7 BK SPARK MIT trial with google drawing 'cards'

Learning outcome; Understanding the Visual Arts strands at Level 3 of the NZC

Objectives:
- To be able to recognise explicitly what is required in meeting each strand
- To be able to figure out what is potentially missing in a piece of work within each strand
- To be able to negotiate their own strengths and weaknesses in their own work based on this breakdown of understanding

What we want to achieve because of this:
- A bank of resources that demonstrate understanding of each strand, within potentially the same piece of work
- To be able to differentiate not only between curriculum levels, but also between a low, mid and high standard in each curriculum level
- To be have an open, accessible and collaborative bank of student work that can be used in self-assessing, comparison and idea gathering for other teachers and students beyond Hornby.

What I have so far:
Level 3 Practical Knowledge;

We used a piece of work from another class that was incomplete, but clearly demonstrated this strand, at this level and in the unit of work this particular class is just finishing up. Verbally, students could easily identify everything I wanted them to be able to see. However, translating my intentions and their answers from a verbal conversation to the google drawing 'card' I made was more challenging. I have not taught this age level before. I over-construct sentences at the best of times. For 10 and 11 year olds, it must be terrifying. Working on the chrome books is significantly different to my laptop, which meant that we had some technical challenges, however, 7 bk were remarkably prepared to continue trying out 'how' to do this right. Eventually, we go t a good number of cards completed and saved.

What I am doing differently next time:
- Working on defining the strands in clearer and more simplidied language than last time.
- Using a chrome book as my teacher's computer, so I am in the same place as the students.
- Simplifying the language used on the google drawing 'card'.
- Use CARR awards more regularly during the lesson - no one seemed to notice, but it is a school system and I should have used it.

What I am happy about:
- It sorta worked
- The resilience of 7bk is awesome
- Their digital citizenship was on point - no off task behaviour on chrome books
- I can see this taking shape (just slowly) and a good positive direction.
- I can see how I could integrate the google self assessment sheet I have already worked on, with this; self-efficacy has to be an outcome of that approach in my opinion.
- I have found an educationally sound and useful way of working with google drawings - I initially just thought they were too basic to be of use with teaching something like Design and not relevant to anything else. I have changed my mindset, and solutions have presented themselves.

SPARK - MIT trial

7 Bk's Class blog.

This is a class I have hardly seen and they cannot keep up with the programme we had initially planned on because of that. Interruptions will continue unfortunately, so I am going to work with them as a trial class.

I will post up the results of this after Thursday

SOLO in Art

This is our take on SOLO with Visual Arts. It fits cleanly with our base assessment scale, with the expectations of NCEA in visual Arts at level 1 - 3 and as a way to enable good clear scaffolding for students to achieve at higher levels too.

What I Am Going To Try; Google Draw

Click on this link for the original Google Draw file

I think this is at the substitution level as it is. What happens to that information they create with these is how it becomes redefined and modified.

Breaking it down into low, mid and high of a curriculum level is really what is happening on the google sheet that I have already worked on with the students.



This as a do now - 1 - 2 curriculum strands from students work so far, or work done previously that I know they can manage. All the answers are ones that my current Year 7 and 8 students could provide based on the work we have completed this term. They know what Tache is, and they can identify all of those elements.

We teach the vocab using flash cards anyway, so just making sure they are available or even developing them into google drawings as well, would help.

Getting the students to 'bank' these in a file somewhere is the next step and relating it back to SOLO for Visual Arts.

What Is My Innovation?

Trying to get to the point where students can identify what they are doing and why they are doing it. But also being brave enough to share how they are doing, without fear

Have I explicitly taught the strands? No. Is this a mistake? Possibly.

I consistently address that fear of people seeing whether or not the students are 'good enough'. I am so caught up with my junior classes teaching in the limited time that we have, that unpacking the strands, can be something that gets put 'away'.

SOLO - we did this once! We had extensive PLD on it and then it fell away with the numerous other commitments we have. I am wondering how I explicitly re-introduce this and link to this as well as make those strands more obvious, student owned. When I took on SOLO in Art, I added in an extra step. When SOLO is related to NCEA 'achieved', 'merit' and 'excellence', multi-structural comes out as 'achieved'. I feel that is inaccurate at level one NCEA. So we added in another step. in order to get 'achieved' we rely on relational as the step that correlates. I will post separately on this to explain this further.

The term one focus for us with the outreach programme has been rewindable learning. The google site, with the teaching blogs has been a way of keeping learning available and rewindable. This has to aide in helping students develop their understanding of the work, but not necessarily the base strands that work applies to.

So the google sheet design collecting students self-assessment actually becomes less of an innovation and more of a data collection as to how well students manage putting their own thoughts about learning out there as data and whether or not they understand our teaching and how it all works. How do students feel about making their own thoughts on their grades visible? Do they understand what is expected of them?

Because the students have not designed the google sheet with me - i.e. they have to understand the criteria for each task, but I am using language they don't get, they do not yet own it. We have reworded lots of it already.


Challenges:
- Time in the classroom - we lose a lot of time in 7 and 8 for Kiwican, sports, teacher conferences, attitude talks, assemblies...
- Access to devices - this can be cumbersome when not all students have them. Locating spare ones takes time and energy and at times guess work.
- Is this relevant to actually making what I am trying to ultimately achieve?
- Have I extended myself too far?

Next steps:
- Focus on one class only. Not all.
- Take time out of the curriculum intentionally with this one class. 7 Bk - as they have already lost a lot of content time so maybe they are a class to work with. Because the content is lacking, then I can already safely afford to determine that understanding process is more important? They can make up for their lack of content by understanding the curriculum better and being able to articulate it and therefore progress almost as quickly upwards because of their more implicit understanding.
- Clarify SOLO for Visual Arts at Hornby.
- Create an exemplar of processing work into curriculum strands.
- Create basic definitions of each strand, set it up as a group exercise where students categorise and process an art assignment into the strands. This can be the work we have already done or work from other years.

Because I only have this class once a week, it could be that every lesson for 15 minutes we do this. I teach a refined programme to this class that could help back up the strand focussed on, or not.

Working using Google Draw, I have an idea of how to create a 'make a copy' file way of doing this.

SAMR - Not a Hierarchy

Above the line and below the line is often how it is referred as, but as soon as you do that, it becomes something that has a finish - when you get to redefinition, you can go no further until someone invents a new app...

This approach negates the fact that there is good teaching and bad teaching, good learning, bad learning with or without technology. Sometimes a substitution task is the most appropriate for the learner in front of you. Sometimes you move from redefining a task back down to substituting a section of it with a google doc, for good reason; the best for the learner's needs at the time.

While what we want is for students to be determining their own learning, that is not always possible, nor what we need at the time. The idea that if we are teaching to the needs, and students are learning what the need to know, we are moving above and below the line all the time.

Student self assessment - Qualitative Data gathering using google sheets

Spark - MIT have given me the opportunity to explore and figure out a way of developing a way with my students to unpack the curriculum in Visual Arts for themselves. In order to do this successfully, (shoutout Tania Coutts for help with this) I need them to be able to not only self assess, which they do anyway, but to be public and brave about it.

Google sheets is essentially 'live'. 'Protected sheets and ranges' means that I can have multiple editors and lock them down to only what I want them to be able to edit. Qualitative data is significant in understanding how students are managing that top end of the curriculum.

This is where we are at with all of our junior classes. Because it is all of them (13 classes in all) it is a bit of a Himalayan trek to get it all done.

This is a screen shot from one class who are incomplete so far.
Each student can only access their own row. It is colour coded and is my marking schedule anyway for the class, with alterations made to the language, as they tell me some of my criteria were too confusing... They can see what each other are entering right then and there and this can be good or bad. How I manage the culture, as the teacher running the task at the time, is important here. It does take clear explanation first as well.

We are working on refining it with each class and there is differing feedback from each class. So it has to be developed with the class, not for the school.