Thursday 15 December 2011

A plan is developing

We've spent much of today working through a week by week plan of what students will need to learn and accomplish to achieve the goal of producing a professional quality magazine. The following are a couple of observations about this process:
  • Thinking in week-long (rather than period-long) blocks of learning requires quite a change of mindset. Exactly how much can a group of 16 and 17 year-olds achieve in 20 hours? How long can they sustain their focus on a particular task? How much variety and self-direction will work well for them? I guess we'll find out next year if what we've planned was appropriate or not!
  • Most NCEA standards seem to be designed to assess small chunks of learning, rather than sustained blocks of it. We've allocated a whole range of standards to the initial tasks (developing briefs, presenting concepts, research, interviews), but it seems there are less opportunities to acknowledge the refinement and crafting of the students' articles and page designs. This does mean that by the time they are half way through the project the students should have more than half of their credits, which will be reassuring for those who want to measure such things.
More observations to come later.

2 comments:

  1. I'm enjoying reading this blog and seeing your thinking evolve - looking forward to seeing how things progress:-) It's an exciting challenge for 2012.

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  2. Thanks Karen. I'm currently at the stage of feeling like I've bitten off a pretty big challenge! Looking forward to getting into it properly when the students return though. Will definitely keep you updated.

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