Skip to main content

Problems and solutions...




It's been awhile since my last post, and I think that it is due to a departure from Mantle as of late within class. We have been having some struggles with maintaining a MOTE approach with 60 students, and with 3 teachers who have never taught in a MOTE before. It has been a big learning curve for all of us.

The newest commission that the company received was to create bus stop posters from the Pasifika Komiti that were interactive, engaging and informative about 'Journey's to New Zealand'. The company underwent some professional development to help build their knowledge before creating the posters. In hindsight, I think that that the 'Professional Development' days that were set up to assist in the development of the posters were too teacher driven in terms of the content. There was no questioning of students in terms of what they already knew / wanted to know / questions they had for the development of their poster. I think that if we had have done that, their belief in the company would have continued (not that it's entirely gone, but there has been a separation from the company when it comes to approaching tasks). In future, while 'Professional Development' days answer the need for teaching content, we still need to keep in mind that the learner stays at the centre. They still need to drive the learning because of the framing that we have given the students.

While students have completed some well thought through posters that meet the requirements of the commission, the role of the company and students expertise within this have not been a focus. One way that I saw around this was to shift the perspective at the completion of the poster. We imagined that it was 6months later and the posters were up around Canterbury. We asked them to imagine that they were people at the bus stop engaging with the posters and create a short clip to show responses. After this activity, the students then posted a social media post, in role as a member of the company, responding to the public interacting with their work. This small exercise gave me back my hope. It showed that the belief in the company was still there and that they could see the connections between their task and the imagined world we had done this in.

We have created a powerpoint that documents the company journey as well, which has proven to be a good reminder of what we have achieved and decided as a company. It would be good to get ownership of this within the company staff, but how this looks, I'm just not sure...

I think as well, which is something we talk a lot about at a new school with an integrated curriculum - sometimes, when it gets hard, we go back to what we know. And it's about challenging ourselves for our learners. As we move into the next commission, it would be great to renew this connection with the company.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reflection on attempt number one

We have wrapped up our first attempt at Mantle of the Expert as connected teaching team. There have been successes, as well as some points of frustration and uncertainty. To summarize our MOTE; Hook: interned messes up, put the display put in order to send off Company Creation: created office space, wrote about our first day on the job, created artifacts of the company (logo, business cards, vehicle design, website) History of the Company: advertisements, interviews from our successful history  Mini commission: write lesson plans to accompany the display sent away Commission One: create a road show that explores continental drift. We trailed our ideas on local years 6-8 students and gained their feedback. We used this to do some data analysis.  Commission Two: Create a bus stop poster that is informative and interactive showing Polynesian Journey to NZ  Wrap up: imagine you are at the bus stop, what is your reaction to this poster. Write a short social media ...
3 comments
Read more

Creating the world

The history of our company was cemented with short films being made that Edna from Archives had found for us to watch. These short films included interviews with Ellen, a cooking show we once did and some meme's that our company created to connect with a younger audience. These have been referred to as we have moved forward this week. With 60 students, I was really worried about how we would build the office spaces and further develop belief in the world we are creating. Luckily, there was testing on for half the group in two blocks. So, for 45 minute blocks we could work with just 30 students on further building belief. This made this far more manageable and I'm not sure that this same approach would have worked with 60 students... We started with creating our building spaces. We took the floor plans for the office spaces and standing in a circle we placed them on the ground, unpacking them and placing them where we though they would be. It was something that all students...
Post a Comment
Read more

PROOF!

Term1, 2018 starts with a new Mantle of the Expert!  I am collaborating with a science teacher for this selected offered to Year 9 students called PROOF! This selected (option class) runs for one term with two sessions of 100x minutes per week. It is based around forensic science - something I know nothing about - and students will learn how to dust for fingerprints, analyse different fibers, analyse information and make conclusions about various crimes that are presented to them. The teacher I am working with experience MOTE last year when I was working on a connected class (check out my previous blogs for my reflections on that) and he is keen to try it again on a smaller scale and now that he has some understanding of the ways of working. In our first class, the students were met by the science teacher taking on a frozen effigy. He was sitting on a stool, with a box beside him (they could see a document with fingerprints on it), looking seriously at a piece of paper he was ...
Post a Comment
Read more