Humanities TAI

Focus: Digital Inquiry

Background:

1. Research /inquiry is our core business.. but… …students do not know how to research information effectively in a nonlinear medium i.e.

the web.

Link to school goals:

1. To raise achievement levels to merit and excellence

2. Use digital resources effectively for all classes- SAMR.

• This will then feed onto the NCEA courses and the research and inquiry based

assessments

Collection of base line assessment information:

All of Year 9 students were set an assessment within first week of term one.

Conditions included no input from teachers as we were testing prior knowledge

Topic: “New Zealand capitals”

• Fairly narrow approach, to make it easier.

• Covered 6 aspects of inquiry

- Develop research questions

- Find info

- Collect info

- Record info

- Present info

-Evaluate process and information

Our findings

Very poor results - Only 55(19%) out of 288 students achieved or better when totals were collated.

- 58(21%) students had NA in all 6 tasks.

• Reasons for it.

- started 4th period into their Year 9 stint.

- Christmas had addled their brains

- They were scared because it was a new environment

- Teachers were not allowed to have any input to help answer questions.

Progress during the year:

Term two:

All classes were involved in an assessment activity for the topic: Explorers and conquerors.

The research questions were set and the students had to collect and process (involving

annotation) the information as well as evaluating the process. They were given a model of

how to approach this assessment to refer to.

Term three:

Some classes had a research assessment which required a collection and evaluation

component for Multi-cultural societies

Term four:

• All classes went through a processing exercise of selected texts and cartoons to practice:

- annotating resources

-to evaluate how appropriate the resources were to answer the focus question

- to process information to extract peoples perspectives from an unfamiliar resource.

• At this time all students were also taught how to analyses web resources for reliability

and appropriateness for use in a particular task.

• The end of year examination skills standard was redesigned to fit into this TAI to see the

progress that the students have made during the year.

The results for three classes:

Out of 86 students from three classes( extension plus two mixed ability) the baseline

result was 37.36%( mean) and the examination result was 87%.

Reasons for this massive improvement:

- Students have had a year to mature and become comfortable with their environment

and teacher

- Teachers have followed a set of tasks that that developed these skills

- The digital inquiry processing skills have been targeted explicitly.

Summary for the 2015 TAI .

•Obvious issues were highlighted through the year about this TAI.

1. The scope was too big for a one year approach.

2. Covering and collecting data on the entire Year 9 cohort was just unmanageable as an

effective approach. The final data collection was for the extension class plus two

mixed classes. Their examination results were compared with their base assessment

done at the beginning of the year

3. Our approach to the TAI was stalled because our lead teacher left at the end of term 2

4. We needed to have a full department “best practice” approach that was common

across the board. This did not happen as there were assumptions that teachers knew

what good practice looked like.

• Success came in the form in the following areas:

Collection of data:

- To highlight the need to follow the development in this area

- Clear evidence illustrates what we have known for a few years. Although students

come to the upper middle school having used the web resources for many

assessments in previous years, they do not come with a clear set of tools to

research/navigate the web so that they can be truly independent and effective

learners. This is part of digital inquiry( and digital literacy)

Creation of resource material and best practice methods:

- We have realized that there is a need for “best practice” structures.

- By the end of the year we will have created a set of best practice procedures and

posters to go with this TAI that all teachers will put up on their classroom walls so

that students can feel comfortable with and refer to at any time during the year.

We as teachers have to be very explicit about what “good” looks like and this must be

advertised to the students through:

- Classroom posters - Ultranet skills reference folder - Generic tasks that will be based on the 4 main inquiry aspects. These tasks will only test two parts of the inquiry process at a time, and can be done in the double period set aside for 2016.

Teachers’ involvement in TAI at this stage:

Almost all teachers had classes at year 9. Teachers that did not have a class at this level

marked the baseline assessment at the beginning of the year and the skills assessment in

the end of the year exam.

TAI 2016

To continue to fine tune this TAI, in 2016 we will incorporate the final aspect of the digital

inquiry which is the development of focus questions to start an inquiry.

We will also continue to embed this skill into the year 10 with an explicit set of exercises

so that by level 1 these students will have no problem working through the inquiry

structure.