Workhop15

During the term three holidays 48 teachers throughout the country came to Hobsonville Point Secondary School for a two day NZACDITT workshop. 

The workshop started with a look at Hobsonville Point Schools, it provide an opportunity to see what a ILE looks like. Then a quick introduction to Hobsonville Point School, The Learning Design model and Hobsonville Habits(dispositions) provided a backdrop to how the next two days were going to play.

The first workshop went through external achievement standards, with the teachers working in groups to pull apart the external achievement standard,work out what was being asked for, what were the requirements for an achieved, merit and excellence. Then using the markers report and teachers guide worked through the development of a collaborative non examination external report. 

The workshop invited one of the digital technologies NZQA moderators to provide an insight into what is evidence. Working out what is evidence for assessment purposes helped look at different ideas for teachers to do digital internal moderation, as well as what is evidence for digital technologies internal assessments. How can we get the writing down. The ideas and feedback provided some good discussion and a challenge for change.

The Ministry of Education then filled us in on the RAMP review and asked for ideas on what Teaching and Learning Guides could look like for Digital Technologies in the future.

Day two saw the challenge of writing internal assessments. Through the NZQA moderator and NZACDITT president saw examples of assessments, and going through the process of an internal moderation on the assessment task. Using the internal moderation checklist provided teachers an opportunity to collaborate and discuss ideas on why the task passed or failed. Developing internal assessments that meet the requirements of the standard and the Know your students helped teachers collaboratively develop internal assessment tasks that provide opportunities for students using authentic contexts. This was a well received workshop and one that could be run within regions by the conference delegates.

The post it note wall was then actioned, providing some interesting discussion about student numbers, developing assessments, authentic contexts, and making noise to name a few. Through this we also talked about how much feedback can you give for externals to students as a teacher. 

I must say being the workshop convenor and bringing this to the embers was a challenge for me, however having a growth mindset and using the tools that I have seen through other NZACDITT events and hearing the feedback from the delegates that came, I am heartened to have such wonderful teachers teaching the subject. The passion and experience that you brought to the workshop helped make it a success. The beginning teachers in the room were full of praise about the tables that they sat at and hearing first hand about some of the positives and negatives of the strands. They have walked away with a amazing amount of knowledge, and so have you.

Some of the information that went out around the conference, I have heard through emails and conversations on the day that these were some of the best dispositions and that other conferences could do well looking at how to implement similar dispositions.

This workshop is not a sit down and listen workshop. This is about what you put in, it is about resilience, purposeful, reflective and compassion. This mirrors the Hobsonville Point Secondary School Habits (Dispositions) and it is about practicing what one preaches.

Resilience, working with others to co-construct external and internal work and assessments.

Purposeful, staying on task working through with others in the development of a co-constructed external assessment that will be sent away to the NZQA official markers who will provide feedback in a new pilot developed in conjunction with NZQA and NZACDITT around external feedback in the externals.

Reflective, being reflective in the changing nature of students knowledge and skills. Developing ideas for new programmes of learning based on thework that you do in the sessions.

Compassion, working with others to develop new assessments and listening to what they have to say. Challenging when needed, to clarify, but not to judge.

This workshop is geared to be about working out the answers to your questions together rather than hoping for that silver bullet solution. Because there is no silver bullet solution.

Again, thank you for the fantastic two days. Keep the lanyard in sight and think about what you can do for your region.