When the opportunity came up for us to look at adding a classroom and providing for a much needed upgrade of our most dated buildings, the first place I looked was the New Zealand Curriculum.  One of the discussions I have been leading, and certainly an area I am reflecting on a great deal at the moment, is the concept of learning communities and how we can establish and build on learning communities in the School.  I particularly like the simple explanation in Facilitating shared learning under the Effective Pedagogy area of the document:

Teachers encourage this process by cultivating the class as a learning community.  In such a community, everyone, including the teacher, is a learner;  learning conversations and learning partnerships are encouraged; and challenge, support, and feedback are always available. As they engage in reflective discourse with others, students build the language that they need to take their learning further.  (NZC – p34)

Our wonderful staff are taking steps to make this happen… (that’s another blog entry!).  So how could we design our building upgrade to support this?  I had a chat to our Board, reviewed the strategic vision for property in the School to reflect the curriculum and then we engaged an architect to support us to enable this to happen.  I spoke about openness, shared spaces, as a leadership team we have had dialogue about communities of learners and how the physical environment could support this (wider than just our own classrooms).  People are on board.

The result, while only a preliminary 3D sketch and design is outstanding and very exciting… don’t you agree?

(I may post a photo of what it looks like now just as a comparison!!)

I am so pleased to be able to bring some wonderful educators to Nelson on the 22nd and 23rd of September for our cluster’s curriculum seminars.  This is going to be an exciting time for us all.  While we are all doing a variety of things in terms of implementing the curriculum in our own schools, it is fair to say that we are not quite ready to implement our own school’s curriculum… actually, it is not even in its design stage yet, but that is cool – because we are getting ourselves into a position to do this, and do it well!  :-)

Over this next month there will be an incredible amount of development and professional learning around curriculum and curriculum designs for schools in our region.  This is going to help our team and provide us with some much needed ‘digestion’ and ‘reflection’ time to enable us to review our plans and assert what it is we are going to do.  What’s more is that it is collaborative and will lead to some projects and developments across schools too!

This leads me to the reason for this entry… What would you ask schools and school leaders who are well down the track of implementation of the NZC and development of their own curriculum?  Please add these questions as comments below.  I would love your feedback!

Many thanks.

I read with great concern that the Government is going to be making big cuts to funding for physical therapy for students with special needs, here is the question time dialogue from the House on the 3rd of August.

I am not prepared to take sides here, nor am I ignoring the fact that we are still in a significant recession and spending cuts are to be expected.  However, I agree with the Hon. Clayton Cosgrove’s question regarding the extra 35 million dollars that is now being pumped into private schooling in this country (which is to happen over the next 4 years – reading the question time responses, you could be forgiven for missing this important detail) and whether that situation is fair.  I also agree that it is a ‘fair’ question, and that the response was unacceptable.  What I am struggling with here, is the fact that special needs kids have great needs and should NOT be the top priority for spending cuts.

I see that there has been a small ‘about turn‘ by the Minister and while the comments on that link are not very objective, they are certainly better that the Hon Trevor Mallard’s comments on the Labour Party Blog!  For the record here are his comments, and for some balance, the Minister’s comments are also provided.  This is not a swipe at the Minister or this Government over the special needs issue, the extra funding which has gone into the ORRS funding scheme has made the funding more accessible and the process tolerable.

The issue for me, is that when we enrol the child next year who needs extra physical therapy, where is the funding going to come from to help us support the child and the family?  While I value the support the MOE gives, it is the actual therapy that will make the greatest difference.

Aside from the obvious concerns around so much more funding going to private schools (surely if someone chooses private schools – it must be like going private in the health care system… the user pays!  Not the taxpayer!), I would feel so much more comfortable if the Minister would consider cutting costs where there was not a direct effect on student achievement, such as printing and sending of all of the online documents generated by the MOE and ERO to every school.  This documentation is very valuable, but I imagine that many schools cannot read it all – and it is duplicating what is already available.

That would be a good place to start, it would easily save the 2.5 million for the kids who need the physical therapy support.

I had a great afternoon completing some development around numeracy teaching and learning in our School.  This was extremely well facilitated by Elizabeth from UC Ed+ and it is really getting our team together to think about how we are teaching and how we can work together better to enhance outcomes for students.  I am so proud of our teaching team and the attitude and approaches they bring to this… our team is going to be successful due to the fact that they care so much about the student’s learning.

Enough!  I am now over National Standards and have moved through all of the stages of grief and am now on to ‘acceptance’…

I accept that these standards will:

• Make Schools and teachers accountable (I am convinced that this is the ‘not so hidden’ agenda) for nationwide student achievement
• Allow the Government to standardise reporting on student achievement
• If used well, could inform school improvement
• Be implemented regardless of the fuss kicked up by the sector and other experts
• Lead to ‘plain language’ reporting to parents
• Will lead to direct comparison of ‘perceived’ school performance
• Detract from teaching and learning as we build the learning around the assessment, rather than the assessment around the learning.

And as part of my ‘acceptance’ our team will implement these in a way that is morally responsible for our learners and ensuring that our learning culture and learning focus is at the forefront of what we do.

I will speak no more of these ‘Stand DUD s’ in this forum.

Here endeth the lesson.

Up until now I have not heard much from Mr Hattie regarding National Standards. He clearly is a man who likes to take time to make a measured and reasoned response.  Congratulations to him. This is indeed a worthy response (assuming the source is accurate!!).

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/education/news/article.cfm?c_id=35&objectid=10587936