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Literacy in Technology |
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School:
The City of Portsmouth Boys’ School,
Portsmouth |
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Fellow: Helen Cushion |
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Email: Helen_Cushion@yahoo.co.uk |
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Final report: |
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Background |
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Attending the June Seminar
was great in many ways however it did also
cause me many problems in so far as it inspired
me with a whole host of ideas that I wanted
to put into practice at school. I had recently
been promoted to Subject Leader and within
days of the seminar I was changing the curriculum
and meeting with the Design and Technology
LEA advisor for guidance. Consequently my
work load increased dramatically. At the same
time I was also accepted on a Masters course
in Design and Technology Education and became
a Lead Practitioner in Engineering. It appeared
that one minute my main concern was year 9
lesson plans and the next I was organising
seminars and conferences!
The aim of my Gatsby project was to create
resources that could be given to newly
qualified Design and Technology teachers
to help them meet the Literacy objectives. I
took the opportunity of slightly decreasing
my work load by using Literacy as my action
research project for my MSc. By doing
so it meant that I could focus on gaining
all the background research required for
my Gatsby project. So I began by
writing my paper, Literacy in Design and
Technology.
The writing of the paper coincided with
the January seminar. This was another
nerve wracking and yet hugely rewarding
experience. The hotel and meal the
night before allowed more informal discussions
to take place which flowed successfully
at all kinds of tangents. Being
allowed to take the stage at the Royal
Society is an experience that I will never
forget. It was awe-inspiring and
an amazing privilege. It also allowed
me, for the first time to describe what
I had been doing for the last few months
to both my peers and mentors. |
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My research paper |
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From my research I found out that there
is no real definition as to what Literacy
is and that Literacy levels completely
depend on how it is assessed. For
instance, I became aware that in many countries
the levels of Literacy are based on how
many years’ students have attended
school regardless of how well they can
read and write. As a result of this
some countries may show high Literacy levels
even though compared to the UK they may
actually be quite low.
It also became very clear within my research
that Literacy was directly related to social
inclusion. I found that there was evidence
that prison populations and fertility rates
rose as the levels of Literacy fell. For
instance, according to the Literacy Company,
more than three out of four people in America
that are on welfare, 85% of unwed mothers
and 68% of those arrested are illiterate.
About three in five of America's prison inmates
are illiterate.
With regards to Literacy
in the Design and Technology classroom I
realised that one of the main barriers was
that teachers weren’t actually trained
or used to planning Literacy within their
lessons. They
just didn’t know how to other than
spellings and vocabulary. The Literacy
Strategy was implemented by the Labour
Government when they realised that low
levels of Literacy were having a fundamental
effect on the economy.
The National Strategy document Literacy
and Learning in Design and Technology helps
to guide teachers through the three main
areas of the Literacy Framework including
learning through talk, from text and through
writing. However, this is quite a
time consuming document to read and the
tasks aren’t easily transferable
to schemes of work.
Consequently I decided to create a resource
book that would include the objectives
and methods of thinking described in the
National Curriculum in an easy and understandable
way. |
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The Resource book |
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I had to read carefully through each
section of the national strategy document
DfES to try to gain an understanding of
the key concepts. Each section of
the document includes a section on what
to teach and a section showing different
methods of teaching. Consequently
I began by creating a lesson that included
all the elements of what needed to be taught. I
then created worksheets and resources that
related to the lesson. To make sure
that the key concepts were understood I
also created power point presentations
to describe the lesson. I did this
for the six year 7, 8 and 9 lessons – 18
in total.
A lot of the listening lessons are written
around the SEMTA CD “A GCSE Engineering
and Manufacturing resource”. This
is because I have used this CD many times
and all my students loved watching it. It
is relevant and effective.
I then created a number of starter activities
that were not associated with any lessons
and could be used independently. I
compiled all this information, however, I
decided that the power point presentations
did not need to be included in the book as
they just added bulk. Once I had the
documents together I had to create all the
other introductions and front covers. This
was quite satisfying as I knew I was reaching
the end of the project. Once completed,
I photocopied all the work. This proved
time consuming and really boring. I
should have asked the reprographics assistant
to complete this part but she went on holiday!
I created my front cover using Microsoft
Publisher. This was an exciting time! I
chose the colour scheme primarily because
the CD cover that was originally shown to
me has a fire background and looked great! I
asked some year 8 students to pose for me – of
course they were working normally! This
caused great excitement in the class and
I asked the students which cover they liked
best, black and white, greyscale or colour. They
all chose colour so I went for greyscale!
I e-mailed the finished cover to Printwizard
who printed the front cover in 24 hours – magic!
Once the covers arrived I hired a binding
machine and bound the copies together – I
used wire because it looked more professional
than plastic and used Acetate to protect
the front cover. I also stuck down
the plastic CD wallets onto the back of the
front page. I was then able to insert the
CD that I had made and also the CD that I
was given by SEMTA. The book was complete! |
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The CD |
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I was originally going
to create a CD of my work which just included
all the files in a normal Microsoft format. However,
after speaking to a computer whiz kid I
realised that I could make the CD look
far more professional by using Flash!
Consequently I hired the computer whiz from
CK Computing, to create my CD.
I was given a number of different CD front
covers to choose from and after much deliberation
I decided to include all the logos on the
CD. This was because The City of Portsmouth
Boys School has supported this project and
I felt it was important to show appreciation
of this. The CD’s were then printed
and sprayed to give them a shiny finish.
It was quite a stressful period trying to
get the documents completely finished and
ready for burning however, the finished result
looks and works great! |
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The Poster |
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I created the poster, once again, using
Microsoft Publisher. I examined all
the different phrases that the National
Strategy document included and tried to
group them together. This would give
students a chance to model their own thinking
and speaking.
I created the document as an A1 poster and
then had to convert it to a PNG file. This
kept causing great problems so I eventually
just opened up a new file and copy and pasted
the document onto it. I burned the
document onto a CD and sent it to BAE SYSTEMS.
Unfortunately I was running out of time. The
cost of printing the posters at A1 was going
to be huge so I left it up to BAE SYSTEMS
discretion as to the size….It’s
been two days and I have yet to hear back! Fingers
crossed! |
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Reflection |
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I wasn’t initially planning on
researching Literacy in so much detail
but on reflection I think that my Gatsby
Project would be quite superficial if I
hadn’t spent so long ensuring that
I fully understood what Literacy was. I
spent a long time researching Literacy
in Design Technology and spent £50
buying a Literacy resource that is currently
available. I found this product similar
to what I was initially proposing in so
far as it included spellings and word searches. However,
having completed my research I now realise
that, although these resources do have
value Literacy is far more complex and
needs more sophisticated strategies if
standards are going to be raised.
The January seminar was a great reflection
point on what I had done so far. It
allowed me to gather my thoughts together. It
also allowed me to check the progress that
I was making on my project compared to my
colleagues. This was quite interesting
and really gave me the incentive to continue
with the work.
Once home, however, I was back into normal
work load. Although I did re-read through
the National Strategy and create an action
plan of the activities that I still had to
do I didn’t really begin the main thrust
of the work until the beginning of March. I
thought that 4 months would be a sufficient
amount of time…oops! I hadn’t
realised quite how intricate the lesson plans
and how detailed the power points needed
to be. I worked solidly for up to 4
hours every night from Mid March until June
to complete the work. It has been hard
but very satisfying now it’s complete.
Actually writing the lesson plans was really
interesting and informative – realistically
I’m not sure how an everyday D and
T teacher could approach the objectives considering
how time consuming this project was. The
worksheets were also fun to create. The
power points took the most time as I had
to make sure that what I was saying was correct
and there were no grammatical errors – something
I am still not sure of!
The worst part of the project was the checking,
changing and modifying. Once I thought
I had finished I had to keep going back to
each sheet to make minor corrections. This
was time consuming and a little boring. I
also wasn’t aware of the underlying
stress that such a project puts you under. Knowing
that you have to do extra work after returning
home from school does at times affect your
sense of humour! However, the results
are worth it! |
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The Future |
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Now that I have created the resources
I do need to test them out. Consequently,
as part of my MSc Module 3, I am actually
going to research the effects that these
lessons have on the students. I originally
trialled out some of the lessons on a year
9 mixed ability group of boys, who were
just about to start on their GCSE coursework. Afterwards,
however, I felt that I had chosen the wrong
time to be introducing something new. Although
the boys did comply with the instructions
it was very obvious that they really just
wanted to get on with their GCSE work!
Therefore I decided to re-work the Programme
of study for next year to include a Literacy
project at the start of each year group for
the first 3 weeks. This will ensure
that a number of teachers all evaluate the
pack and lessons.
My plan is to test some year 7 students at
the end of this year to gain a base level. I
will then teach them using the packs and
re-test them at the end of September. This
should result in an improvement. I
will also ensure that the Literacy learned
during the Focus topic underpins all the
schemes of work next year.
I need to complete my research by the end
of October as part of my Masters course,
however, I will be tracking student’s
progress throughout their years at City Boys
to see if the resource book does have any
real impact on students long term Literacy
abilities.
It is up to all teachers to ensure that literacy is
improved and I feel that this resource will help teachers realise that expectation!
I would like to thank the following people
and organisations for supporting this project:
M. Smith – The
City of Portsmouth Boys’ School,
C. Kennea – CKComputing, T. Feest – SEMTA, G. Martin – BAE
SYSTEMS, N. Baldwin – Technology Enhancement Project
and of course, Gatsby Teacher
Education Projects (GTEP) for
all their help, support and funding to enable
me to complete this project as part of my
Gatsby Teacher Fellowship. |
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