Thank you Spark and MIT for this opportunity.
notes accompanying the slides:
Slide 1 - Tēnā Koutou Katoa
Ko Kaiterau tōku Māunga
Ko Waikōau tōku awa
No Kaikoura ahau
Ko Annette rāua ko Paul Bourke ōku mātua
Ko Rowena Clemence tōku ingoa
Slide 2 - He Kaiako Te Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka
Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.
Welcome to my presentation as a Visual Arts teacher at Hornby High School in Christchurch.
Slide 3 -
We have new tools requiring new pedagogy that allows learning to happen ubiquitously, rewindably.
Teachers dream of facilitating learning rather than ramming knowledge down throats to be regurgitated later.
We have an opportunity for self-efficacy.
Slide 4 - ‘Why’? Woolf Fisher data from 2016 highlights the problem we knew we already had with writing.
72% of our new entrants into year 7 are below or well below the national standards in writing.
The problem is not the ‘dumbness’ of our kids, as they are not.
Slide 5 - It is the skill-set to break up language and reapply it.
People with good writing skills are generally seen as more credible.
Are our students equitably empowered when they are constantly playing catch-up with national standards in writing?
Slide 6 - There are no ministry exemplars in Art for the junior levels.
Art teachers apparently ‘just know’.
Equal emphasis and weighting is on all four strands.
Two of these strands require written/vocabulary based understanding.
Slide 7 - So I’m look at Writing. Understanding key words so they can use them effectively.
Compare their work to what they understand of the curriculum, assess, plan their next steps.
How do we manage this ubiquitously? And in a way that supports learning beyond Art?
Slide 8 - If the students have the words, they control their learning.
When they don’t have the words, it’s easier to talk one on one and watch you understand (there is a certain amount of reading your reactions going on) natural intuition and intelligence.
Slide 9 - Every child I surveyed returned a low self-rating of curriculum level.
Most children surveyed demonstrated they didn’t understand that visual Arts had curriculum levels.
We are doing everything as a school to address this stuff.
Slide 10 - So much we get confused, and it all comes from the one place of wanting to do our very best for our students, to undo the deficit theorising, social expectations, social issues that affect their daily lives.
Slide 11 - I had to move from how I have always done stuff to making it ubiquitously accessible.
SAMR is clear measure for me to assess my own teaching methods against.
This was not an overnight success. It was a gradual realisation based on the pedagogy driving it.
Slide 12 - I tried this. Over-complicated, too many words, I am an experienced teacher, but I still do not know much about teaching at year 7 and 8.
Clearly.
I had a whole class complete these and basically i told them the answers as they went.
Slide 13 - These are matching exercises.
I broke those strands into keywords for level 3 of the NZC.
Then it became obvious that I could use it more than just as a substitute for flash cards.
A bank of learning cards could be created. With work on them.
Slide 14 - We have recently started to refer to these as ‘delete it’ exercises.
In modifying the task, google draw was a pretty simple tool.
I picked a year 7/8 class that I was only getting once a week, choosing to focus on understanding over doing.
Slide 15 - I figured I may as well see if I could extend their literacy over their practical skills in the time I had.
Initially we used smart share on Hapara to send these out and a whiteboard to organise who had done what...but the whiteboard was always erased next time, and it was messy.
Slide 16 - More modification was required
Drives were cluttered and students were not yet working on wholistic blogs.
Hapara WORKSPACE allows for a cleaner interface and embeddable in the google site for Art.
It changes this into something much more ubiquitous too.
Slide 17 - I can grade it and send the students feedback.
Students who have arrived late to the class can be included in all prior learning.
I can see when a student misunderstands their work, they can save their work as jpegs and upload them to their now functioning blogs.
Slide 18 - Beyond this, what is good and not so good, at each level?
Using google sheets, I have made self-assessment sheets; rather than students guessing what ‘good’ looks like.
I ‘know’ what it looks like without much ministry guidance, but still it needs to be carefully quantified.
Slide 19 - This is shared with all the students in their class.
They can only edit their named row.
Each row is locked down to only that student.
They can see each other’s assessments for their work, but they cannot change it. It is coded to achieved, merit, excellence.
Slide 20 - So what can my students do now that they couldn’t do before?
The students in this particular class can explain there are 4 strands, that they feel they are within level 3 because they can see it.
An autistic boy does his work at home away from class, and that is fine.
I can see it.
Slide 21 - This is where I want to take this next.
In doing this, I will be working alongside our local primary school and another, to determine how Visual Arts is handled within a teaching programme, at the same time using this as an opportunity to refine project based learning skills for my own use.
Christina Fortes, just for you.
