Moderation of Carbon Cycle poster

Earlier in the year, I wanted to have discussions within our department around the standard we have set for our internal standards.  During discussions with my mentor I came across clarifications and the role they play.  This then lead me to look at the Conditions of Assessments for the different standards we were offering. To me it highlighted that our expectations might be a bit high.  

My first step was to look through my student's assessments again and I identified some of them I wanted to discuss further with my HOD.  We had a number of conversations about it but we really weren't on the same page.  One weekend he took them home and had a look through them.  He really wasn't impressed that I had continued questioning the marking and on most of them he came back with an even worse view.  

The next step was to speak with the Principal, who then worked with Ric to come up with an external moderator who would look through the assessments.  I gave the moderator a selection of the student's work, she looked through it and as a department we sat down to discuss the findings.  As a result, a number of student's grade's did go up, we also identified some student's who's grade came back lower but we didn't change it.  

During the process, we identified a need to update the Student Instructions for the AS90953, the Carbon Cycle Standard.  Based on the marking schedule we required them to draw their own carbon cycle but in the student instructions it just said to place your carbon cycle in the middle of the poster.

There was one student who had researched the topic really well but didn't use his own diagram.  It was decided that it wasn't a minor error therefore he couldn't resubmit his standard.  

His parent's continued making inquires and as a result the Principal nominee for NCEA looked at this student's work.  After months of discussion a decision was made.  The student gained a Merit.