Thursday, May 4, 2017

Starting my new Year 10 group off with SOLO activities

My new year 10 group have made a start on their project for the term. They are going to be designing and making a model of a portable speaker. This will give us the chance of going though nearly the whole process that they would be expected to do at NCEA Level 1 so they know what to expect if they choose my subject for next year.








The first thing that I got them to do was an individual activity. Find a picture of a portable speaker that they like and describe it using this describe diagram.


Here is an example from one of the students who completed this activity.



This was to prepare them with lots of ideas that they could add to the next activity where they had to work in pairs to do the SOLO hexagon work.
I decided this time, to do this activity using the Google Drawing template that I had prepared. I have to admit to missing the usual paper and scissors and mess though!!
Here is the template that I shared with them.



The students had to write up all the elements that they could think of to do with the topic then put the groups together and write an explanation of why they decided to put those items together.
They did this in pairs so they could use each others ideas and come up with reasons together.
They then had to take a download image of their work and share it in the class community. They had to do this 3 times with different groupings.

All of the work that they completed has been shared in the class Google Plus community.
This gives all the students a chance to see what everyone else is doing, so if they miss work or get stuck, they can have a look there. It also gives them chance to see the feedback that I am giving each item of work as I am doing it in the comment section under the post. They can also use this feedback to improve their own work, even though it is not specifically about theirs.

Most of the class worked well at these activities except a few who used small group / pair work as an excuse to do "not a lot".  I suppose you will always get some of them.
I have had good feedback from my Year 12 students when I have given them a chance to work on some elements in small group and pairs so I am hoping that by filtering this way of working down to the Year 10 students, they might feel more confident about the subject and consider it a possibility for next year.

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