My Space and My Place

Using VTaL to track Student Achievement in DigiTech

I’ve recently adapted the tracking sheet in my Senior DigiTech class to reflect the credit goals for senior subjects, and to align with the Kamar NCEA Statistics Summary used to discuss student achievement in meetings with the Senior Leadership Team.

The colour codes within the tracking sheet represent the following:

	Standard has been completed, marked, achieved, moderated, published in Kamar
	Standard has been marked, is awaiting final date entries, and moderation
	Standard is not yet complete
	Standard has not been started

The Student Standard Data Update tracking sheet is shared with students.  There are more comprehensive details included in the actual tracking sheet, such as NSN Numbers, Student Names etc.  For this reason, that particular tracking sheet is not fully ‘visible’ and embedded into my subject site.  However, the tracking sheet (including the one linked from the image in this post), includes hyperlinks to Class Task Lists (Tracking Sheets) for each standard, which IS visible in my subject site.

Profiling DigiTech Students

• Multi-Level - The Student Standard Date Update tracking sheet also shows that the class is multi-level; made up of students undertaking NCEA Level 3, NCEA Level 2 and NCEA Level 1.  
• Multi-Ability - As well as being multi-level, students within each level also achieve at various ability levels.  This is why the benefits of being able to differentiate using VTaL is particularly important in terms of meeting the learning needs of all students.  
• Prior Knowledge - Of the twenty two students on the class roll, only three of those students took Senior DigiTech in the previous year.  The greatest cohort of students to join the class without prior knowledge from the previous year, is twelve Level 2 students.  This is why previous years of student exemplars shared in the DigiTech Google+ communities is particularly effective, in terms of helping to guide student learning.  
• Attendance to DigiTech - Eleven students have 90+% attendance per week, five students have 80+% attendance per week, two students have 70+% attendance per week, two students have 60+% attendance per week, and two students have 30+% attendance per week.  In addition to this, three students arrived at different times during the year from overseas, and joined the class.  Student attendance and student start dates impact on student learning and student achievement.

Using VTaL Student Standard Data Updates to Identify Interventions

The Student Standard Data Updates visually shows a snapshot of where students are achieving at.  This information is used in one-to-one conversations between myself and students to identify student needs in terms of progressing forward in the project (and standard).  It is essentially a Formative Assessment Tool, with levels of hyperlinks to progress within a standard, as well as individual student progress.  The students can see how many credits each standard is worth, and a cumulative total of the number of credits achieved and required to gain a minimum number of credits within DigiTech.  This includes a breakdown of the credits offered in class time, and doesn’t include the credits and standards offered through our IT partners, Fusion IT and Techtorium.

Term 4 is going to be crunch time for the students!  Every day counts, every lesson counts.  So does ensuring that formative feedback is turned over quickly, is kept up to date, and accessible to the students!

2017 Parent Survey

Recently I had discussions with some Tamaki College Parents at the Subject Pathways Evening and Student Parent Conference Days, about accessing their child's learning online.  The following photos are of one of our parents, Melisa Vili, in conversation with me about VTaL Visible Teaching and Learning.

Survey Findings

Next Steps

I had the pleasure of meeting with Natasha Taylor, parent of Lukis Taylor in Year 9, at the Student Parent Conferences.  Natasha wanted to know what Lukis's progress looked like in DigiTech, and so we had the discussion based on information that was available in my DigiTech with Ms Anderson subject site for Year 9 Student Academic Progress.



Natasha was delighted to see what Luki's progress looks like in class so far.  Here are a few comments about what Natasha had to say:

"OMG he's doing work".
"It's nice having good feedback from teachers".
"The colours are so clear.  It's pretty obvious what the colours mean.  Green means he's doing work.  Red means students haven't done anything.  Kind of like how marking is always done in red pen, so you know something isn't right".

As a teacher, it is really enlightening to see how transparent and useful the colour codes are in the tracking sheets and class lists for parents and students.  Natasha was really keen to catch up with Lukis and commend him on the information she'd just learnt about his progress in class.

A Strategy - Commenting to Boost Motivation

The Process - Using a Google+ Community to Comment

The Challenge

DigiTech Google+ Communities

Student Voice

Kori-Lee - Year 11 DigiTech Student

Tauhogofulu Haffeiki and Gustavo Pohatu - Year 12 DigiTech Students

Filipe Alipate, Cruz Putu-King and Jaydenzel Pitolua - Year 12 and Year 13 DigiTech Students

The following is a snapshot of the notes relating to my inquiry process.  In order to make sense of the inquiry, it is important to know what the challenges are, and the desired outcome from the inquiry.

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.

The Challenge for Learners

The Holy Grail

The Inquiry

I ran a Toolkit session about Visible Teaching and Learning, focused around what that might look like in a secondary school context.  The session was aimed primarily at new staff to Tamaki College, but also for any staff would may have wanted a refresher overview on VTaL as well.

We had a brief discussion around what we understand Visible Teaching and Learning to be.  Then the bulk of the session was locating information about a particular Year 11 learner [ID 16179], as well as tracking the learning and progress for this learner within the DigiTech with Ms Anderson site.