Teaching as a Team and Peer Mentoring: Sidebar - The Guide
After the introduction of Year 11 Technology in 2002, it was clear that some students found the move up from Year 10 a challenging one, at least initially. Students found the Year 11 curriculum demanding not only because it required a greater depth of learning and understanding, but also because of the need to document their work as they went. This was confirmed the following year.
What was required, Terry reasoned, was a guide clearly outlining expectations for the year. Experience had taught Terry that some students are happy to focus on a series of immediate tasks, but others need to see how things fitted into the year's big picture. Explaining the big picture and putting things into context, using a whiteboard, would have been confusing Terry says, so, to cater for both types of learners, he produced a guide, that allowed some students to put their work in context of a long-term goal, while allowing others to work through the processes required by the courses page-by-page.
The guide is not a template or a series of boxes to be ticked, but a guide to the processes required by the different parts of the year's work.
At the beginning of the 2005 year, the new Year 11 Technology class was issued with a copy of the guidebook. Students came back with what Terry describes as "well considered" questions about the coming year.
Student: "It pretty much told us what was expected, the sort of things we had to write."
Terry stresses the guide is very much a living, evolving document and will change year-by-year.