The Power of ‘Word’: Why Students Should Blog, Especially in a Manaiakalani Setting

Blogging is a powerful tool for student learning and expression, offering lots of benefits that extend beyond the traditional classroom. When integrated within a pedagogical framework like Manaiakalani, the impact of student blogging is amplified, fostering connected, visible, and empowered learners.

(Click on image to go to Scarlett's blog post)

Above, the image is linked a student blog. The student is able to present their process along with their finished work and reflect as little or as much as they are comfortable doing. I had very little to do with provocations or scripting this particular post, as the student was ahead of their classmates. With possibilities of directed provocation, scaffolding and kaiako guidance, it might have looked different, OR it might not have been authentic. In saying that, once a student begins their writing, how much can I really 'control' the process even with provocations and templates, in a class of 25? How much should I control?

At its core, blogging provides students with an authentic platform to develop and refine thinking, communication and writing skills. The above example can be seen as a starting point, or it could be enough of an artefact of learning process that is stays as is. Nevertheless, the act of writing for a potential audience, (whether this is classmates, whānau, or the wider online community), encourages clarity of thought, improved grammar and spelling, and the development of a personal voice. It moves writing beyond an assignment for a single reader (Kaiako) to a meaningful act of communication - whether or not that is read by others. This process naturally enhances literacy skills and builds confidence in one’s writing abilities.

Beyond basic literacy, blogging develops critical thinking and the ability to analyse, as you have to research, organise your thoughts, and articulate/speak your understanding of a topic. The interactive potential of blogs, through comments and feedback, helps foster communication and collaboration. This small act helps to teach students how to engage in constructive dialogue and respond thoughtfully to others' points of view. In an increasingly globalised world, blogging provides students with valuable digital literacy skills, including cybersmart tools and responsible digital citizenship.

The Manaiakalani pedagogy of "Learn, Create, Share," provides a base for student blogging to develop and evolve. The "Learn|Ako" learning aspects see students acquiring knowledge and developing understanding. The "Create|Waihanga" learning aspects are where blogging becomes a natural and powerful tool for students to process, synthesise, and construct their own understanding by creating blog posts. The fact that students can and should include multi-modal elements to support an engaging post, enhances this. Communication and articulation of ideas and theories becomes more than ’word’. The "Share|Tohatoha" learning aspects are inherently embedded in blogging, as students publish their work online, making their learning visible and accessible to an authentic audience. (note; blogging is not and never intended to be the only way ākonga express and engage in sharing).

Ubiquity, Agency, Connectedness, and Visibility; central tenets to the Manaiakalani approach, are significantly supported by student blogging:

• Ubiquity: allowing learning and sharing to happen anywhere, anytime, extending the learning environment beyond the classroom. Students can access and update their blogs from any internet-driven device, making learning a continuous process.

• Agency: Empowering  students, by giving them ownership over their learning; a platform to express their ideas and perspectives. They can make choices about what to write, how to present it, and how to interact with their audience, encouraging independence and self-direction.

• Connectedness: Connecting students with their peers, kaiako, whānau and potentially a global audience. This provides a genuine purpose for their writing and opens up opportunities for collaboration, feedback, and exposure to other’s points of view.

• Visibility: This is one of the most significant impacts of blogging. Students' progress, understanding, and creativity are made evident through their blog posts. It allows kaiako, whānau, and the community to see and support their learning journey. Transparency also encourages student reflection on their own learning process.

In conclusion, encouraging students to blog offers a wide array of educational benefits, as researched and proven by both Woolf Fisher and in turn the Manaiakalani research team over the past two decades; from improved literacy and critical thinking, to enhanced digital skills and self-confidence. Because it is embedded within the forward-thinking pedagogy of Manaiakalani, championing learning, creation, and sharing in a connected and visible environment, blogging becomes an even more potent tool for empowering students and accelerating their achievement in a setting where we know, with our own kāhui ako data, they oftentimes (but absolutely not exclusively) begin with a deficit of learning of between 18 months and three years.

PLD with John Parsons

Duty of care needs to be around yourself before you can look after anyone else.

Schools are left responsible for too much. We are not responsible for bad parenting. The parent that allows the 11 year old to have a facebook account, by suggesting/allowing they change their year of birth instantly is impacting that child’s sense of identity. The date of their birth. They need to own that. One little white lie tells that kid it is ok to lie if it is an online lie, creating a division between cyber and real world, when really there isn't one. You are ‘you’ online and in real life. When you start allowing, or even encouraging your tamariki to mess with that, you are in effect colluding to create that division.

There should be no need for cyber safety. It is safety. There should be no need for a ‘digital citizen’, you are just you. Trying to make the internet into an abstract world is confusing and unnecessary, it is a part of the world.

Questioning kids -  never ask questions that give the information - i.e. ‘was it alcohol?” -  “what was it?” is better.

Always report concerns to the ‘leads’ - kg and wk

Rule of optimism - don’t go with ‘but they are a nice person’ date and record every concern you ever have. A nice person can still be a predator/offender. What if you are right on your first instinct? Better to be wrong and err on the side of caution. Allowing the rule of optimism allows more harm to be done.

Don't make assumptions about what has happened to the child, just record.

Act without delay, to report. Encourage staff to trust gut feelings.

Make sure you know NAG 5 - safe physical and emotional environment for staff and students

What is our child protection policy? Find out and know it. Don’t leave it to be someone else's problem.

Four behaviours that are not a part of a teachers role:

• Creating social network connections that are not driven by school and educational needs with students - keep your boundaries up. Imbalance of power. Which does not cease until they mature
• Teachers who like to give gifts to students that are unknown by management. Even a pair of shoes. Everything must go through ‘the school’.
• Teachers who instill themselves into the whole family and become the go to person for the whole family. Ego based and unsafe. Use the systems in place with the school. Don't take things on board without being a part of your own systems. EVERYTHING goes through the leads of the school. Bigger systems cannot be followed if you take these things out of the system by siloing yourself. You don't have the skillset and you will be drawn into the drama of the situation and will fail to meet the needs of the student
• Teachers that hug students - confuses the boundaries for every other teacher with those students and it is not collegial. Its meeting the needs in us, not the needs of the students. Gotta be sensible about it, sometimes you cannot avoid a situation!

Don't let your kids use the school laptop. Don't let anyone at home use your laptop

Password protect your laptop when it is unattended even momentarily.

Purge your phone of images of students every two weeks, don't leave them on your personal device. Get them onto the school network where they belong. If you lose your device and it is found and/or hacked, it could give the community an unbalanced view of your professionalism which is not what you want.

LCS Quick responses to online questions

Today's staff meeting gave us 15 minutes of time to answer questions around LCS and sites, blogs, hapara and apps/extensions...

If there are more, let us know and we will add them on.

The Development of a Collaborative PBL environment in Visual Arts reflective documentation part one

Collaboration is about doing stuff together. A partnership. It is an expectation that students will work this way in PBL environments and likewise staff will have to also.

We have been working on how we manage our senior courses. For the last two years, instead of Level one Art, Level 2/3 Painting, level 2/3 Design and level 2/3 Photography, I asked if we could change things up. We always bang students in the back of level 2/3 Design when they cannot fit into level one Art. Likewise, designers end up in Painting classes when they cannot fit in Design. It's considered a nuisance, something in Art departments that we are meant to fight against as it hampers the growth, the validity, realness, ultimate truth that our course is far-far superior than our senior managers see our courses as, and our ...egos I think if we are honest.

2015 numbers rolled in, as they always do around October. We had 39 students listed for Year 11 Art. We were asked to cull at least 10 of those. 10 is not such an accidental 'I had no other option' number sitting there. Whereas in Photography we had 15 students. Enough for a legitimate class. Likewise in Paint and Design. Really good numbers.

I knew full well that there was an Art teaching colleague at another school on the west coast 'doing it tough' in the opinion of some of the bigger school Art depts here in chch. She had only one senior Art class, one of her students had down's syndrome and she had written up what she was doing for her students for TKI as a planning resource for smaller departments. It was all about going with the mixed discipline/level approach and embracing it, leaving things open for students to come back and complete level one over two years and it all focused on concept as the driver, over a whole class approach.

Little nagging thought in my head: We always taught our level 2/3 students from that position anyway. Why would it be different for level one?

When we went to Tamaki College for Manaiakalani professional development, we saw this cool thing in English where they didn't teach academic, vocational and communication English from level one upwards. They took the labels of smartness/dumbness away and had theme based classes. What do you really care about? What makes you think, be passionate, have a voice? That is how you chose your English class. That is also where you start an Art concept from. Then I have that lightbulb moment, followed by that slight guilt moment of how I may have been disadvantaging students for a very long time, culminating in the 'I'm changing the world' moment. In my Art room at least.

So again, why was I making it so different in Level one? Because the standards don't quite align to level 2 and 3. So I sorta used that as a justification. But that doesn't actually matter, there are always ways around things.

I was making it different because it was easier than altering my mind set, I still had that fear that I was going to upset traditionalists in my field (they don't even know my name, so I'm not sure why I cared) and if I am honest there is still the 'You're from Hornby? Oh...' thing going on for me. I don't want to make things too different here at Hornby and therefore have our students not able to do as well as 'theirs'... forgetting the fact that the will, drive and passion of the student is what will eventually cause success, not whether I cared about whether they were going to be the kid in the second-hand jumper getting teased about hand-me-downs.

Yes, content, technique, skills are all really important, but first and foremost is the 'catch'. Fostering will, determination and passion for learning something is what we must do first. And sometimes the only thing we may end up doing. But eventually that will come back in on that same person and the light will be re-ignited.

My proposal was to intentionally mix the 4 lines of Art up into being a mish mash of everything and then going for it.

That year had been a mare for Cindy with 5 level one Art students sitting in the back of her level 2/3 Design class. The designers did well - 100% pass rate in the external in the end. The year 11 students all passed too, but they were all hard on her - 'you only care about the designers' followed by 'why do you spend time with the babies? WE are more important!' from the designers.  There was a total non acceptance and division between the two groups. But there was this really interesting student in the class who had come to us from alternative education. He only did level one. He struggled in a lot of relationships with a lot of teachers and only met his dad that year. He had moved from the North Island and everything was just weird here. Wickedly talented, creative and interesting, when he was on top of things personally, not so much of any of those when things were going wrong personally. He worked in the same kind of way as you would at Art school. Independently and interdependently. Coming up with new trains of thought, discussing these out loud with others, bouncing ideas back and forth and taking everyone's opinions really seriously and always, in his own little space of what did look like a fine arts studio in the end, down the back. He worked like a senior painter. Cindy just had to keep up with him to make sure he as ticking the boxes for the internal standards along the way as well.

Level one pass rate external folio for 2016 - 92%

This bit of data is important because of the school results for level one in 2016 as well as the fact that level one students do not understand how they get assessed in Visual Arts at this level. It is the second year we had run our programme this way. 2015 was not shabby either at around (don't quote me) 85%. We do not have time to make that clear and real in junior Art. 2 hours a week for half a year does not allow us to capture their passion for Art as well as school them all on entering into NCEA as competitive, geared up, understanding how they are likely to do in NCEA, machines. Its enough to ascertain that they have readily developed skills that stand them in good stead already and passion.

What it looks like:

We keep lines 1, 2, 3 and 4 of our 6-line patterned timetable open for Art at all three levels. Students are well-schooled into understanding that they are responsible for their concept, and have mostly begun developing this in year 10 if they are coming into Year 11 Art. Anyone who wants to come into year 11 without year 10 Art gets a sit down chat with me about what I expect with their own direction.

The first two weeks of the new year are spent on brainstorming what students care about, reading through books on art and learning about artists that catch their interest. Discussions with the teacher and with each others (levels 2 and 3 help a lot in guidance here) help formulate the direction a student wants to take. We discuss, question, and develop a plan.

We use our google site to unite them as a class with a tracking sheet for each class loaded onto the page for each class. For each course, there is a course outline digitally presented with a hyperlink to the folder containing the assessment schedules for each standard they can earn. It is up to the student to make sure they are ticking things off...We also use teaching blogs to then differentiate subject and level specific resources, help and guidance. But most is on a more individual level. All students are using a blog to document their work. Some are still reluctant, but the more it comes through the junior school, the less foreign it is to them. Their use of a blog allows us as teachers to pursue their progress beyond a class time. I'm marking and giving formative feedback essentially, just online.

We frequently demand that students prepare a timetable of their week for us on the whiteboard at the start of the week. Telling us what they are doing, not the other way round.

In that, there must be outcomes - a piece of work for 1.2, a research paragraph for Art History, a blog post. If their outcomes are unreasonable, they rewrite them and take some responsibility. If they don't meet them they have to replan their next week to sort it out. It is their credits in the end. if we do this right, they should care more about them.

Because we approach our classes willingly as mixed level and discipline, it alters our mindset about how we feel about teaching them and how we approach it. It is a placebo effect.

The flaws/areas to work on:

- Communication between the two Art teachers - we both have different skill sets that we could be using together more for the benefit of the students.

- This model is threatening to some people. Some students do want to be told what to do. We try and adjust approaches for them, but that is quite a lot of work in this environment.

- Art History standards are way better for research skills in Art than any of the research standards in practical art. We need to offer these more at levels 2 and 3, not just level 1. That does lend to addressing literacy standards more for us too.

- Communication with the deans as to how full the lines are - one ended up with 37, another with 33, one with 24 and one with 11 at the start of this year. That needed to be addressed.

Blogging; why, what, how (Sinek)

The above is the Hornby High staff feedback on why Blogger helps our students learn, followed by the presentation on how are students are blogging, and developing our next steps into 'what' we will be doing to not only teach them this way, but in fact just keep up with them.

Breakdown of Scholarship Begins...

Scholarship resources for Hornby High School starting here.

Late last year, I overheard a conversation between two teachers about how we 'need' a separate class for scholarship potential students at year 13. According to the vocal one of the two, this class would be about 5 students. The school's Senior Leadership Team needed to prioritise it if they really care about students succeeding here and yes that would mean academic casualties, like the loss of some subjects or pass rates to achieve it. It was seen by one of the two as the only feasible way to break the spell and get those elusive scholarship grades. The other stayed very quiet.

This idea that you have to be in the right class is no different to having to be in the right school, live in the right area, come from the right two-parent family with the right moderate to good income, driving the right car... Nothing of it sits well with me. I rage inside at the thought of it. I want Cinderella to go to the ball, Dorothy to find home and Snow white and Sleeping Beauty to get themselves up out of bed.

We already had our one student sitting her scholarship and we knew she was well on track for the excellence required to be able to be considered for it. Not once did I consider that anyone else had, or should have to miss out on their place in the class because of her. Or, in order for her to get there that they should go. But that was definitely my moment of 'we are going to make this real here'.

So we are paving that yellow brick road, making it real and breaking the spell. The significant things I have found are that the way it is assessed is not terribly similar to the boards or the other standards.

There are three categories that they assess by and the students can achieve three different grades of not achieved. Each category is marked out of 8. 24 marks in total are attainable. It's complexity can be very daunting when resilience is a key component requiring significant scaffolding. The link above is the document for assessment. It is posted on our google site and students are able to find it and comment on it if they wish. I would be encouraging students to use this to seek clarification if they need it.

The resources online are limited in comparison to other standards. Not many schools like sharing! Though one has been very generous in his Teaching Inquiry on scholarship and his resourcing. Tim Thatcher at it has certainly made it all very much clearer in how this could be handled within an average class. I see from his inquiry, that total integration within a classroom is preferable to having separate classes or sessions outside of class devoted to scholarship. That the uptake for those dwindled as the year carried on.

What I have achieved so far:
- We have one certainty for scholarship in both Design and Paint (willingness that is, though exceptional talent too) for 2017
- There are students in our current 2018 year 13 cohort who need to be considering this exam also, but there are also a lot of pressures on high school students. How far do we go in preparing students for this? Or is that no better than the 'right' class, right school scenario?
- Breaking down scholarship to be less complex and visible to the students on the main google site for Art at HHS.

Still working on:
- Having some kind of calendar for the 8 pages (which I would want to say were 12 so that students could edit them down to the best 8)
- Accessing a range of schools resources, including sharing what I have done without feeling like a poor cousin. Walk the talk. Sigh.
- Using Art History standards to better allow for that research component. It is really successful in level one so far this year... I have an unpublished blog post about that come to think of it...
- Using Classroom, Hapara, blogging or something to work the critiques through with the individuals as they go along for the scholarship pages. Will discuss with colleagues.
- Making a 24 hour day into a 30 hour one.

2017 Inquiry

Our Inquiry for Visual Arts this year is a joint one, focussing on how best to spread the load of specialty skills across as many senior students as possible.

Can Teacher Collaboration Improve Student Achievement in Senior Art Classes?

Our progress so far has been to set up the google sheets to track at least the first 6 weeks of each class in the senior school for Art. I would expect these to develop and grow based on how we use them.

There is the intention that these are used to make sure no student is left behind in being given feedback and kept up to speed.

We have also organised to split up the line 3 and 4 classes and share the teaching across those lines. We do have differing styles and expectations so it may take a little time to adjust to this. however, if students are truly working to their own goals and are there for the right reasons, this should come together.

At this point in time we have one over subscribed class of 37, one of 33, one of 13 and one of 22. Because we chose to mix our levels, there was a lack of communication between the three levels in general about numbers, so this is an issue that needs clarifying.

By the end of 2017, I want to be able to say we gave every senior student the best possible chance with teacher expertise available to direct their own learning. I want every student to be able to direct their own learning, rather than lean on the teacher or dismiss their own chances because the right teacher is not there.

Genius Hour

Collaboration in PLD at work. Shared google doc with notes a few staff took simultaneously during our PD with Caroline From Christ's College on how she runs Genius Hour. Awesome session;
Contributions from:
Joanne Clark
Ben Carter
Sarah Richardson
Rowena Clemence

Hornby High School Kapahaka

"It's just an excuse to get out of class..."

Not a student, but a former teacher. The prospect of students coming out of a timetabled class for Kapahaka practice.

"I don't think it is fair that they miss one of our classes and we lose that time, they are usually the most behind"

It is not the most accurate quote, but it is a sentiment expressed often when, as a dean a few years ago, I was the space between the rock and the hard place in soothing fears and hurts over the school attempting to get some traction in setting up Kapahaka as a culture here. Unsuccessfully, I might add. In both respects.

The key word here being 'they'.  Us and them, you and me, management vs school vs students vs Māori students. When fear is a factor, the 'other' becomes a significant stumbling block, ignorance outweighs compassion and common sense. All we end up seeing and being, is a part of a divisive and negative culture.

So I joined the Kapahaka practice. It is the most surreal thing to watch students who in the grounds, and in some classes, are at times sorta, kinda wicked hard work, not always particularly open to you as a teacher, be the star of the show. Take control Ms Tongotongo and direct your senior girls to stand with, and help teach the new girls (and women teachers), dictate the volume output with your command and your own voice, amp it up, control the 'pause', teach 15 new students the first section of the school haka in 7 minutes, thank you very much.

Back inside the auditorium we all go, back with the boys, standing together. A male and a female lead again control the volume, determine the pace, and within 15 minutes we all know those first few lines well and the roof is being raised off, like a lid of a soda bottle shaken up by the pressure of our voices. We went from 40% to 110% input in stages, as directed and maintained by our student leaders.

There are benefits to all staff being in this room at this moment. We see confidence where we didn't know it existed, a sense of togetherness demonstrated by the students, the collective consciousness as a real thing. Manaakitanga, Kawanatanga even, there as real tangible elements. Taking this and translating it into the classroom means more than just being there at the practice as a teacher. I want to explore this more, I'm hoping that some of what we do is already doing this. At the end of the year, I want to compare how my new senior class structure compares to this style of education and whether results have in fact been affected, or even whether I care about those results or something more.

google drawing card for analysis and why it didnt work

Language. If you don't have it, you can't apply it. Interestingly, as I explained the concepts, it clicked into place, but I still had to keep doing this and in the ned, I really just made  a bunch of kids "repeat after me..."

What I have I learned?
1) they are clever enough there is not deficit with their intellect.
2) It doesn't matter if you are clever, if no one has exposed you to the language to express it
3) All of this correlates to our data on writing.

Shikobi tells me it was alright, but why were my words so confusing?













Next steps:
Go back to language base, and develop it based on breaking down and analysing the curriculum levels. This will be an interesting exercise as I don't think it has been done. If so, there are no easily available resources on it. How would a general teacher expected to cover all subjects at junior levels be expected to manage this? Not cool, TKI!

I used to use flash card, which worked (i love organising things by colour) but were easily lost, not something they could take home and laborious to make a student copy for, let along keep up on maintaining full sets int eh right colours. How to do this digitally.

Also, I want to use a small group of kids that I can take out of a class and work with as opposed to relying on my own art time.

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.

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.

Assemblage - Manaakitanga; Collaborative Consideration, Collective Control.

These photos are the result of students working on the same drawing at different times and adding their own ideas to them. We had five proposals as a base. Each of the three classes worked on these equally. Time limits in class were set and students had to really think about how they perceived shelter from a spiritual, emotional, as well as physical sense.

 

Students voted for their favourite drawing and had to justify why they made that choice and consider how they would eventually make the structure. The first and largest image above is their choice - number 4. It wasn't mine and I struggled with not putting  a case forward for one I liked personally! That would have undermined the intention of it being their collaboration. It was their decision and they felt that 4 reflected their understanding and intention in discussing shelter. The difficult aspect of this is that this is not a three-dimensional drawing. It is a flat design, with texture, space and form that needs to be made three-dimensionally. In studying Anthony Caro, there is a realisation that he is not just a sculptor, but he is also a proficient abstract painter. And in fact, he is often really just painting with metal and space. Unlike Aycock, the student's other Artist model to consider in assemblage practice, he does not however, plan anything, or draw anything of his sculpted pieces. He only makes from the materials he has and the idea he has, often based on lengthy discussion and debate with his Artist wife. I have not got her name on hand. 

From there students have been working on creating it our assemblage. The first part of this, was how do we make a floor happen?  Anisha suggested her dad may be able to give us some old wooden palettes. Framing up a floor with 2 x 4, would have been a long, technical process and would have used a lot more material than we had budgeted for. So we asked Anisha if he would let us have some and the next day he delivered us 6 palettes, that our photography class nailed together as a floor. I was a little stunned when he drove up with these. Brilliant community here at Hornby. He also provided some nails from an old nail gun, but when you use those without a nail gun, someone has to sit there and break the wire that bonds them all together like machine-gun bullets... sore, sore fingers.

 

 

 
 

  Nikita and Bevan to the left, and additionally Shavaughnm Mich and Brianna below in the shortest video ever below (I  need a new phone...)

  The painters who werent too shy to be photographed; Niomi (Photographer), Estelle, Ana and    Quaid.

So who did what; The painting class took on the making of the uprights for the frame. The designers and then the painters took it on from there. Due to time constrictions across term one, we have struggled to finish what we have started, but the plans seem to be progressing as to how we manage the roof. Three v-shapes that likely have a proper building name, have been made by students with left over bits from a children's swing, one made solely by Danica, which was pretty impressive. There has not been one of our current students, who has not involved themselves in some way. We do not have real building knowledge here, we are in fact making what we have work, to be what we need visually. Mr Rees and Mr Rozka have been really helpful when we come over to them asking for all sorts of their gear and advice on how to do things that we had not even considered.

Our plan from here is to glue and drill screws in for the roof, as this seems sturdier and that is what we need as we go upwards. We have worked hard to make plaited flax ropes for bindings around corners and tying things on or down as we need to, but we need a lot more. Matua Mike Murray was brilliant in showing our design class how to carefully and respectfully cut the flax for this, with a Karakia and only the grandparent leaves. The cross feature and the wire features are still needed. Sheets for walls seems to be popular as we can use a staple gun to get them up and they will provide good imagery to draw, paint and photograph for folios, which is half the purpose of this structure; that it becomes their visual grounding, starting point and muse for the rest of the year. So, we have to re-set deadlines as we lost more class time than we initially anticipated and certain tasks too longer than we wanted as well.

 

  Miss Botherway, Mrs Cairns, Logan                                                               and Jacob

Additonally, Teresa, Shavaughn and Anisha pictured here with the boys (Design class).

There are numbers of incidents of working together and being collaborative, and it is often on the spur of the moment that it happens. That sense of helping each other out has been increasing and is happening in a natural way often. However, there are times when the teacher still has to get things started before it happens. I wonder if this is a confidence thing? But still not happening is the students owning it and working on it during their own time. There have been some small incidents of it happening with the small photography class, but it was short lived, with interruptions in learning slowing this down. So there is not really the sense of collective control that we wanted. Time and personalities across three classes have disrupted this. Students are working on how they make this structure meaningful in their folio work for the remainder of the year and already there are the calls to not start certain aspects of their personal practical work until 'we finish it'.

In starting this assemblage standard, to cover Manaakitanga as one of our cultural conventions, I find that other aspects of what has now been defined as our 6 successful teacher criteria (but for me was initially relative to how the Treaty of Waitangi is, or is not validated in teaching inquiry) are necessary in making this a success. Kotahitanga is most specifically what I am considering now. I have already begun using it as a learning outcome for term two of the year 10 programme, now I see that it is a natural progression for this programme also - creating unity, while celebrating individuality - this is my understanding of Kotahitanga based on discussions with our HOD Te Reo Māori, Matua Corey Kamariera. I need to think this out much further, as to how to apply it here meaningfully. I need to think about a lot of things further, as the two main concepts in studying Caro and Aycock need to be something students draw from during the course of their work this year too. I'm making a list.

In terms of completion of this assemblage, we have revised our expectations and are working towards completion, but with student collective control, not teacher-run timetabling and deadlining. Cindy and I are very proud of what our classes have achieved so far, but well aware of the work required still...