Week 4 News & Views

Tuesday night documentary link

If you didn't get a chance to watch this on Tuesday night then please take the time to click on the picture above and watch it on TV3Now (online). What ever we perceive school and learning to be it is important to take the time to consider the context that has framed this thing called school and learning and have some discussion around something that has a huge part to play in all our lives!
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Monday reflection: Our School and our Learning

On Monday night we had a great crowd of (approximately) 80 parents come along to our school hall to hear about what is changing with learning at our school. I began the evening by asking everyone to consider two questions:

• What does school look like?
• What does learning look like?

With these two questions in mind I introduced the scene of what our place is about before everyone headed off to the different team information. A quick summary is below:

• the one constant in our modern world is change
• adaptable schools develop a culture of change
• example - the tools and methods of dentistry has changed - like every profession - why not school and learning?
• We reflected on the background to school planning - that the full curriculum (including reading, writing & maths) is still the main thing. The change is in how we 'do learning' that is appropriate for todays learner in todays world!

Our children need to know that success is not easy - but requires grit, perseverance and effort! As a team our staff stood as a group - then moved into teaching teams - then into the collaborative teaching teams - then into the different curriculum teams. This was done to demonstrate that the expectation we have for our children to collaborate and innovate together in their learning is the same expectation we have of ourselves as teachers in the way we collaborate together to make our learning programmes relevant, engaging and innovative for our children!

The different teaching teams then took groups of parents back to their own space and shared 'the coal face' experience. Thanks to all our parents who came out for that evening. We look forward to seeing you at the next evening we hold.