Writing Big Ideas in planning units of work Incorporating LCS and SOLO

Embedding stuff that we want to use because we know it makes pedagogical sense, is easily said, but how do we do it cohesively?

1) Present a format that all departments can easily use to write units of work and/or schemes for the year in a predefined course.

2) Present a way of thinking and writing 'Big ideas' and then 'specific learning outcomes', followed by essential questions and a success criteria within, that allows teachers to easily digest and re-invent their own content and teaching methods as embedded within your chosen pedagogies.

How do we write nice clear Big Ideas for our students? When we break it up it's your overall Learning Outcome, the one that holds it all together and directs your 'why' (Sinek). It's 1) a noun or thing, 2) a measurement system like blooms (but why not SOLO? - http://pamhook.com/), 3) a verb that makes the noun or thing observable and therefore measurable and 4) any additional criteria that can be added to show the success for the student. I initially pulled something similar to this out of my very, very old lesson and unit planning booklet from 1999 at Christchurch College of Education, but found it more carefully explained and elaborated upon here: https://teachonline.asu.edu/2012/07/writing-measurable-learning-objectives/ 

From there, explicitly identifying LCS within the learning sequence in reference to SOLO could, in fact, come together nicely for us all.

If I play with this for myself, I often rely on "the role of the artist in understanding Pasifika patterns as a narrative..." as it feels broad enough to cover everything! But it is not very detail orientated, nor does it reference any pedagogy we are currently trying to use. If I apply this model it looks more like:

With SOLO referenced as a measurement:
The role of the Artist in using and extending a narrative with Samoan patterns in planning a painting.

With LCS referenced, specifically C:
The role of the artist in creating and extending a narrative with Samoan patterns in planning a painting

with LCS referenced, specifically L and C:
The role of the artist in activating your own understanding in creating and extending a narrative for the purposes of planning a painting using traditional Samoan patterns with a narrative

With reference to LCS:
The role of the artist; activating your own understanding of Samoan patterns in creating and extending a narrative through planning a painting for the purposes of exhibiting and explaining your story to others.

The role of the artist; - SOLO steps 1 and 2 Pre-structural and uni-structural
activating your own understanding of Samoan patterns  SOLO step 3- multi-structural
narrative through planning a painting  SOLO step 4 relational
understanding extending, Exhibiting and Explaining SOLO step 5 extend ideas

Activating - Learn

Creating, Understanding,  Extending, Through planning a painting - Create
Exhibiting and Explaining - Share new understandings

The role of the artist; activating your own understanding of Samoan patterns in creating and extending a narrative through planning a painting for the purposes of exhibiting and explaining your story to others.

From here devising your success criteria, or specific learning outcomes, flow forward nicely. the wording needs attention, but the idea of how I get there appears to work and is there. 

Reflecting on PBL Developments with Business & Enterprise Kete in Year 9.

How have things gone in year 9 Art this year so far? Probably ok, but man it was disjointed. I have finished with Teaching 9 TN and Cindy has finished up teaching 9 Ca. We take on 9 mn and 9 hy for terms three and four.

We finished the term with the Business and Enterprise kete for years' 7 - 9 and a market day on the netball courts. It was overwhelmingly successful, with most student business making a profit over a loss, and all student businesses having learnt some lessons about the harshness that can be business.

We are in a world where our young people can seem so entitled - how do you get the latest iphone worth more than a good second hand car, without actually paying for it upfront? Pretty easily it seems - and the pressure is on for parents to provide their children with these things because of that sickening feeling that they will be the odd ones out, the rejected child and less likely to survive the hostility that can be adolesence.

From within this very world, Janine Morrell-Gunn from Whitebait Productions and Matt Brown from 'My Father's Barber' lectured every single Year 9 on how realistically hard, full of failure and fear it was to get a business up and running.  There were still pockets of 'this is what I want to do, so you should want it and buy it because I said so'. That is entitlement, without actually putting the work in, knowing whether your market even exists, or if it is just a vanity project. BUT, these pockets were remarkably small. Most students put thought into their product, and went beyond this is what I want to do because I like it, into how will I encourage others to like it too, or should I consider something else instead of, or as well as? That is business. Know your market and work to that, not against it or ignorant of it. At the end of the day Art sells too and is just as marketable as any other product.

Back to my point. The disjointed nature of this was somewhat down to me. I wasn't sure how I fitted in with this and in fact I was disappointed that we didn't shut the whole curriculum down and whole heartedly attack it with our own expertise as leverage. So we did our thing for term one, then tried to teach around the kete in relation to business and enterprise.

However it wasn't just a 'me' problem, it is a 'new thing' problem, 'unfamiliarity' problem, 'time-based' problem, 'how does our hierarchy/systems work with this' problem too. There were meetings to try and keep things together. I'm not sure we were reporting back or updating progress from any of us in our 'siloes' that we are desperately trying to break down. We did our own thing because we hadn't resolved how we all fitted together. Room to breathe please. We were still doing the traditional job we have been employed by the school and MOE to do; subject specialist teachers. Gotta start somewhere though.

We were only teaching the Visual Arts aspect of this to two of the four Year 9 classes due to our timetable. There was clear crossover between DTE and Visual Arts, but the other two year 9 classes that we didn't teach, were not doing DTE this semester, only one of the two classes Visual Arts had, was currently doing DTE. More disjointedness.

For whatever reason DTE only gets one hour a week, but were trying to do the same thing in terms of advertising and visual language, but there was no room to breathe to even correlate that. I note that although jingles were written with groups through Music, no where were they able to use these to market their wares on the day of the market, adding to my sense of disjointedness between subject specialists and the process itself.

Planning in relation to how we may or may not fit in with the Arts kete (undecided from beyond me) for Visual Arts will take this stuff into account. As will an expectation that we are either in it full on or not at all and doing our own thing. In the mean time, until we are at a point where we can shut the curriculum down and go for it, we still have our traditional jobs to do, for us, teaching Visual Arts according to the curriculum and reporting back to whānau on the strands within that subject.

New PTC's in NZ Teaching; how I see the relationship to TAI and Appraisal

Simplified version of our RTC's now called PTC's. The language seems more modern and there is a clear, concise e-learning version of how they could be applied here too. The first thing I thought was 'great, my labels all need to be remade on my blog... thanks EDUCANZ', more work on top of TAI for appraisal, actually teaching my students, the leadership and pastoral roles I already hold and the new staff member we will have in the Art department next week (yay :-) ). But in reading them, the language is better, the concepts are modernised and there is the e-learning study that CORE ED have done here too. 

What I like:

• The overarching statements cover everything nicely and the criteria and indicators are nice clear guides:

Overarching statements

1. Teachers play a critical role in enabling the educational achievement of all ākonga/ learners 1.
2. The Treaty of Waitangi extends equal status and rights to Māori and Pākehā. This places a particular responsibility on all teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand to promote equitable learning outcomes.
3. In an increasingly multi-cultural Aotearoa New Zealand, teachers need to be aware of and respect the languages, heritages and cultures of all ākonga.
4. In Aotearoa New Zealand, the Code of Ethics / Ngā Tikanga Matatika commits certificated teachers to the highest standards of professional service in promoting the learning of those they teach.

• You can approach it from a place  like this blog, where you detail the why, how and what of what you are doing and detail that with evidence, labelling statements and/or criteria and/or indicators appropriately

What I don't like about it:

• Even though it says these are interdependent and overlapping, you could still turn it into a checklist for teachers to tick off. Defeating the purpose of them being interdependent and overlapping. 
• I don't see how a teacher can construct one single TAI that is used for appraisal purposes as well as meeting these all at once and I think it is worth debating whether we should be trying to do this.

What I find interesting:

• I'm just not convinced you need to apply one massive big TAI to the whole year to meet these, nor the old ones for that matter, and I recently had a discussion with a colleague about whether TAI should be used to demonstrate these over the course of a year long focus inquiry, or whether it should be a process that happens naturally and repeatedly because of your continual reflection on your own practise. I cannot remember who the colleague was or how the conversation came about, but my brain kept reverting back to 'but this is the direction the ministry and our school is wanting us to develop - TAI integrating with PTC's to test appraisal'. That is such a weak argument. It should not be why we do anything, because the ministry says so... (don't sack me).

So could I say no I'm not doing A TAI, to prove I meet these overarching statements, any of the criteria or key indicators, because I could probably prove every single one if I continue on like I am; posting up evidence of mini TAI's happening naturally, within the course of my teaching and leadership roles, and clearly identifying how they answer these a bit at a time. Could anyone at my school say 'you are doing that wrong, you are not competent'? Could I even be accused of failing to meet the first criterion? I wonder if your whole appraisal is based on a major TAI as we are being directed towards, we cannot manage this lofty goal?

The last time I applied for my registration, I sent the URL's for my teaching site and for this blog. All I was asked for that was extra, was a birth certificate from this millenium (why do you need to keep providing a birth certificate every three years?). Cool, much less work than jumping fences with unknown heights through the TAI system of appraisal I was initially involved in creating at my school (and I enjoyed the academic work of doing it too) .

In any case, my own TAI that I started 2017 is no longer relevant. However, several off-shoots of the TAI I started with SPARK - MIT have developed since then, that easily meet the PTC's.  The whole 'thing' has become so much bigger, but also so many more that are smaller, easier to document, more relevant to the on-ground job at hand and less 'constructed' to fit other peoples boxes, that I think we ought to be rethinking how we 'test' appraisal. One major TAI that has to be forced along and ignores the fact that TAI exists all over the place in all sorts of ways in your practice doesn't do it. But, it becomes a monstrosity or it becomes lip service. In my opinion. Having being trying to push myself through this exact concept for 2 years now. 

So for however long I can get away with it, I will not be doing a major TAI. That is my TAI. Can I document my natural processes as a teacher, leader and learner through the lens of TAI, as it happens, remain competent and still be steadily working towards our school vision of Learn, Create, Share; Actively involved learners? I would happily challenge any other professional or academic to prove that I do my students, colleagues and community a disservice by doing so.  I am also happy to be appraised separately. Any one can come in and see my teaching, go through our planning, collaboration, offer advice, make up check lists that address an appraisal of sorts. I just don't want us to be calling it a day after one major TAI for the year being constructed and isolated to do that for us. 

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.

Developing Scholarship as our new normal.

I keep threatening this idea that all of our senior students will complete scholarship pages as normal practice. The reality of making sense of this exam in Visual Arts is in fact, exhausting. At least I found it so.

For the second time in the time I have been at Hornby High School, we had a student submit a scholarship work book for painting. The work was beautiful, but the pages were regenerated based on work she had done to fit the exam. So she entered it blind.

The focus was on her completing the folio with an excellence (you cannot be considered for scholarship unless you first attain excellence in the field you are submitting for). And she did that. But missed out on the scholarship. The most beautiful Excellence board I have seen though maybe I am biased, as she was also one of the most beautiful people to know as well. 

Why are we doing this?

Three good reasons why;

1) If it is normal, it is achievable. High expectations allow for higher achievement, you get what you expect and that is in line with Carol C. Dweck's mindset theories too

2) Again being fed up with the idea that we can't because of the stigma of being in the wrong area of a not that big city anyway... my blood boils over that one. 

3) The tools we have with GaFE and digital learning, the support of Manaiakalani in developing resources, lends us to be able to support learners to achieve this exam with more surety. So why on earth wouldn't we? If we were encouraged to have low expectations of our learners and ourselves, I suppose we may not... that is to to be our pathway though. 

So the development of such a plan for our learners here begins. 

Steps in the process:

- Reaching out to other schools who already offer a scholarship programme without offering a scholarship class (I feel that defeats the whole purpose of what a scholarship is, though I do understand that many schools see this as a highly competitive thing that adds a special kudos to their wider community)

- Breaking down Scholarship into meaningful chunks of understanding and clearly relating them to how our students learn throughout the year, so they can be completed in real time alongside real work.

- Making sure all resources and supports are ubiquitous and accessible online

- Using SAMR appropriately to support online development. 

Now onto do the work. 

I'm starting with moving our site into the new google sites platform, within that, it may well just be easier to develop scholarship resources, as we are starting afresh somewhat. As e-learning is a role I already have, making the switch to the new platform is in my best interests.

"Write That Essay" PLD day notes

Our focus is writing and based on the Woolf Fisher data we received on Wednesday, That is pretty much what it should be.




There were a lot of useful tips and tricks that we can implement starting Monday, and we will. Blog posts are about to change for our senior students.

Google slide for developing a unit of work with the students

Working on systemising how we break down the units so that the students can relate it back to their analysis on google drawings of each strand based on examples of work.

The idea being that we create and discuss the unit and it is added to as students experiences and understanding unravels in that first lesson. Will be seeing how it goes this coming week.

Making the Language Real and Accessable

   

Talking myself around in circles. The plan here is to make something that students can use to create their own DLO's. This is why I haven't bothered with Quizlet or Kahoots. They are engaging, accessible, and relatively easy to use. However, I want the children to be able to make something that they can digitally keep and refer back to. Without the language. I have some hesitation is continuing to use google draw, I don't want to come out of this one trick pony. But I do see it suiting my needs here.

I envisage crating a bank of language that is specific to each curriculum level, each curriculum strand. Flash cards/definitions that can then be applied to one art image or piece of documentation in making art. Students can then have their image surrounded by 4 to 10 different card, different colours as strands never sit neatly as one task per strand.

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.

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.

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.

MIT Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher's Scholarship 2016

This is something I applied for in 2015 as something to address in imbalance that exists in getting talented, priority learner Art students through into NCEA with as much confidence in the written/analytical strands of the curriculum, as well as handling the visual/technique based strands.

I want to create an online exemplar forum of student work that is live and demonstrates the curriculum at the junior levels as low mid and high. we are moving to reporting to our community along these lines, as a lot of schools already do, and even using NCEA terminology of Achieved, Merit and Excellence within each level. Years' 9 and 10 are my target group at the moment.

Writing and literacy is a major focus for our school and this inquiry I have planned addresses that focus in Art as well as working at making digital learning opportunities ubiquitous and moving critique and self-assessment into the modification and redefinition phase of SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition)

Rough Breakdown Of the Visual Arts Curriculum:

PK - Practical knowledge - at ALL curriculum levels this is technique/technical based learning in Art
DI - Developing ideas - likewise all levels, it is about formulating ideas to make your own art works happen and showing thought in doing so.
UC - Understanding Context - that art works are viewed and/or made
CI - Communicating and interpreting about your own and other's art works

The top two do in fact require a very good level of literacy at all levels to generally excel at them, however, you can to a certain extent do really well without this, as thinking can be so very visual too. But I feel it hinders not having that literacy.

The bottom two strands are most easily assessable (but I wonder if that means not necessarily understandable) with good literacy.

The order I have listed these strands is how they were initially released when the Visual Arts curriculum was released in the year 2000. However, when it was revised in 2008, the order was changed to have UC, PK, DI and CI as the order. While that may seem like not terribly important, it was a way of trying to get teachers to focus on making sure students understood the context of what they were studying. Hence making the emphasis a little more important that the students have higher levels of literacy, in order to truly manage the higher levels of the curriculum (NCEA).

Each year, there are students in our classes who are highly skilled visually, but are sitting much lower than you would want, with literacy. It is at every level. There are students who despite this, have been known at achieve University Entrance level in their chosen field of Art and I could rattle off a few dozen names from memory (not doing that on the public web though!). Equally there are just as many who don't make that level and it often appears, or can be explained by literacy levels.

There has been a clearer distinction for me lately - students who have participated in critique, even with low literacy levels, manage to eventually get to the level required, even though their language skills were less evident. Though this is often at the expense of the teacher's time and other teaching opportunities. More frequently, we have good examples of student learning and end achievement in the senior levels from students who not only participated in the group critiques, but also blogged about their work, in their own language, were more likely to succeed. I am not giving numbers here. My numbers are too low to use as statistics with any real integrity. I had 1 photography student at level 3 in 2015. So that is 100% pass rate. Really, that is not a good way to report statistics. My 3 painters gave me stats of 66% merit endorsement, 33% achieved grades and in total, obviously 100% pass rate. So clearly, I am amazing. Or the numbers are just too low to read as statistics. Those stats also don't show the students I lose leading up to level 3, and those the school itself loses before I could even possibly get them into a level 3 class. Again, lies and statistics.

That throws up the other issue that I am using this to also track and hopefully positively impact retention into NCEA courses here at Hornby High School as well as provide a real resource that other teachers can key into, students can access ubiquitously and use at their own pace to measure, target and improve their own learning. They will also be able to take their own work and share it as a valid, real, teaching and learning resource.

Creating Agentic Learners

Agentic is a funny word that my husband tells me makes little sense. Agentic = agency = bad place to have to go to, someone there telling you off, making you beg, judging your values...a social welfare institution looking over your shoulder. It is generally a negative connotation.

I find this a funny word, but what it is meant to mean here is being the agents of your own destiny, being in control of your own learning. It is something that our school documents talk about a lot, in creating resilient learners. Resilience being one of our core values, CARR values.

It is really easy to fall into a trap of doing too much for you learners. When you see them struggling to even get some containers organised for taking paint home (one student so far out of 25 year 11's); my first thought is to go down to the warehouse and get some for them. It's only a few dollars, some students may not have a few dollars, I feel like I am letting them down not doing this. But then, is this a case of priorities and/or lack of lateral thought on how to solve the problem themselves. Do I set it up so that thought doesn't go into how to get around the problem, next time something is needed? Sometimes I think yes, sometimes no. I think it all depends on the context. But I am not buying those containers for my senior students! I do think it is not encouraging agency to just buy them.

This is my "hunch"; that I can increase the levels of agency in my senior students by expecting them to make some important decisions about their work and expecting them to find solutions that I do not provide for gear.

This is how I have been doing this so far: Year 11 - nothing about their folios is pre-formatted. While they have an overarching theme of Propaganda and world war two, they are expected to develop their own approach to it. Normally I would encourage this, but also have significant scaffolding to fall back on for students who were likely to struggle. The problem being, that capable students would also fall back on the scaffolding, as it was easier. So they are not extending themselves. Their work falls a little bit flat sometimes. So I have reversed that. Students are expected to develop their own way forward, and if I recognise the struggle, which I should with all the checks and balances in place, I work on scaffolding the work to the individual. This is not necessarily easy to do with a large class, and it more like the approach I take at Year 12, with smaller numbers.

Progress with this class so far is interesting. There are students who are doing really cool stuff; Liberty, Theresa, Madison, Shane, Taryn, Olivia, Tailah, Jahaana, Shaiana all showing a sense of control over their own ideas, telling me what they think their next step is, and why, with good back up. There are nine students also struggling. One is due to skills not being in balance with ideas. Four are because they speak little English, and struggle with following what is going on. The remaining four sit with lower literacy levels than you would want in Year 11.

A breakdown statistically:

• Students excelling - 9, 8 girls, 1 boy. 4 Maori students, 4 Pakeha
• Students struggling: 9, 4 girls, 4 boys, 2 Maori, 2 Asian, 1 Middle Eastern, 1 Pasifika, 1 Pakeha.
• In-between: 7, 6 girls, 1 boy, 1 Maori, 6 Pakeha.

What to do about ensuring full success: the next two weeks are about structuring and scaffolding work for those students who are in that bottom group. But, I feel like this has to be done in a way that allows for 'agency'. So that means framing up a direction that each student could take, but allowing for choice, and finality. e.g. 'Do two A3 paintings, that fit here, choose between these three themes, then design the top half of panel two based on what you think is the next step'. That, I have rattled off as an example of how I would potentially speak to one student in particular, who is in my head as a write.

Beyond that, I do not want to leave that top group alone, I want to push the extension required too. Critiques could be a way of doing this, which could encompass that in-between group, providing momentum and possible extension too.  Critiques in fact could be my inquiry focus for Year 11 in general. Critiques in groups, self-managed by the students, not me, as a means of extension and agency. My hunch again; that introducing critiques in small groups without teacher input, but with expert learners, could also encourage agency.

CORE ED Modern Pathways to raising Maori Achievement

Janelle Riki's Presentation

Our Professional Development today focussed on Maori Achievement and digitally connected kids.

While the URL above is a link to it, most of the presentation was Janelle's spoken words around it. This was a very concise definition of why we should be using MLE's, which is one of the strongest points I took from it. Janelle was a very analytical and well-spoken presenter.

Slide 8 "...to be modern, anything were designing or building must be conceived of and developed for what we know and understand 'just now', drawing on our lessons from the past, an d considering the demands of the future.."

Explaining that our 'modern' spaces are about recognising what we need now and catering for the future made this seem a whole lot less 'catchphrase-y', and more about being realistic with our design, rather than just trying to force the modern practices we are already likely to be using into boxes that were designed for modern practice 50 years ago.

I liked that she started with "don't throw the baby out with the bath water" and took the time to break down how Maori culture and education values went from a traditional village system to victorian education systems, without anything in-between leading them through to this, and that this is likely according to some researchers, to still be impacting on the current state of affairs. I have read other pieces of research along those lines in reference to a number of other issues Maori are faced with, so while not a surprise, Janelle was really concise and confident with the information. Her point being, what can we learn from traditional village education systems that did exist? That students were relationally connected with their "teachers", were being evaluated for their natural strengths and then encouraged to play to those for the betterment of their society. They didn't necessarily 'pass' and 'fail' at what they were being taught, they just tried again and figured out a better way each time. Survival depended on it and it was a system of education that was 'fit for purpose'.

I do continue to wonder why we insist on teaching exam skills, and putting students through these; it isn't real applied learning, it doesn't resonate with you in 15 years time as something that altered your life, because it doesn't allow for you to practice a new skill or break down new information in a way that you will use for real, over again, in real life situations. An exam is almost like bad reality tv, without the captive audience; placing the 'ordinary. And when only 9 % of our Level One students credits came from external exams, I do have to wonder why? Level Two was 14%, Level Three I believe was 8%.

In relation to yesterday's PD on Feedback I then have begun to consider this; It is really easy for most of us to say that internal achievement standards under NCEA are easier. I say it. However, they are all aligned now and technically are not at a lower standard. Our students achieve them more readily, because we are working on them relationally. We are allowing them time to digest through feedback, and following up with that feedback, on the information/skill/problem being assessed and really learn it. It is naturally discursive, unless you sit there and just hand them out a booklet to work through and do your best to ignore getting to know your kids. So are they easier, or are they a more realistic learning processes? In Art, they are smaller chunks of learning, but I don't see them as necessarily easier. I don't think I will call them so again. You get the chance to reinforce the reflection process in class, over and over again if need be. 28 times to create a habit. You can give students the opportunity to critique themselves and each other. An exam paper only gets returned if you ask for it, and you cannot necessarily decipher the why or why not for the outcome. Our folios get returned with no feedback as to why decisions were made, but we know they were present in their process. It gets treated like a big secret we can't know, in case it undermines the sanctity of the 'exam'.

So in relation to the topic at hand, raising Maori achievement, I am not sure where this leaves the New Zealand curriculum or our assessment.

Slide 18, Janelle points out what she believes our students will need to survive their career pathway. Within this she graciously allowed that creativity should have been there and will be next time. While it fits brilliantly with the front end of our curriculum, it doesn't sit nicely with how we end up shoveling our students through as much NCEA as possible and prepping them for exams, from which they then only get 9% of their credits.

Is what we are doing with how many assessments are handled 'fit for purpose' for where we want our students to be at as people when they finally leave? Is what i am doing in our Art department fit for purpose in the same way? I believe it is, but I also think I need to analyse it further to really know.