My Space and My Place

Marc Milford and I delivered a SLAM this morning during morning briefing, about the Literacy Strategies that we had collaborated on for my Semester/Rotation 1 Year 10 class around the context of Climate Change.

Usually I would focus a lot of class time on technical skills and techniques, in teaching the students the coding skills required for game development.  In terms of content, I would not usually allocate much learning time towards this aspect of the project.  However, for this particular project, I took some reading material and articles to Marc about Climate Change, and he helped me to break the tasks down, in order to develop the reading, discussion and writing skills with my learners, so that I could connect the students more closely to the content which they would use to develop their games.

The following is the presentation slide deck that we used in the SLAM session.

Literacy Strategies - Year 10 Project | Climate Change and Game Development

It is important to note that in the process of breaking the tasks down for the learners, it wasn't a case of distributing the tasks like handouts and leaving them to navigate their way through the learning.  The students required feedback and/or feedforward so that the learning activities were useful for them, and equipped the learners to be able to write a final summary.  I used a Workspace to communicate the tasks with the learners and so that they could submit their work.  I used a tracking sheet to give students immediate feedback of the task, and used comments in their individual documents for students who needed feedforward to complete the work.

I am likely to integrate these same approaches with my target group for my 2021 CoL Inquiry this year.  Staff from other departments have shown interest in wanting to collaborate, with a particular interest in the Climate Change project, which Marc and I both welcome!

Describe the tools/measures/approaches you plan to use to get a more detailed and accurate profile of students’ learning in relation to that challenge. Justify why you chose these approaches and tools.

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 reason that I would like to use the Explanation Writing Poster for Digital Technologies, is because it includes colour coded examples within the poster of various types of Writing Features, which students could potentially use and follow within their own writing tasks.  The students can also use this tool, to improve their understanding of reading materials that include a lot of new and technical vocabulary, such as Assessment Tasks.

The reason that I would like to use the Academic Writing Slidedeck, is because it also includes colour coded examples within the slides, and explanations of different levels of SOLO Taxonomy, that relates to a Digital Technologies outcome, which students should be able to relate to in this subject.  The examples of the different of SOLO Taxonomy, should enable students to develop their literacy and writing skills in alignment with the exemplars that have been provided.

From what you know already about your classes and your school’s profile and leadership goals for the year, share a possible inquiry focus.

Frame your focus as a desired change in student learning NOT a change in teaching (as yet!)

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.

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.

---

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.

The following is a screencastify on a quick task that I've set with my learners, so that I know, that 'they' know, how to access their learning on my site.

This was a timely reminder for learners to know how to access their learning, while they are in the classroom, as well as when they are offsite including during lockdowns.  It is also an extremely useful for students who are new to my subject and are completely new to Tamaki College.

Academic Writing - Online Game