Mt Roskill Grammar School
Mount Roskill Grammar joined the Beacon Practice initiative in 2006, with the aim to restructure and further develop its Year 10-13 electronics and control technology programmes.
"Work on restructuring the Year 9 and 10 Technology programmesbegan in 2006 and continued through 2007," says Bill. "The aim was to capture more students into Technology and develop a consistent vision for technological literacy across the spread of technology areas in the school."
A number of strategies implemented during 2006 proved beneficial:
- more formal recording of formative assessments;
- structured and planned programmes of work;
- templates to help students who need more structure;
- a single place to find all the course materials;
- consistent definitions of technology terminology.
A number of areas received further development work in 2007.
"From the work in 2006," says teacher Bill Collis, "it was clear that when students struggled with their work it was often because they had been allowed to 'over reach' with their projects – they had not been scaffolded through the learning processes well enough."
Pre-testing student's skills, knowledge and understandings to help teachers and students identify strengths and weaknesses before projects progress too far was an important area only touched upon in 2006 that was developed further in 2007.
There was also development work done on high-end technological literacy in the Year 13 course, and more structured techniques for preparing students for scholarship. Work was also done looking at how students develop and retain (or not) a generic technological knowledge from one year to the next in Technology.
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