Upcoming NCEA changes

 Since late 2020, secondary school teachers from across the country have been learning about the upcoming changes to NCEA.  In my role as Manaiakalani’s Secondary Specialist, I am fortunate to be a part of the ACCORD training days administered by the Ministry of Education.  I’d have to say, the changes are a positive step forward. This is the first significant change since the forming of the New Zealand Curriculum (2007) document.  The amendments include changes to the Literacy and Numeracy Standards and subject specific NCEA Achievement Standards.

The purpose of the change for the Literacy and Numeracy standards is to strengthen students’ understanding and to apply these skills in diverse contexts.  Hence, all secondary school teachers, regardless of subject speciality, are being asked to include elements of literacy and numeracy.   

Students from Year 9 upwards will have the option of taking Literacy and Numeracy in English or sitting the Te Reo Matatini me te Pāngarau Standards.  

The Literacy and Numeracy standards will be assessed online through a NZQA Common Assessment Activity.  

Initially, students entering the Te Reo Matatini me te Pāngarau standards can choose to complete a NZQA Common Assessment Activity or submit a portfolio of work.   This will be reviewed by NZQA following the first round of assessments.

To meet the requirements, learners will need to pass:

• either literacy or te reo matatini; AND 

• either numeracy or pāngarau to meet the requirements.

Each standard or set of standards is worth 10 credits; however, these credits do not count towards the 60 credits required for NCEA. 

Students must pass both the Literacy and the Numeracy standards in order to achieve NCEA. 

Although the changes will not become mandatory until 2023, teachers are being asked to give immediate thought to the inclusion of literacy and numeracy aspects in all subject areas. There are also around 250 high schools running pilots in 2022.

How teachers embed literacy and numeracy learning opportunities within topics that involve authentic scenarios will be key to aiding students’ understanding. I’m sure this will be a highlight of our upcoming Manaiakalani Department Discussions as we share practice and examples of what this could look like.

Literacy Standards

In literacy there are two unit standards, one for reading and one for writing. The reading component includes three big ideas: Learners make sense of written texts, learners read critically, and, learners read for different purposes. This approach aligns really well with Manaiakalani’s Designing Learning With the End in Mind research framework and will be a valuable tool for teachers’ practice as they work towards meeting the literacy criteria. Furthermore, with so much emphasis on the need to develop students’ critical thinking skills and the ability to discern fact from fiction, the literacy component should provide plenty of material for real world contexts appropriate to developing students’ understanding. More information and the Literacy Learning Matrix can be found on the new NCEA.education.govt site.

Numeracy Standards

The Numeracy standards cover Mathematics and Statistics in applied situations. There are two central themes; Process Ideas and Contents Ideas. The whakatauki that’s guided the development of the Numeracy Standards, Whiria te kaha tūātinitini, whiria te kaha tūāmanomano refers to threads within our societies that include academic, social, emotional, and cultural realms.

I am interested in learning how teachers plan to incorporate numeracy across the curriculum using real world scenarios so students can apply their learning. For the breakdown of the Numeracy Matrix and more information go to the Numeracy page on the NCEA Education Site.

NCEA changes

Every NCEA subject area has had changes.  Some subjects have received more NZQA Achievement Standards, while some are being consolidated to offer fewer quality assessments.  For more information, see the individual curriculum areas.

Teachers are being encouraged to make use of the following sites to aid their practice. 

• The learning progression framework
• PaCT - The progress and consistency tool. 
• e-asTTle 
• TKI

Term 4 Manaiakalani toolkits

Effective workflows for secondary school teachers 

Yesterday I ran a toolkit on developing effective workflows for secondary school teachers.  I wanted to share some ideas about streamlining your online resources to enhance visible teaching and learning.  

For me, it's essential to establish a good foundation with your file management system.  Naming files systematically helps you to retrieve and search files in your Google Drive.  This can be especially helpful if you are looking for files from previous years. In addition, an agreed-upon file naming convention can help everyone locate necessary documents for shared resources within departments or schools.  

When it comes to creating visibility through a class site, ensuring folder permissions are set to 'anyone with the link can view' will automatically mean files within that folder can inherit those permissions.   It's also possible to have files in multiple places, which allows you to have learning resources in your department folder and in a folder associated with your class site.  

During the toolkit, a highlight for me was hearing from secondary school teachers in other schools and learning what works for them. For example, Jayne Abernethy,  a Science teacher at Hornby High School, shares her site and how Toby's bookmarking tool helps her compile relevant online resources for her Year 13 students.  She then embeds those links back into her site.  

Juliet Buenaventura, a maths teacher also from Hornby High School, shared her site set-up.  I really like how Juliet has organised her site with the Learn, Create and Share headings. This is a great way to organise her learning resources with each year-level task associated with drop-down menus.  Here's a link to her site.  

I really enjoy it when teachers share their practice. There is so much to learn and be inspired from each other.  

If you'd like to see the recording from this toolkit or review previously held toolkits, you can search the Manaiakalani archive by clicking here.  

Manaiakalani Share staff meeting

This week we ran our first online nationwide Share staff meeting involving over 500 participants.  There was a lot of sharing and rich conversations about our inquiries.  Key topics were focused around students' well being, culturally responsive pedagogy, reading, writing, maths and leadership.  We worked in small online groups, giving everyone an opportunity to have their say and to share their ideas.  

My group was made up of secondary school teachers from Ōtaki College and Tamaki College.  Our chosen topic was Culturally Responsive Pedagogy.   

A colleague of mine for several years Ruth Hills from Bay of Islands College is highly regarded for her knowledge in this area.  Just last year, Ruth gave an online presentation at one of our Secondary Connects, titled Blogging through a culturally responsive pedagogical lens.  Ruth shared with us how she had managed to extend students' writing ability through the use of the shared class blog for senior Year 12 PE students.  These students were responding to Ruth's provocations on leadership, take a look here at the blog post titled Evaluating your leadership strategies and you'll see there are 44 comments from her students.  These are well thought out comments, and as Ruth refers to her in her recorded presentation, it's clear that students were learning from one another.

I really enjoyed having online staff meetings.  It was a bit of a lottery in terms of who you were teamed up with, but I thought this was a real positive because you got to meet people who may not have ordinarily come together.    Manaiakalani are planning to run this again next year in term 3.  

Create day on DFI

We had an awesome day with our DFI cohort and exploring everything about Media.  This particular day focuses on being creative with technology to do things that we couldn't ordinarily do without it.  When we look at creative tasks, there's always something for everyone; even the experts amongst us come away with a new trick up their sleeve.  

I was looking for something a little different to do with Google Slides and came across a great idea from Ditch that textbook.  A colleague of mine was also looking for something that would hook and engage some year 9 boys who were struggling to get on board with their learning.  

Building on the idea of Parson's Problems, I created the slides but left some links broken and unfinished.  I first came across Parson's problems last year when I was studying Teaching Programming at Canterbury University.  I'm interested to see whether or not students engage with this approach.  I think the idea of designing their own app, which will run in the web browser and through their blog, will hook them in.  Potentially they could download it and add it to their phone with a shortcut that then plays in the browser.  This is a great task that will align with design and developing digital outcomes from the new digital technologies curriculum.  It's also a good introduction to computational thinking and programming in something like Scratch or Python.  

First day with our online cohort

Today was the first day of our online DFI cohort for term 3 and this is a photo of the wonderful people in my bubble.  Our group is made up of talented educators from right up north in Oruiti, near Kaitaia, down to Papakura, across to Gisborne and finishing up in Greymouth and Hokitika.  We had a fabulous day together getting to know each other and learning about some of the foundational kaupapa of Manaiakalani. 

Northland DFI cohort is underway

 It's wonderful to have our kanohi ki te kanohi Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Intensive in Northland this term.   We have a wonderful group of educators in this cohort from across the Te Hiku and Kaikohekohe Clusters.  As with all our DFI cohorts they represent primary and secondary teachers, deputy principals and principals. The collective expertise in the room sparks rich learning opportunities and diverse conversations.   

Over the next nine weeks, we'll come together to understand the Manaiakalani kaupapa and pedagogy; the workings of Learn, Create, Share.  One of the real highlights of my job is supporting teachers through this process and seeing them grow.  Often our kaiako are nervous with anticipation of what's involved in the course however, it soon becomes apparent just how worthwhile and useful this professional development is.  Not only will teachers' workflow improve but they will have the pedagogy to support teachers' practice for working in 1:1 digital environments.   

NCEA changes ACCORD at Tamaki College

 Last week I was fortunate to be able to join the team at Tamaki College for their Ministry of Education ACCORD training day.  This was the second ACCORD day for 2021.  The focus of this particular day was to unpack the changes being made to NCEA Achievement Standards in the coming years.  There are a number of modifications being made to the standards across all subject disciplines.  These will be phased over three years with new Achievement Standards for NCEA Level 1 in 2022, Level 2 in 2023 and Level 3 in 2024.  

There are four key changes which were noted as system shifts, they involve;  

• Well being
• Inclusion and equity - reflecting students identity 
• Coherence - Coherent Pathways Guidance Document
• Pathways 

Some schools are already underway with pilots for NCEA Level 1.  In 2021, pilots are being run in English, Visual Arts, Science and Religious Studies.  Bay of Islands College is undertaking 4 pilots in Level 1 NCEA Science.

It is recommended that the design of assessment reflects and reinforces the ways students have been learning. Collection of evidence for the internally assessed standards could include, but is not restricted to, an extended task, an investigation, digital evidence (such as recorded interviews, blogs, photographs or film), or a portfolio of evidence. See the full NCEA Level 1 - English Assessment Matrix 

For more information about changes to NCEA and further updates, you might want to bookmark the new home for NCEA. 

Weaving Māturanga Māori into the curriculum

The development and inclusion of Māturanga Māori in the New Zealand Curriculum is a significant milestone in education.  It's inclusion is believed to be foundational to our New Zealand culture which will lead to full participation, based on a system of values and beliefs.  To honour the mana of Māturanga Māori,  assessments will be available in English and bilingually.  

Things teachers need to consider is how can we weave Māturanga Māori into all our subjects, classrooms and the wider school/community?

Ubiquitous learning and rewindable learning resources

This week started off with a facilitation day at Bay of Islands College, followed by a staff meeting I ran on Manaiakalani's Learn aspect.     This term, we were looking at Ubiquitous learning and rewindable learning resources.   

Visible teaching through a class site allows teachers to make their learning resources available 24/7 which effectively means they are available from anywhere with an internet connection.  I like this idea because it allows learning to continue beyond the school gate and with whanau.  It also means there's a lifeline for students whenever they are away sick and, of course, if we ever have to go into lockdown again.   There should be no barriers to students with visible learning, which is why Manaiakalani recommends all learning is made available through the class site.  It should be the one-stop learning hub.

When it comes to creating rewindable learning resources, teachers nowadays are spoilt for choice.  Screencastify is an extension that sits in the Google Chrome browser bar.  It can record your screen with or without a webcam.  The app recently brought out some new features that allow you to show emojis, which are great for giving feedback to students without interfering with the document.  

There are, of course, other ways teachers can create videos, for example, using their laptop, phone, iPad or film camera.  Audio files embedded into class sites and Google docs are a worthwhile resource and provide extra support for students who may have trouble reading.   

 With rewindable videos, you also have the power to watch a video slower or faster.  

Ubiquitous learning came into its own last year during the Covid Lockdown.  Having everything visible online means our students can learn anytime, anywhere and at any pace.  When students have their own device and their learning has been designed by an effective teacher, students should be having a powerful rich learning experience.  

Let's not forget the powerful workforce in the classroom as well.  Students are excellent teachers who would gain a lot of confidence by contributing to teaching resources.  With so many young people being YouTube stars with tutorials from how to win in League of Legends to how to apply makeup, I think it's highly likely students could see themselves contributing to their peers' learning.  

   

Digital Fluency Intensive 2021

We're underway with the first online DFI cohort for 2021 and what a fantastic group of teachers, principals and deputy principals we have on board.  Sixty-eight educators from around the country will be meeting each Wednesday for the next 8 weeks to learn about the Manaiakalani pedagogy; Learn, Create, Share.  We'll also cover all the apps from the Google Education Suite supported by the pedagogy for why, how and when to use them.    I'd like to wish everyone in our cohort a very warm welcome, especially to the wonderful group in my digital bubble.  I'm looking forward to working alongside you over the coming weeks.  

The origins of the Manaiakalani programme started back in 2006 at Point England School.  Thirteen more schools in East Tamaki joined Point England School and formed the Manaiakalani cluster.  The success of this first cluster spearheaded the development of the Manaiakalani Outreach and five more clusters.  In 2021, the Manaiakalani programme is delivered in11 clusters worldwide, including one virtual cluster.  Over 100 schools are represented in the 11 clusters, including 23,000 learners in primary and secondary schools.  It's an exciting time to be involved.  

Manaiakalanai Wananga October 2020

The annual Manaiakalani Wananga is always rich with inspiring speakers.   I come away feeling motivated and full of ideas to try and implement.  One of the highlights was hearing from the Woolf Fisher Research Centre's Associate Director, Dr Aaron Wilson's.  His presentation unpacked the 2020 data from across all Manaiakalani schools nationwide and represented trends from online observation data.  

Aaron prefaced his presentation by explaining that understanding the online observation data begins with identifying student learning patterns.  Analysing these patterns helps identify strengths in teacher's practice and raises some important questions, such as retooling teaching practice, to make it more effective for students' learning.   Significant gains have been occurring with students writing, showing that after three years at Manaiakalani schools, students are making twice the expected progress in one year.   Writing achievement is showing promising results. 

However, a recurring theme within the recent data showed an over-representation of lower achievement and lower progress rates where reading is concerned.    

Aaron explained that students need to develop strong foundational reading skills in the early years of school.  Furthermore, teachers need to have the diagnostic ability to recognise students who need extra support.  They also need to know what steps to take to ensure students get the guidance they need.  

The overall reading pattern showed the trend in many schools that students can get to Year 4 with basic literacy but have irregular patterns for the preceding years.  The key goal is to disrupt this pattern by implementing high leverage practices and increasing students' reading mileage.  Aaron emphasised how teachers' planning is imperative to lift students reading using high leverage practices. 

The Shanahan & Shanahan model (see below), places basic literacy, i.e. letter recognition and phonetic sounding, as a necessary skill.  We still have some work to do to help students achieve intermediate literacy. 

Mirror texts (where students can see themselves in a text) encourages students to connect with what they are reading, making it relatable and purposeful.  

Window text, on the other hand, gives students a view into other worlds and cultures.  Window texts provide opportunities for students to recognise ethnic diversity and empathy.  The challenge for teachers is to incorporate both mirror and window texts.  Ideas to consider are;

• What opportunities are we offering students to read about non-European and non-western worlds?   
• Are our texts representative of the cultures within our class, and are we also using window texts to expose students to different cultures?   
• How can we help our students see themselves in what they're reading?  
• Plan to use texts that open students' minds to the wider world to help engage students in literacy and literacy development.  

Metacognition challenge: 

How are we developing and planning for metacognitive challenges across a range of abilities?  What support and scaffolding do we have in place?  Are these resources easily accessible from the class site? Reading in a specific subject area is a specialised skill at high school and must be taught consistently.  Teachers can help students understand by discussing specific texts with students and conversing about a text's structure.  This approach helps students to interpret the key messages or big idea.  Another teaching strategy involves having students unpack topic-specific text and to aggregate vocab pertinent to the genre.  

Class site design to aiding reading:

Aaron advocated for teachers to plan for and to include teaching strategies on their class site for students to refer to.  It would benefit students and be a resource for parents to engage with their child's learning. 

Critical Literacy:

How then might we develop students critical literacy skills?  Aaron advised critical literacy is not something that can happen spontaneously in the classroom; it needs to be deliberately planned.  Additionally, purposeful, engaging activities should be part of a teacher's planning.  These resources should be scaffolded for the best student outcomes. Teachers also need to be mindful that they are not putting a ceiling on students learning and limiting their ability.  Questions for teachers to consider are;

• Are we providing opportunities for students to evaluate multiple texts and then discuss them?
• Have we factored in planned activities for group discussion?
• Are we giving students a choice of text?
• What options and choices are we giving students to Create and show their learning?
• Have we provided a range of texts in terms of length and complexity? 

Professional development:

There is a need for systematic support to help teachers design and develop reading resources.  The recent classroom observations showed a shift in teaching practices towards multiple texts, so there is progress across our clusters.   The wero or challenge is to think about how we can work collaboratively and collectively to disrupt and improve reading outcomes.  

Our overarching goal could be for students to be reading like a writer and writing like a reader.