& Literacy abled in Technology
This was the title of a recent cluster meeting that was run in Auckland. Dr Irene Anderson (our Literacy specialist and a lead facilitator working at the University of Auckland) and I worked on putting together a workshop to help technology teachers understand the complex nature of Literacy in the subject area of technology. For this post I am going to share the content that we covered with the hope that it may be of interest to other teachers out there.
It is important to realise that both of these are important and both are quite different in the context of technology education.
being technology literate is more about the ability to understand and succeed within the subject, where as being literate in reading and writing enables students to be able to access success. The three biggest barriers that I have come across in the schools that I work in are:
In reflecting on the barriers we decided to split the session into three sub parts looking at Vocab, Reading comprehensions and Writing Frameworks.
Initially on entering the room we gave teachers either a word or a definition of subject specific terminology, asked them to find their partners and quickly brainstorm an elevator statement that they could use to describe their subject to a layperson. This is a technique you could use within the classroom to unpack words that students need to understand.
We then looked at two Digital tools that could be used to support Vocab building. The first was to use a QR code that can be scanned by students on their SMART device that then links to and opens a PADLET page, through which all students can type a response to a question or in this case I wanted the teachers to post a descriptive word that unpacks the picture. The show was used as a visual prompt and the ability to post words or comments around the prompt extends vocab that is specific to the context that we are looking at.
I have talked about the second tool in my last blog on Augmented Reality. Using a SMART device to scan a poster in the room that links to a video explanation is also a good way to enable students to reflect on taught knowledge if they were not sure or had forgotten the meaning. I can see the potential for students to prepare their own AR posters for the classroom or even as part of their design portfolios.
We introduced the idea that reading subject related stories, magazines, blog etc added to the students 'Kete' of experiences that could be drawn on, reflected on and discussed within their portfolios towards achievement standards. However, sometimes this is a hard task as the students can find the content difficult to unpack and make meaning of. For this strategy we used a story from a 2014 issue of the 'Connected series' from literacy online.
The story called "Black is Back" discusses the dying process used to treat organic substances used in the traditional process of creating the 'Piu Piu"(Dancing Skirt).
This strategy was used to check meaning and summarise the content in a succinct way. Three different scenario's were given and students through collaboration had to choose the description that most matched the meaning.
Moving onto the last section:
I thought it was important to focus the writing section on the ultimate goal, which is to support students to successfully achieve in the external achievement standards. I am specifically talking about the generic standards at each level that require students to write reports of their technological experiences that they have undertaken throughout the year of learning in a way that addresses the question or topic. I think it is fair to say that the criteria for achieved falls directly to students being able to DESCRIBE, for Merit they need to EXPLAIN and for excellence they need to JUSTIFY the processes, decisions and thinking that has underpinned their experiences.
My recommendation is to use the above tool (or one similar) to unpack the standard before you design the tasks for learning. By unpacking in such a way it becomes very explicit for teachers to design learning experiences that hit the desired outcomes or learning objectives.
In terms of writing support a writing framework is a good tool to brainstorm and collate evidence in a way that enables the students to see the correlation between their thinking, their project and how to show this for the external examiner.
Please note: that the panel leaders reports in recent years have
suggested that using a template such as the above and submitting as part
of the external report can limit the success of the students
achievement. This suggests that the markers require more depth and breadth in the students' explanations. This sedgeways beautifully into the last strategy that we discussed which was on the importance of using transition or linking words. In the example used below you can see the direct link to Point: Describe, Explain: Explain and Extend:Justify. The template also gives examples of how linking words can be used to show the difference between these three.
Ka kite Ano
Nicole
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