During my most recent practicum, I was fortunate enough to be involved with my schools “Clubs” program. This program saw students from years four to six choosing and participating in three from a selection of twelve different activities, including options like cooking, soccer, drama, Gaelic football and robotics. These activities took place every Friday afternoon on a three-week rotational system. After students had spent three weeks on a single activity, they were regrouped and allowed to participate in a different activity of their choosing. In order to organise and assess student interest in these activities, an initial survey was given out to students listing the twelve possible options they could choose from. Students were instructed to independently number the activities in the order of their preference and were guaranteed that they would get a choice within their top five. This data then needed to be ordered and sorted to determine what students were doing which activities and when.
Task
A manual attempt was made by the principal and all staff across these year levels to order this information, but this proved to be a difficult task and many errors were found. Due to my proficiency with computers and coding, I offered to digitally store and sort this information in a coded spreadsheet. The principal accepted this proposal and also requested that I create class overviews, student attendance sheets for each club, and personalised print-outs for each student so they are aware of what clubs they shall be doing. I was given three days achieve this task, in addition to my normal responsibilities as a final year teaching student.
Action
I began this task by recording the manual groups that were already created and storing this information into an Excel spreadsheet. A table was created showing the twelve different activities broken down into three separate sections to correspond with the three different rotations. Students were then added into this table directly from the manual groupings that were created. I followed this by coding the Excel spreadsheet to highlight any cells that contained duplicate data in a rotation and in an activity. This would allow me to easily identify any instances where students were in two groups in the same rotation or in the same activity twice. Any duplicates were then moved to a different group or rotation depending on the error identified. After all of the duplicates were rectified, I began coding a spreadsheet to display class and student overviews.
The second spreadsheet focusing on each class and the students therein was coded to search for each student’s name in the original spreadsheet. Once found, the cell with the code would display a value depending on the cell the original data was stored in. If a student was in columns C, D and G in the original spreadsheet and those columns held data for cooking, drama and Gaelic football respectively, then those activities would appear next to the student on the new spreadsheet. Furthermore, those activities would be ordered into the different rotations depending on the numerical value associated with each cell in relation to each other cell. A smaller number in comparison to the other two would indicate that the student would be doing the associated activity in rotation one, while the higher number would indicate rotation three. Coding the spreadsheet like this reduced the possibilities of any data handling errors from occurring due to copying and pasting, and allowed for this template to be reusable for future cohorts. Once all students were confirmed in the spreadsheet, I communicated and worked collaboratively with teachers to ensure there would be no conflict of personalities within groups. This final step in the process saw me moving students from one group to another and would often cause data conflicts arise. Due to the coding that was undertaken to create this spreadsheet, any errors were immediately identified and were able to be rectified before the final copy of the spreadsheet was sent to the principal and all staff involved with clubs.
Result
The resulting spreadsheets that were created effectively stored the information required and facilitated the creation of the other resources required by the principal. The class spreadsheet was structured so that each teacher could print out and distribute the clubs of the students in their class. All students knew what activities they would be doing during each rotation, and were aware of where the activities would occur. The original spreadsheet was structured to allow the staff members running each club to be aware of and mark attendance for each student in their care. The creation and use of these spreadsheets allowed for the effective organisation of students into their clubs, which further allowed for effective communication of this information to all students and staff involved. This ensured there would be minimum conflict and confusion, resulting in a well-run learning environment.
Professional Practice Standards Covered
4.2 – Manage classroom activities The creation of a spreadsheet detailing the various activities and groupings allowed for staff and students to be aware of where students were supposed to be and at what times. This was used throughout the term as a guide for students so that they were aware of what was expected of them.
5.4 – Interpret student data The creation of the spreadsheet was only able to be done by collecting the various opinions students had about participating in each activity and using this information in conjunction with student profiling data from teachers. This information was then collated and used to determine group sizes and members, while also structuring groups where students were less likely to misbehave.