Episode 140: How to Figure Out the Focus of an Assignment

TRANSCRIPT:

You're listening to the Parents of Hardworking Teens podcast, episode 140. Follow along with me as I dive into, dissect and explain all the parts of a real life research assignment, so that you can help your teen know where to focus, how to make smart and tactical decisions, and where to put their effort, their word count and their time on their future assignments. 

Hey VIPs, I hope you and your teens are doing super well. 

I have a slightly different style of podcast episode for you this week, because I really wanted to share with you some insights and takeaways from a one-to-one private coaching session that I just did with a student, and I was thinking about how to sort of summarise and share these concepts and the main takeaways that I would really love for you and your teens to understand and know and use. And what I ended up doing was just kind of thinking, you know what, I'm just going to take you through it step by step. 

So what I'm doing in order to hopefully help you be able to follow along and see where I'm going and what I'm doing with this, is I'm going to put up a completely sort of anonymised copy, a really basic copy of the wording and the information from this assignment task. And I'll pop that onto the resources page that goes with this episode. So it'll be at www.rocksolidstudy.com/140. 

So I would really recommend that to get the most out of this, you go there, you print out that document and you kind of follow along and you highlight and annotate and you underline and you circle things as we go through. And I'm just going to share with you all my thoughts, all of the input and all of the coaching points that I gave to this student that I think are ones that can absolutely apply across any kind of research, enquiry, task, investigation. So hopefully you and your teen can benefit from these as well.

And the reason that I really want to share this is because there was one overarching, big sort of aha moment for this student and one really big takeaway that I wanted them to get. And that was that what the focus of the assignment looked to be was not the focus of the assignment at all. So this student came to me and she was like, hey, look, can we go through this? Because I thought I'd done pretty well. 

I'm normally getting A's and B's. I ended up with the C grade on this task. And I just really kind of want to know like kind of where I went wrong.  

This is a student who is putting in effort, works hard, wants to do well. So it was really about where that effort and focus was going and where she had put in a lot of time and effort and energy and research in producing the final assessment piece and where this was actually off track. And it wouldn't have been easy to see. 

So this is why I want to share this one with you, because I think if you can see it with this, then you'll be able to see it across pretty much any subject or topic. So come along with me as we go through and you can listen to me break down each of these elements within the task step by step. 

Okay, so the interesting thing is that the really the big takeaway of this is in the very first line of the assignment task, but it is very easy to miss it. 

So I am going to kind of spoiler this by telling you what the takeaway is, but then what I want you to see is how all of the different aspects tie back to it, because I can see why it would have been very easy for students to miss this. 

Alright, so the first line literally says purpose. So what the purpose of this assignment task is and it says to demonstrate understanding of factors related to food security in the world using images. 

Now here's the thing that I want you to see straight away. Okay, this is the big spoiler. This is the big takeaway. 

I'm going to give it to you straight away, but I want you to stick with me so you can see how to discern this with your teen, for yourselves, for any task that they face in future. The whole purpose of this is to understand factors related to food security in the world. And then it says using images. 

The images are not actually the main thing that they're judging. This is not a photography subject. This is a geography subject. 

I should have mentioned that this is a geography task, although, as you know, I always say this is not about the subject. It's not about the subject content. It's about the strategy, the concepts, the techniques, but it is a geography topic and it's to do with food security. 

The fact that they have to use images to portray or convey this information is simply the vehicle. And yet the task is called design a photo story. So it is no surprise that this student really went in on the whole photo story element of the task, because that is what the task is, design and produce a photo story. 

The purpose of it, though, was to show an understanding of the factors related to food security in the world. And this is what I mean by not just looking at what we're supposed to be doing, but why we're supposed to be doing it. What are we supposed to be proving to the marker? 

What is this assessment task? A vehicle for us to prove or demonstrate. Okay, so let's get into a little bit further. And I'm going to bring in some additional sort of skills and tips and strategies as we go through.

So it says for the task description, design a photo story about a particular topic related to food security. You may want to choose one of the following. And then there's a whole list of them.

It's got things like food wastage, sustainable farming, population growth, climate change, GM foods. There's a whole list. And it even says you can pick another topic if you want to, if you have checked with your teacher. 

Now, one of the first things I did with this student was I said, tell me what made you choose the topic that you did. Okay. Because one of the things I work really hard on with students is having them select a topic tactically, strategically, so that they make it as easy as possible to number one, achieve the criteria that they are aiming for. And number two, make the assignment itself as smooth and painless as possible. That is not about making it easy because they were trying to shortcut things or skip over things or avoid certain things and maybe even reduce the quality. It's the exact opposite of that. 

We want high quality, but we don't want to be going around the houses doing more than we have to, or essentially making life hard for ourselves. And I always say to students, no matter how interested you are in the topic that you've chosen, if it is really hard to give what they want, it is suddenly going to become very much unenjoyable. 

So I always want your teen to reverse engineer their choice of topic by considering what do they actually need to prove or do in order to achieve the criteria that they are trying to meet on the rubric or on the marking scheme. 

That's what we want to do. Which of the topics is going to allow them to do that? Now, in this case, one of the things was that they had to have three out of five images be primary sources. So that meant that the student had to go and actually take her own photos. 

So when she was telling me about why I chose this topic, number one, her first reason was that she had examples nearby to her home. So she was able to go out and take photos that would demonstrate the topic that she was going to be talking about and investigating. The other reason, she said, was because she kind of thought it would be interesting.

Now, the first reason I was totally on board with, it's all about being able to achieve the criteria and do what is required in a way that does not make our lives harder than they need to be. The second reason was not so good. 

Now, if your teen can find a topic that enables them to reach the very top criteria, if that's what they're going for, and they find it interesting and they want to investigate it further, then fantastic, that's a beautiful combination. 

But if they haven't considered, does that topic allow me to demonstrate the skills or concepts or knowledge at the highest levels that they are aiming for, then I would encourage them to pick something that does. 

So the instructions so far are pick the topic and we need to select five images and it says that demonstrate an aspect of your topic and three of them should be primary sources. So far, we've got a lot of focus therefore on picking a topic and selecting five images because it then goes on to say each image must be accompanied by a short caption. 

Now, I've got a lot to say about captions but I'll come to a bit more on that in a moment. It then says over the course of your photo story, the following information should be included. Information about your topic, explanation of each image, so those are partly going to be covered by the caption, an explanation of the impact of your topic for the people in environment and if you have been following along with me for a while, you will hopefully have clocked there the idea of information that's described, explanation, explain. 

Now, it says explanation of the impacts, the fact that we are doing impact after describe and explain, that is actually levelling us up into analysis. So, good to know, they've said explanation of the impacts, we could consider that as analysis because it's not just what is happening and then why or how it's happening, it's then going on to state the impact and that classifies it therefore as analysis. 

Next bullet point says suggestions about what is being done or could be done or should be done to solve any problems related to your topic and then this is just the last bullet point but this is quite a significant part, comparison to a selected country in Asia, like that's a whole kind of task within itself, you've got all of the research about your topic and using your photos to demonstrate it and it's just like one bullet point just as comparison to a selected country in Asia. 

Now, I would say there's quite a lot in that one bullet point because within that we have to make another decision, what other country are we going to choose in Asia to compare it to and how are we going to make that decision strategically? 

Comparison means we need similarities and differences, so if we know what topic we have chosen and again can you see why it's so important to like reverse engineer this, don't just choose the topic and then start going through what you need to do, figure out all these things you need to do to help you choose the topic, you might want to choose your topic based on is there another country in Asia that I know of that would make an excellent comparison within this topic and if there isn't, maybe choose a different topic. 

We want to choose a country that allows us to show similarities and differences with the case study, with the topic, with the location that we have chosen and the student then needed to get all of this into, now it says they had to produce it as a video, so they've got to produce a video, they've just got to show those photos and essentially you do a talk over because it says the video should be three to four minutes, that is not a lot of time to get all of that in. 

Now I'd have a problem with that because I always say that for example exams, exams are not just testing subject knowledge, they're testing our ability to convey that knowledge in the way that the question demands and the mark scheme requires within time limits and that's exactly what is happening here. 

We cannot just share an infinite amount of information about this topic, we need to consider what is the focused information, at what level of detail, with exactly what content and explanations and comparisons and analyses and how do we get all of that within three to four minutes. 

Okay it then just says the text on the screen in their video should be brief and clear, i.e not your script and I would hope that most students would realise that. So there is our assignment task. 

Now here's where it gets interesting. The student has to produce a video, the student has to have five images, the student needs to have three of those images be primary sources and they're then going to have to talk over those to give information about the topic, the explanation of each image, the explanation of the impacts, the suggestions about what needs to be done and the comparison to a selected country in Asia. They need to get all of that done and it's doing it through remember a photo story and it even says design a photo story. 

I think even that word design or it could say create even that makes it feel like the focus is on the sort of artistic side, the selection of the images, there's a lot of importance put on those with the wording and the description of the task. So it's not surprising that this student paid a lot of attention, put a lot of time and effort into going and getting those photos and going online to find the additional two other photos and really trying to do their best to show this food security issue visually in the photos that they have selected. 

Now I went through, we watched through the video that they had produced and unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you see this it was very clear and easy for me to be able to give them feedback and show them okay here's where you hit the nail on the head and here's where we missed it completely and here's where we partially did it because they had indeed done really well with their visuals with their photos and with describing information about the food wasted issue they've done all of that really well. 

What they hadn't done was really pay close attention to those higher level skills like analysis explaining those impacts like the comparison which in itself is an analysis level command and what absolutely demonstrated this so clearly was when we looked at the marking rubric. 

Now I would love to share this but I won't because it's got the students like marking and it's got the teacher's feedback and things on there but what I will do is read out a couple of the key bullet points. So one of them around knowledge and understanding was to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the challenges to sustainable food production and food security and appropriate management strategies. 

They got that, they did that well. Here's what some of the other ones said. Evaluate data and information to justify conclusions while developing and evaluating strategies using environmental economic or social factors. 

Now for a start data in this case just means the photographs that classes as their data okay just like a text can be anything it doesn't have to be a novel it could be a movie it could be a poster okay that's where they had fell down they hadn't fully done that evaluation in terms of which one is better which one is worse that might have come into the comparison with an Asian country it might have come into their suggestions about solutions. 

It also says create descriptions explanations and responses consistently using geographical knowledge geographical tools as appropriate and it says a little bit more but I can't quite go down that far on the criteria it's kind of cut it off on the um on the marking sheet and the last one is just their bibliography and their referencing of sources. Now I said I'd give a summary of those I've actually read out all but one so I'm just going to give you the last one as well it also says demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the environmental economic and technological factors that impact agricultural productivity in Australia. 

Now given that I have now read out all of the marking criteria here's what I'm really hoping you notice. What isn't appearing in that rubric on any of those criteria at all? 

There is nothing about photos there is nothing about images there's nothing about the photo story itself and this is the thing that I want everyone to take away from this episode. We really need students being able to discern what are they getting marked on.  What is this assignment task a vehicle for them to prove or demonstrate? And how do they use that to strategically decide and plan and navigate where they are going to put their time their effort? Their word count or in this case their time limit for their video for their assignment for their enquiry report whatever it is that they are producing? And for all of the research and the work that they're putting in to produce that where does the majority of that need to go? Does it need to go into finding amazing photographs? Going and getting amazing photographs? In this case, no. No marks are given for the quality or the selection of the photographs. The marks are given for the information, the explanation, the analysis that goes with them.

So I hope that this has given a really good clear example of what I'm getting at when I talk about the assignment is the vehicle. The task itself is the vehicle to prove something and this idea of reverse engineering everything that we're doing and thinking about this before we even start writing. Going to the end and working backwards so that your teen can be as efficient and effective in their assignments as possible. 

So reminder, this is all loaded up on the resource page for this episode www.rocksolidstudy.com/140.

I would love to hear your feedback and let me know if this kind of thing is helpful. I think sometimes sharing very real, very specific examples can be really impactful. So drop me an email - support@rocksolidstudy.com and let me know your thoughts and your feedback. I'd love to hear from you.

Have a wonderful rest of your week and I'll see you back here next time bye.