My Space and My Place

No Comments

Collaborate with your school’s leadership team and colleagues to identify areas where your inquiry will make a powerful contribution to wider school and cluster goals.

My target group of learners for my Inquiry 2021 will be my Year 12 NCEA Level 2 class. This group of learners were my target group from my 2020 Inquiry.

The area that I feel my Inquiry will make a powerful contribution is in Literacy. Literacy and Numeracy are part of the School Goals and Technology Department Goals for 2021.

School Goal 2 Literacy and Numeracy

By the end of Year 10, 80% of students will be reading at or above the expected level

By the end of Year 10, 70% of students are writing at or above the expected Curriculum Level.

By the end of Year 10 70% of students are achieving in Mathematics at or above the expected Curriculum Level.

That 90% of Year 11 students will achieve NCEA Literacy.

That 90% of Year 11 students will achieve NCEA Numeracy.

Department Goal 2 Literacy and Numeracy

Background - To develop an ‘Explanation Writing’ display poster.

Next Steps

As a department, the next steps is that we review the process, discuss the feedback and comments, and discuss what we would like to retain, adapt, change or remove, in order for this approach to be effective, and for literacy skills to improve for Technology students.

What is the most effective way of utilising the Explanation Writing posters, with Technology students throughout the year?

What is the most effective way of communicating shifts in achievement of Technology students, that reflects the use and application of the Explanation Writing posters and learning process?

I consulted with Marc Milford, Literacy Expert and Extraordinaire, as well as Karen Ferguson, fellow CoL, Techie and whose previous Inquiries have had a Literacy focus, about their thoughts around how my inquiry would make a powerful contribution to wider school and cluster goals.

Marc has been asking for Year 11 assessment tasks to critique, to help align current student writing at Tamaki College with NCEA Level 1 exemplars online. Having previously provided me with support around literacy for my own practice, as well as the Technology Department, Marc is very keen to see my 2021 Inquiry continue along the Literacy focus, in alignment with both the School and Department Literacy Goals. Marc is also keen to continue supporting me with my inquiry this year, which I believe will be instrumental in gaining critical feedback from somebody who is an expert in this field.

As the original developer of the Explanation Writing Exemplar, which is contributing towards my Inquiry focus this year, it was important that I spoke with Karen and gained her insight and feedback into my inquiry ideas around literacy. Through our discussion, Karen could see how the ideas I was floating around, could offer the learners steps of support for literacy, by chunking down bigger concepts into smaller ones that learners could get their heads around. It also helps that Karen's approach in many literacy learning activities, often start from the Unistructural (Yellow) section of the SOLO Taxonomy poster, and the activities staircase up from there. Karen shared me a folder of learning resources that she has experimented with, to demonstrate various approaches with her learners.

Although I understood that Literacy is a current and relevant area for Inquiry in terms of supporting student learning, it has helped to talk to others about their perspective, knowledge and experience working on literacy as well.

No Comments

One of the Technology Department Goals for 2020 was based on Literacy, in alignment with the School Goal 2 for Literacy and Numeracy.

The Technology Department Literacy Goal for 2020 is:

To develop ‘Explanation Writing’ classroom display resources for each specialist technology subject, based on SOLO taxonomy

After the department literacy session on understanding the Explanation Writing process, I developed an 'Explanation Writing' template for Digital Technologies. I shared this with Marc Milford, who provided feedback and changes as shown below.

Discussion Points about the Explanation Writing Digital Technologies poster

In order for teachers to assist learners with fluent writing, beyond the use of sentence starters, it is important to master three types of functional verbs used in writing. These are:

relational verbs (small auxiliary verbs that express tense)
mental verbs (what you do in your head)
action verbs

Final Writing Explanation Poster for Digital Technologies

The Final Writing Explanation Poster for Digital Technologies looks as follows. This will be colour printed, laminated, and displayed on my classroom wall.

Next Steps

I have been developing a slide deck of Academic Writing that relates to Game Development. The academic writing exemplar follows SOLO taxonomy, and I intend using this as an exemplar with my students, to support them to gain Merit and Excellence. I am seeking feedback and support from Marc Milford, after which, I will be further developing the exemplar to follow the Explanation Writing model demonstrated in the poster. This will enable a Visual Representation to be used on my classroom wall, Working Exemplars that the students can follow, and hopefully the consistency of the design, both within my own practice, and also across the department, will reinforce the key literacy features that we are wanting our learners to apply in their own work.

As a department, Marc Milford has been providing feedback to Technology staff on their Explanation Writing Posters, such as the Digital Technologies poster shown in this post. Marc is going to attend our department meeting, and give an overview and explanation of the feedback that he has provided, and changes that he may have made to our posters. From there, we will be looking at literacy strategies that we will address in the future with our learners.

No Comments

The following is one of our Department Goals for 2020:

To develop ‘Explanation Writing’ classroom display resources for each specialist technology subject, based on SOLO taxonomy

Discussion Points about Literacy Issues

Staff have been trialing a range of different Literacy Strategies with their learners within our different learning environments.
Students struggle with the physical act of writing. Blogging is inconsistent, and time constraints is an issue.
Students are struggling to read and understand instructions, including identifying and understanding key words.

And so, as a department we decided to prioritize this goal as a Dept Goal focus for 2020.

We are extremely fortunate that Karen has been working closely with Marc Milford to develop an Explanation Writing frame for her students in DVC. Karen lead us through the initial process that she has undertaken to break down a piece of text relating to our specialist subjects areas. The workshop was great, and everyone enjoyed the activities that Karen had organised for us.

The following is a general outline of the process that are following:

Each member of the Tech Dept developed our own Visual Board relevant to a piece of text specific to our subject area
Karen shared a digital template for each of us to digitise our 'Explanation Writing'. We will complete this by the next department meeting
We are going to share our digitised 'Explanation Writing' with Marc Milford for feedback
Our 'Explanation Writing' posters will be colour printed to display in our classrooms.
As a department, we will decide through the development of the Explanation Writing display poster, how the resource would and could be used to measure literacy progress for the students.

I'm really looking forward to experimenting with this literacy strategy with an upcoming assessment I have with my DigiTech Level 2 students.

A huge thanks to Karen for leading this session with the Tech Team, and also for modelling the process that she has applying in her subject area. Thanks Karen!