How to succeed in your Wood Technology CBA 2

By Kieran McDonagh - 3 minute read

For this CBA you will analyse your coursework and what skills you have learned in Wood Technology up until this point. You will analyse and evaluate a range of tasks you have completed or a specific task, e.g. research, sketching, evaluating, presenting work, processing materials, etc. You will need to critically review your own progress, your strengths and where you can improve. This CBA is also important because it will help you plan and make decisions for your wood technology project so take the time to get it right!

This CBA is designed to help you learn how to evaluate yourself. This CBA is designed to encourage the practice of self-evaluation throughout. Once you conduct the self-analysis of your skills to date, evaluate your findings by making meaningful observations and detailed judgements of how this will help you improve going forward. interpret your analysis to offer constructive direction for the upcoming project.

You will do this CBA at the start of 3rd year and you will focus on three key areas in your learning log.

These areas are:

1. Identifying coursework elements
2. Reflecting on learning
3. Communicating your CBA

How CBA2 is assessed

Lets look through each of these key areas now in more detail.

1. Identifying coursework elements

Once you have chosen a piece of work or range of work, you then need to need to identify and look at the different areas of this work and do a self-analysis. Here is where you think about how your skills have improved up to now in relation to the work you have done and talk about what areas you are strong in and where you can improve.

Features of Quality	Identifying coursework elements
Exceptional	The student has identified a diverse range of coursework elements, that allows them to make insightful detailed observations and a comprehensive self-analysis on the development of their skills to date.

2. Reflecting on learning

Once you have done this first step, you now have to use what you have found and make some judgements on this information. These are meant to help you make future decisions on your strengths and where you need to improve. You should explore a balance of areas, e.g. research skills, sketching skills, processing skills, etc., to give yourself a comprehensive, realistic reflection of your skills to date.

Some questions you could ask yourself for this are:

What research did I carry out and what sources did I use? Primary, secondary.
What steps did you follow when designing your project? Freehand sketching, CAD, physical models, etc.
List the materials/ joints/ tools I used in my project.
Were they suitable?
What are my areas of strength?
What are my areas for improvement? What steps am I going to take to help myself make these improvements?
Suggest materials/ joints/ tools I could use in my project and the benefits of using them.

Features of quality	Reflecting on learning
Exceptional	Critical judgements were made on areas of strengths and areas for improvement and demonstrated an exceptional level of awareness of how these would inform future work.

3. Communicating your CBA

The final step is presenting what you have learned from your self-analysis and evaluation of your work. It is important to do this in your own words so you can show you understand how it applies to you personally. Make sure you pick the most relevant information here to show what you have learned.

Features of Quality	Communicating your CBA
Exceptional	The presentation of the findings is of an excellent standard; using a highly effective medium which allowed for a critical consideration of what information best communicates the CBA.

How to approach CBA2

In preparing for CBA 2, it is very important that you should retain some evidence of projects you would have completed throughout 1st and 2nd year to allow you to conduct your analysis and evaluation on. to offer a supporting stimulus You don’t have to keep the physical project, only whatever could help you complete the CBA.

This evidence may be in the form of:

An electronic copy of a portfolio
A picture of the project
Any documented feedback from the teacher
Copies of the research presented as part of project work

Picking your coursework element

The below graphic may help you to analyse one of your projects and break it down into different coursework elements to focus on in your CBA.

Online resources

If you need to follow up on more information or resources, the link below can help:

https://www.jct.ie/technologies/assessment_wood_technology

By Kieran McDonagh

Kieran Mcdonagh is a Wood Technology teacher at Ballinrobe Community School, Co. Mayo. As well as teaching for over 15 years, Kieran is also an examiner in Junior Cycle Wood Technology.