Explain how some of the data you have used to build a profile of the students’ learning will be used as baseline data at the end of the year.

My target group of learners for my Inquiry 2020 will be my Year 11 NCEA Level 1 class. I intend inquiring into the process of using the LearnCoach online programs (content) and VTaL Visible Teaching and Learning (workflow) to accelerate student achievement for Tamaki College students undertaking courses in Digital Technologies NCEA Levels 1, 2 and 3.

The blogpost  BP4 : Evidence, Data and Preliminary Findings - Student Progress during Covid19 Lockdown demonstrates how Student Progress through the use of Tracking Sheets for a particular project or assessment, can be measured over a specified timeframe.  Within the specified timeframe, the Tracking Sheet relevant to a particular date, can show the Student Progress and completion of the tasks within the assessment.  When this is compared to previous Tracking Sheets, it is possible to measure the rate of task completion for each student.  This is particularly important, when students need to hit mini deadlines within an overall assessment deadline.

1. Digital Technologies 1.7 & 1.8: Develop a Computer Game

In order to support learners to understand the assessment task, and to complete the assessment activities for the NCEA Assessment 'Develop a Computer Game',. I developed a Task/Hei Mahi to be an Overview of the Context for the assessment, and a much shorter version of the Overall Assessment.  My hunch from previous experience, is that the shear volume of information within NCEA Assessment Tasks can be overwhelming for students.  Whilst the information is important in terms of what needs to be covered and completed within the assessment, as well as the criteria that learners need to meet, it is still a lot of information.

I decided that I would develop a Student Checklist for students that would chunk and break down each individual set of evidence for all tasks within the assessment.  I spent a double lesson discussing, demonstrating the explaining the purpose and use of the Task/Hei Mahi, Assessment Task © and Student Checklist to the class.  

I also had an initial Tracking Sheet, that consisted of the four different sections of the Assessment Task.  The students were expected to submit all of the evidence for each section into one document for the relevant section.  However, throughout the lesson, some of the students indicated that they would prefer if a adapted the Tracking Sheet to include each individual set of evidence that is required for the assessment.  I asked the students if they understood that would make the Tracking Sheet extremely long and how they felt about having a long Tracking Sheet.  The students still preferred a longer Tracking Sheet to represent each single piece of evidence.  The outcome is the Updated Tracking Sheet.

1. Student Checklist and Tracking Sheet

At the end of the lesson, I asked Olever and David how they felt about the lesson, and whether they felt as though they had a better understanding of the Assessment Requirements.  The following video outlines what the boys had to say about the Task, Assessment Task, Student Checklist, and also the Tracking Sheet.

1. Building a profile of students' learning to be used as Baseline Data

Based on my inquiry findings from my previous blogposts;  

• BP3 : Tools, Measures and Approaches
• BP4 : Evidence, Data and Preliminary Findings - Student Progress during Covid19 Lockdown,
• BP5 : Academic or Professional Reading 1 | Collaborative strategies for teaching reading comprehension 

as well as student feedback during class time and captured in the short video above, suggests that the combined use of Student Checklist and Tracking Sheets will be effective tools to use to focus student learning and also to measure student progress.  The Tracking Sheets at the beginning and end of assessments, for each assessment throughout the year, will provide a gauge of baseline data from the beginning of the assessment, up to the due date for the assessment.  

I have inquired into the use of Tracking Sheets to accelerate student achievement in previous years.  However, the difference of this inquiry to previous inquiries, is investigating the use of LearnCoach online tutorials (for content knowledge and skill development), and Visible Teaching and Learning (Student Checklists, Tracking Sheets and Google+ Communities) to accelerate student achievement.