The Challenge: Providing our year 10's with quality learning.

In my last post, I described what I did to set up my year 10’s to achieve a 4 credit standard we are offering at level 1 Social Studies so that students will have credits on the board before the new changes occur in 2024.  This is blogpost is about setting up the student learning.

Choosing the right topic

It’s hard to try and think of a topic that would keep the kids focussed.  It’s term 4, a busy time of the year.  Kids and staff are under the pump and most are just hanging on for dear life.  I had to think about a major Social Action that students could see had an impact in the past and today.  I thought about the Schools strike 4 climate change march back in 2019, where some of our students had attended.  I thought about inviting some key speakers who went to try and put a face to the action.  But it didn’t seem the right topic that would hook our kids into.  Then I thought about the historical Springbok Tour of 1981.

I talked to the two History teachers in my department about choosing the Springbok tour 1981 and both suggested it was a good idea as we are in the middle of the Rugby World Cup at the moment.  It is also part of the Aotearoa Histories curriculum as one of the pivotal times in our history and needed to be taught.  I wondered if it was too old as a topic but as I started googling and looking at it in depth, I found the themes of racism and racial segregation so relevant for a focus today, I decided to go with that topic.

All paper, no devices

This one was hard to decide on but I decided that student's would only use their devices for research purposes.  I ordered 150 clearfiles and big boxed containers for the staff to put them in.  They will remain in class with the teacher to be distributed during each period so that we won't have any fluffing around with devices.  I invested in lots of pens and pencils that I will keep restocking and big white boxes for the teachers.

Clear timetable for the term

I set up a clear learning timetable and will go through it with each class so they can see the big picture.  On it, I put each of the key events that are coming up like exams, film festival, due dates for the assessment etc.  They will have a print copy and I will share a digital copy as well.

Setting High Expectations from the Start.

I expect some of the students will find it hard to settle at first but I focus on setting up the culture of learning by referring to the values first and foremost.  For example the first tutorial, I will focus on the RISE value of Success as being a partnership and that me and their teachers are willing to give them the best opportunity to succeed and they can meet us half way by coming to class on time, coming prepared with the right attitude for learning.  I will always always praise their potential.

I am hoping some of these strategies will work.  

The Challenge: Providing our year 10's with quality teaching.

In 2024, the new changes with NCEA Level 1 will need to be implemented as part of the Ministry’s curriculum refresh.  To help get our kids on the ‘board’, some of our core subjects such as English, Maths, Science and Social Studies decided to offer at least 4 credits to support our potential level ones who are at the moment in year 10.  In my department, we decided to offer 4 credits.

I had a look at potential standards we could offer and settled on the achievement standard 91041 ‘Describe a Social Justice and Human Rights Issue’ worth 4 credits.  I had taught this standard to my level 1’s early this year and most of them had achieved the standard.  I also felt that this one was the easiest of the standards in Social Studies to achieve especially with the limited time frame we had. 

I wanted to ensure that all year 10’s would have the same access to the learning that my year 11’s did so I went about setting out a plan.  I set a goal of trying to get the majority of year 10's who attend school regularly to achieve the 4 credits (I will formalise a goal after the initial learning sessions).

This blogpost is in two parts.  This part is about setting up the teaching, then next one is about setting up the learning.

Expert teaching about the standard:

As the only teacher of Senior Social Studies I figured that I could support the staff in my department by taking on the teaching  the teaching and learning of the subject by teaching the entire cohort what they need to know to achieve the standard.

I toyed with the idea of teaching all 180 in the auditorium at the same time, but the differences in timetable meant that I would be impeding on someone else’s classes so couldn't do it that way.  There are 6 year 10 classes and on a Monday, 5 of them have social studies, 2 sets of classes have them at the same time.  As I had hybrid seniors on a Monday, I decided I could try and teach the 5 classes as ‘tutorials’ on a Monday, to set them up for the learning (the 6th class was my own year 10 class that I would teach separately on a Tuesday).

5 of the 6 classes also had a double period during the week on a Wednesday or Thursday so I wanted to combine 2 classes on a Wednesday and 3 classes on a Thursday both in the library for the space and the sense of formality.  I called these ‘workshops’ as this is where the majority of the teaching and learning happens for the kids.

Structure of the tutorials:

1st one is setting the scene, basics of the context, basics of the standard, overview of the timetable, setting expectations of learning.  The rest of the tutorials will be looking at teacher feedback, understanding the focus of the week.

Structure of the workshops:

I decided to structure the workshops as follows:

• Our learning objectives
• The values of the day
• What if provocation
• Prior knowledge: What do you know about…
• Introducing key concepts, words, vocal we will come across 
• 5 minute writing tasks defining words
• Slide with 2 paragraphs maximum highlighting key words on context (read it to them)
• 5 minute quick fire questions referring to paragraphs 
• Hit them with a big chunk of learning but summarise discussions with images and at least 2 supportive videos
• A table with questions, short-answer and paragraph writing activities.
• A reading that supports the learning and a writing exercise.
• Recap learning objectives.
• Extra for experts wanting to do more

Single period sessions with their normal teacher:

Following up on an unfinished work and feedback.

I will write how this part went in a later blogpost.