Encourage and reward learning from mistakes.	This is not specific to DVC - my subject - so I am having to do a lot of research and reading. I want to collaborate more with other staff members. I have started this with the Health and PE department as they do this type of work as part of their courses.
Time-bound   -of course, every goal must have an end-point to keep you focused.  If the goal was not achieved, at least by aiming for something risky, you know a lot more about whatever it is that interested you in the first place.	I will get feedback from the students at the end of term 3 and compare it to the feedback from them earlier in the year.

GROWTH Model	Reflection
Goals - What do you need to achieve?	I want the students to be able to complete the work that they start in order to achieve the credits that are on offer.
Reality - What is happening now?	Far too many times, the not achieved in the results is because their work is incomplete. They avoid the things they find hard and leave them unfinished.
Options - What could you do?	I would like to improve how they feel about themselves and their work as they lack confidence.
Will - What will you do?	I will work on mindset throughout the year with activities and information.
Tactics - How and when will you do it?	I will research and read about the subject of mindset. I will collaborate with the Health and PE departments who already do some of this kind of work in their courses. I will include activities and information for the students throughout the year.
Habits - How will you sustain your success?	I want to start this kind of work with the students earlier - in Y9 and Y10 then definitely into Y11 so they have habits set up for when the work gets harder.

Goal Number 2

Link to doc

2020 Individual Goal 2 Worksheet (Other)

Literacy label on my blog 

By… (time frame)	By the end of the year
I have/I am…  (present tense) (practice e.g. ‘ing’ verb)	I will have developed and collated a series of literacy based templates that can be used by any of the students in Design and Visual Communication. These templates will rely heavily on SOLO Taxonomy structure.
So that… (benefit/outcomes)	so that these templates and ways of working become part of the normal flow of working through the design process.

SMART Goals	Reflection
Strategic -it should align with your overall position responsibilities and your organisation’s annual goals, not some randomly selected one.	This aligns with the Department goal for literacy and development of resources.
Meaningful – if it doesn’t do anything for you, the goal should be re-written and should align to intrinsic motivation.	This will give structure and support for all students doing the subject and enable more detailed writing in analysis work.
Aspirational – where might I see the goal leading me to in my practice that would really make an impact.	It is the analysis of their design work where Merit and Excellence results are so this work will give support to aim high in the students project work.
Risky – how about doing something that is complex, will require you to collaborate and get you outside your comfort zone – but in the understanding that it is the learning that is important, not the achievement of the goal.  Encourage and reward learning from mistakes.	There is a lot of learning, reading for me to do and collaborating with other teachers in order to achieve this goal.
Time-bound   -of course, every goal must have an end-point to keep you focused.  If the goal was not achieved, at least by aiming for something risky, you know a lot more about whatever it is that interested you in the first place.	The time scale is until the end of the year.

GROWTH Model	Reflection
Goals - What do you need to achieve?	To improve the students written ability when writing analysis notes with their design work.
Reality - What is happening now?	They produce notes that lack depth and understanding in what they have designed and also lack literacy structure.
Options - What could you do?	Research, read and collaborate with other teachers.
Will - What will you do?	Produce a range of resources that use SOLO as the main structure to support writing in DVC.
Tactics - How and when will you do it?	I will produce and collate resources onto the class site where they can be accessed by all the students and linked to during the project flow when needed.
Habits - How will you sustain your success?	Use and refer to them at all year levels.