We are learning to:
- Create blogposts on Edublogs to reflect on our professional practice;
- Use the Edublogs commenting features to give feedback to colleagues.
I am reflecting on my Semester 1 Y10 Humanities course, World Government and Human Rights. This was a compulsory course for Year 10 students in 2025, and included key Aotearoa/NZ Histories and Social Studies content about government systems and human rights. This was a new course and it was the first time I had taught some of the Social Studies content.
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How well did the learners meet the intended learning outcomes for curriculum and for deep learning?
Consider the numbers of learners achieving at each level of the curriculum and DL rubrics. Were there significant shifts demonstrated in this process? Did results differ from previous years? What factors may have influenced this?
In terms of curriculum achievement, the English aspect course was an abject failure, as the main summative assessment for the extended text study never even happened. Usually, after studying the Holocaust memoir Night, my class would write a response to text essay, learning the essay-writing skills they need for NCEA English. Due to numerous interruptions, however, the class only just managed to finish reading the book by the last week of the semester, and there was no time to write an essay.
The Social Sciences aspects were assessed formatively, mostly through student learning reflections on their blogs. I believe all students engaged with these aspects of the course and showed their learning.
For the Deep Learning outcomes, there were some blog reflections, but no before/after data.
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How well did the learning design meet the intended learning outcomes?
Consider the four elements of learning design: pedagogical practices, learning partnerships, learning environments, and leveraging digital; and also, your use of literacy and numeracy strategies.
Literacy strategies were fully incorporated throughout the unit, with small group reading instruction, multi-choice response to text quizzes, and learning reflections. Students were exposed to a range of text types related to the Holocaust and Human Rights. Numeracy strategies were not incorporated.
Pedagogy – as above, plus application of critical literacy and T-shaped literacy strategies.
Learning partnerships – not much outside the class teacher and peers.
Learning environments – classroom and library only.
Leveraging Digital – nearly all learning was online and took advantage of digital tools.
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What parts of the learning design worked well, what can be improved?
What worked well? What might you improve? How might you do things differently next time?
The learning design was adequate, but not all of it was implemented, due to time constraints and interruptions to the learning programme.
Extended text study – was started too late; another time I would put that much earlier – start with the historical background to the Holocause right at the beginning of the year, so that we would finish the extended text in plenty of time to allow 2-3 weeks for the essay.
The teaching of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was rushed at the end of the semester. Another time I would do that part before teaching the Holocaust and the memoir.
Essentially, I don’t think that the planning or the teaching and learning activities were lacking or inappropriate, but the timing did not work. The start of the unit was impacted by the whole-school orientation programme, with the introduction of SchoolJoy, and the switch of Year 12s and 13s from the Blogger platform to Edublogs, which is less user-friendly. We then had nearly 2 weeks impacted by start of year literacy testing, which was more drawn out than usual, due to us being involved in piloting the PAT writing test. This involved 2 extra tests on top of what we normally do. It seemed that we had barely got into the course material after that when we had to pause to prepare students for the NCEA Literacy CAAs, and time for them to sit these and Numeracy.
While all the activities were important, the net result was that we lost a good half a term or one quarter of the half-year semester, making it impossible to complete all the planned teaching and learning sequence.
Next time, the orientation programme will not be as long, since it will be a refresher, but we will still have to manage getting students signed up for their NZQA accounts and preparing for the CAA exams.