What next? Year 10 2007
Year 10 student: "This year in the Y10 course we're expected to do a lot more... a lot more thinking and explaining what we're doing... and we're doing more recording of our work compared to Year 9."
In 2007, the Year 9 class moved into a new Year 10 programme that was rolled out across the whole department.
In creating this new programme, the team had identified and come up with solutions for a number of issues. In Year 10 there were two terms of compulsory Technology, offered as single terms occurring in any order and at any time of the year. This made it impossible to ensure progression because of the random nature of timetabling. The ten-week time slot in each term also made it difficult to advance knowledge and skills, and many students did not have time to complete their projects.
For 2007, the team negotiated a two consecutive term course in one of the following domain areas: Materials – Wood, Metal, Fabric, Electronics; Graphics; ICT; Food and Nutrition. The new 20-week course divides into three parts:
- A – Basic knowledge and skill building
- B – Technological practice
- C – Extension, which not all students would do.
Carol had trialled this approach in 2006 and found it changed student outcomes dramatically – the extra time enabled her to extend the top students and develop the less able.
It was felt that the technology cycle established for Year 9 needed to be refined for Year 10 to further reflect the dynamic nature of technological practice. The team developed a new one that included flow-through practice of research, planning and evaluation.
The team developed a new set of key competencies that scaffolded the generic competencies, domain knowledge and skills through from Year 9. From this they developed the new unit outlines (Electronics, Fabric, Food; Metal, and Wood)
For Year 10 common technology assessment criteria were again used across domain areas and assessment information was available from Year 9 to provide continuity for both teachers and students. Students receive an end-of-module report at the end of the second term. The Year 10 assessment schedules link Grade 3 to Level 4 of the Curriculum and to the Indicators of Progression for technological practice. There are five schedules based on the following criteria:
- Brief Development
- Planning
- Outcome Development and Evaluation
- Domain knowledge criteria
- Domain skills criteria
Baseline data was again collected at the beginning of the course, and will be when the course finishes, and the KAMAR system will again be used for end-of-year-reporting – see the Year 10 sample report.
