Business activity challenges

One of the challenges I faced with my year 13 Business Studies in setting up their companies which is a requirement for their assessment is funding the production of their products. 

To address this challenge, I decided that all the year 13 companies will have to create a product that can be made by them here in the classroom. 

This year we have five companies, each making a product that they make in class.
Our five companies and their products are:

1. Breeze Enterprize -   decorated fans
2. Eastside Coconuts  -  coconut bowls
3. Embracelet -               coconut bracelets
4. Dream Captures -       dreamcatchers
5. $hmoney Maker$  -   upcycled phone chargers

We have achieved this and we are currently trying to sell their products. If you would like to buy one of their products, do get in touch.

Student engagement

One of the things that I have found challenging with my year 10 Business Studies class is student engagement on the tasks and their completion.

Research shows that students do better in doing what they would like to do and what they choose to do.  I decided to try offering students some choices. I gave students a list of the topics that we could do and also gave them options of trying to do an assessment for Level 1. I also gave them the choice of working as a team or working individually.

Students chose what they wanted to do  and whether they wanted to work in a team or as an individual.  Some of the students who opted to work individually changed their minds after two classes and wanted to join a team.

I noticed the following:

Students who opted to work on an individual task:

•  one group had good self management and were good independent workers 
• one  group were not so good at self management but were absent a lot

Students who opted for team work included: -

• students with  good self management and showed leadership in getting the rest of the team to engage, they were also good at supporting and helping those who were not sure what to do.
• students who were not sure what to do, but were keen to engage with the rest of team and be showed what to do.

So far I have seen more engagement and completion of work by MOST students. Those working in the teams are either support others or receiving support which allows them to complete the task they are supposed to do.  Some of those working individually are working well but there are some who are absent a lot and are unable to complete work.

I think the next step I should look at is to have conversations with those who are absent a lot or not coming to class and to see whether we can work out something so that their absences are reduced.

Visible Learning with Lenva

We are having a Staff PD on Visible Learning with Lenva.
She has created a site for the school with information and resources for teachers.
It also has links to teacher sites from Manaiakalani schools.

Visible learning means what you have on your site is accessible to EVERYONE - the REST OF THE WORLD!  Your students can access it without having to talk to you! If they are away from school, they can access it from home if they are able to or access it independently once they are at school.

We also looked at  bloggging

Why Blogg?

To share learning, information and ideas

Make connections

Allow students to express their views and ideas

Get feedback and ideas from others (including readers outside your own circle)

Keep track of learning

With digital learning a part of school life, it is important for all involved to be cybersmart.

Today's session which was about an hour and a half and provided a lot of information about Visible learning. It was good to learn about what comments on blogg should be about, and also got to make some comments on a couple of students' bloggs. Thank you Lenva for this very useful session.  I look forward to using some of the things I learnt today.

Integrated learning - Year 9 Food Tech and Business Studies

One of the units that year 9 Business Studies do is to carry out and review a business activity with guidance. This involves working in a team, choosing a product to make, writing a business plan, making the product and selling it.

After discussions with the class and finding out they were also doing Food Tech, we decided to speak to Mrs Tuipulotu who was taking them for Tech if we could work together so that what they learnt to make in food tech could be made and sold as part of their business activity.

The product they would make would be determined by what they were learning to cook or bake in Food Tech, they would make this product during Food Tech and then sell it at lunch time.

Students will carry out some of the planning in Food Tech - for instance, the planning for the production of the product - getting the recipe and ingredients together -  and then they can carry out their research of prices to find their costs and work out their profits during Business.

Intervention for priority students:

It is now week 7 of Term 2 and I have been working with some of my students needing support to help them achieve more. Amongst the students I am working with is one of my "targeted" priority students.

Although all students are priorities, we have to focus on two students who are not achieving in our classes and provide the support they need to achieve.

My two targeted students are from my year 11 Maths. One of them has been away from school, and am hoping he will be back soon. The other priority student is working well, I am regularly checking with him and spending more time explaining work to him on a one to one basis.

I have found that using questionings have been a very good tool in stimulating his mathematical thinking and getting him to explain what he sees and what it means. This has also been useful means of checking if he has understood the work.

Supporting my priority student this way has enabled him to get a better understanding of the work which allowed him to successfully complete his assessment.

Visible Learning and Teaching Framework (VTAL) Toolkit

I attended a VTAL Toolkit by Ms Anderson after school yesterday (9th March) in T2.
She used her own class site  and what she does with her classes to demonstrate VTAL.
It was a good session.

How to create a Blogg session by Fn

We are learning how to create a blogg, and the session is with Ms Fergusson the Google Guru at Tamaki College.  This is something new for me, so am going to give this a shot.

How to insert a video:
Open youtube, click on a video
Find the share arrow and choose the embed option and it will give yo the HTML you copy
go back to your blog and click on HTML and paste the HTML you got from youtube and you have the youtube video on thy blogg!!