Pre-planning
'Choc Mint' student work board
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In 2006 Diana suggested to her colleagues that, to establish some kind of cohesion in Technology, they could work together on a project, focussing on the same outcome but utilising each teacher's subject knowledge and strengths.
That year the Materials and Graphics teachers each planned and trialled a unit, A Novelty Item, in which each class spent a term on a specific design or technological aspect with one teacher. While this worked successfully for the students who started with design, it obviously didn't work quite as well for the class starting at the materials stage.
After the trial, the decision was made to offer a Technology course which would touch on all the different 'areas'. Students would work on two projects: two teachers in the Materials 'area' would teach the existing A Novelty Item unit, focussing on a one-off solution; and Geoff and Diana would teach a new unit, Cool Food, which would include Graphics, Food, and ICT and focus on conceptual development.
In 2007 the Year 9 Technology classes were all scheduled in the same time slot, giving flexibility in structuring classes and enabling the introduction of team teaching or differentiated learning. Each pair of teachers would share two classes in the first half of the year and repeat their programme with the other two classes in the second half.
"We thought it was worth giving a combined Technology course a go," says Geoff. "It's always interesting to get some variety. We knew that Technology was already a co-operative learning experience and, with the push for differentiated and co-operative learning, wanted to experiment further. A six-month unit is just the right thing and Cool Food really does involve the three areas – Food, Graphics, and ICT – brilliantly."
Diana and Carol Pound had devised a Food Technology Toolbox, a document which provided a framework to support progression in Food Technology knowledge/skills from Year 7-13, which Diana would use with her students for the for the first time in 2007. See the CP807 Food Technology Toolbox case study.
Each student used a clear-file for recording their progress and including their Toolbox - information on the theory and practical skills they would need to complete a successful project.
