Bonnie’s Blog
I am definitely broadening my education and understanding! Talk about life-long learning. I have learned a bit about data flow diagrams, history of hairdressing, beauty therapy and planning for a big event with the Tertiary Skills students in the last few weeks. There are some really good things going on in our classrooms and workrooms, some great teaching and learning. I want to thank all the people I have visited so far. Although I am sure you don’t exactly leap for joy when I come into your class, you have let me be there and it is really good to see these classes being well taught.
Hairdressing, Palmerston North
I visited Andrea Jackson and her large class in the hairdressing salon a few weeks ago. The students were presenting the results of the research they had done in small groups to the whole class. Andrea was giving them feedback but the students were pretty much in charge of the session and in control of their material. It was good to see the result of the students working in groups, developing research and information searching skills and then presenting this to the class. It is a good way to cover quite a bit of ground in a student directed way.
This was Andrea’s first time on her own with the students, so pretty good stuff.
Certificate Tertiary Skills, Palmerston North
I am just so impressed by the dynamism and commitment I see in this class. Mike Few, Graham Reid, Sherran Merrit, Lynda Whale are working to achieve fantastic results with their students. Since the programme started, I have seen students growing and learning and participating in a way that is a total credit to their organisation and teaching approaches. It is a real pleasure to see they have tackled this new programme and turned it into such a positive experience for their students.
The teachers have put in the ground work with these students: class goals, class conduct statements, lots of modelling and listening as well as teaching. This ground work has paid dividends and all the students know what is acceptable and what is required of them. The students in this class LOVE doing maths. Graeme has approached this with a practical focus, based in the real world, and the result is total commitment by the students. One of the students told me that he wanted to do maths all day. The approach taken has allowed assessment of the content of unit standards to flow from the experience and the learning.
I also wanted to say how good the organisation, background work, front of house and the karaoke itself were for this event. I understand that students achieved a number of unit standards associated with the planning and staging of this event. I really liked the way people rose to achieve in roles that they would not have dreamed of attempting at the start of the course. Like one of the announcers, who Mike told me would not talk at the beginning of the course. There she was with a microphone, speaking clearly, keeping everyone on track and quite unflappable. I saw the security people, the raffle sellers, the film and photograph people, the many organisers. What I didn’t see was all the work from those who got sponsors, who organised the raffles, who organised the contestants, the musicians and the judges. This had all been done behind the scenes so the event just ran on wheels.
This was a great team effort and every person should feel very proud of what was achieved. It was a lot of fun too and gave the students some entertainment on a cool wet May day.
Beauty Services
I wasn’t able to get to the launch of the new facilities for Beauty Services, so I seized the opportunity to visit the class in session the other day. It was great to see the professional suite of rooms, and it was even better to see them with students in action. I mentioned to one of the students that this was really “hands on” learning. She said she loved the class, loved the course and wants to go on to the L4 class in time and to make this her career.
The students were practising their techniques in waxing—hair removal on legs and arms. Ouch. I thought the students were very stoical about the waxing, and it was a nice atmosphere with their teacher on hand to check their work and talk them through any questions. The students seemed confident in the techniques and Ila Knott had obviously set these students up to get on with their learning in a very practical way.
I look forward to the client days coming up, which have just started in fact, though I am not sure that I will sign up for waxing myself! Even though the students made it look totally relaxing!
BICT and Diploma IT
I dropped in on a large class in 1-1-25 and found Sandra Cleland teaching a combined first year combined diploma and degree group. It was a good, largish group of students and it was good to catch a more formal class in session. Sandra’s rapport with the students was excellent; they were both attentive and quietly responsive.
Sandra had structured the lesson, with the main points on PowerPoint, outlining and reminding them of levels and the process in constructing the flow diagrams. Sandra posed questions as they covered the ground and used the whiteboard for instant adjustments. To conclude the lesson, the students were given a task they could complete in about 10 minutes requiring them to apply the theory and show how it the diagram had to be adjusted. I thought it was good that the students worked naturally in pairs, some on their own though, for this exercise. The expectation was that the work would be rapid and the solution which the students contributed was drawn on the whiteboard. This was a very good cycle of teaching, with application to reinforce the process.
I enjoyed the session myself, the principles of a data flow diagram are pretty universal, and so I was applying my mind to the question Sandra set the class.
This was a lively, well planned and fun session. It could have been deadly dull but it worked at a number of levels. I am sure the students enjoyed this and learned from it. A number wanted to ask questions and stayed after the class was over to do that. Sandra kept them focussed and also mentioned the exam (helps with focus!) and what they would actually have to do to encourage them, which was close to the exercise they had just done in class.
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