KPMG Hui - March

Our first KPMG hui was an opportunity to reconnect with our MIT team and to reconnect with the design process.   The month since our initial hui allowed us all time to reflect on our ideas and gather some data from which we could launch our inquiries.

Of course we began with the obligatory coffee.

The first task was a  three WWW's exercise which give us an opportunity to present to the group and provide feedback and suggestions to our team mates.

What is the data showing?

The first question was related to the data we had collected from our learners.  As the first term is a period of summative assessment my colleagues had a lot of objective data to discuss.   My data however was a little more subjective in nature.  I have collected audio recordings of interactions with new entrant learners.  These interviews took the form of presenting the learner with a visual prompt (photograph) and then recording the conversation between the learner and myself.  I then transcribed the recordings and coded the prompts I used and answers supplied by the learners.  Reviewing the data over subsequent interviews helped me to see that I wanted to see if the learners could, communicate the context of the image, and for them to make some inferential judgments about the emotions of the subjects and details about the setting.

What has challenged my thinking so far?

I have been challenged by the nature of assessing oral language.  I have sort the assistance of MoE Speech and Language specialists to assist me in refining my coding and prompts.  I had good advice from the MIT team, who suggested that I use images of the our school environment so that the learners could call on their prior knowledge to answer questions.

What "how might we" statement are you currently confirming?

How might we raise the oral language skills of New Entrant Learners?  I have stayed constant with my guiding question and if anything my recent thinking has even strengthened my resolve.  I believe that by working on vocabulary and providing oral language opportunities for learners to build narrative we are constructing the foundations of future comprehension, and inference skills.

After a delicious lunch we launched into the second part of the day.  

Storyboarding

We were challenged to revisit our crazy 8's - ideas and synthesis 3 of them into a storyboard.  This was a great opportunity to build in one of the ideas I had researched since our first Hui.  I call this my crazy 9.  So my storyboard consisted of an amalgamation of Co-Authored texts (my #1 crazy 8) and play provocations (#2 crazy 8) and dialogic reading (crazy 9).  I envisioned these three interventions forming an intentional oral language focus within the classroom - delivered in via a website.  I chose to represent these ideas visually in the following poster.  Which I presented to the team.  They rated these ideas a WOW - feasible and original.