Welcome to 2008

It has already been a hectic start to the year. We started the year off with a teacher only day on 4 Feb. This was in the form of a whole cluster meeting to which we invited Mark Treadwell to speak on future implications for NZ curiculum, assessment and how the key competencies and inquiry support the vision of the school. He spoke of how schools can transform the framework into the curriculum.
See the cluster wiki for detailed notes



His online notes are available here.
Whatever by Mark Treadwell will be available in March.
Details of Mark's sessions can be found here.

Next up is the Learning at Schools Conference in Rotorua 20-22 Feb. There will be 5 presentations made there by members of our cluster. A fantastic effort and good luck to all.

Lead Teachers Day

The Term 3 Lead Teachers' Day started with discussion on embedding the Key Competencies into the Inquiry process.
We watched Rose Hipkins video and followed up with discussion on the main points she makes.
Two important aspects were discussed -
1. Curriculum cohesion - Rose mentions this and it is a ongoing issue for many schools. Pressures of timetabling and balance make it difficult for the full inquiry process to take place often resulting in unfinished and shallow outcomes, leaving both teachers and students frustrated.
2. Assessment of Inquiry - a matter of ongoing discussion - what do we actually assess, and what does that assessment look like. What is the purpose of the assessment, and what does it mean? More questions than answers, I'm afraid.

We also watched the Yoram Harpaz series of videos on thinking. A wonderful resource and one that kept us in discussion for a long time.

The afternoon was spent looking at podcasting. We made audio files in Garageband or Audacity, and uploaded them to Podomatic. These podcasts were then able to be subscribed to through Apple Store in iTunes.

Also view our Bucklands Beach cluster wiki for more resources and information.

Lead Teachers Day

We held our second Lead Teachers day on Wed 13 June. Our focus for the day was Inquiry Learning. Our discussions centred around big picture ideas framed by the following questions.
What is Inquiry?
What kind of learners do we want?
What are we doing already?
What is powerful learning?
What is powerful to learn?
What is the difference between knowledge/information?



We looked at what each school is doing at the moment, and the different models we have developed and are currently using.
Further information is on our cluster wiki.

Inquiry Learning

A series of staff meetings were recently held to explore Inquiry Learning and the draft Social Science curriculum document.
Bucklands Beach Intermediate School have looked at many exisiting inquiry models and developed a model for Inquiry that the staff are now trialing in the classroom. The emphasis is on student choice and students taking control of their own learning in an authentic context.
Follow this link the the Bucklands Beach ICTPD cluster wiki to download powerpoint presentations that examine the big idea of inquiry and what it means, and a break down of the Bucklands Beach Intermediate Inquiry model in detail.