NZ CURRICULUM PARENT INFORMATION EVENING

Thank you to all those parents who turned out for the parent information evening with guest speaker Chris Arcus. Chris talked through a presentation where he explained the rationale behind the revised New Zealand Curriculum and the challenges schools face as they work towards fully implementing this for the start of 2010.

The NZ Curriculum is a statement (document) of what is deemed important in education. It takes as its starting point a vision of our young people as 'lifelong learners' who are confident and creative, connected, and actively involved. It includes a clear set of principles on which to base curriculum decision-making. It sets out values that are to be encouraged, modeled, and explored. It defines 5 key competencies that are critical to sustained learning and effective participation in society and that underline the emphasis on lifelong learning (TRUMP: Thinking, Relating to others, Understanding symbols, text and numbers, Managing self, Participating and contributing, ) .

Key Messages for schools and teachers are:

• Curriculum design and review is an ongoing, continuous process.
• Schools, with their communities, make decisions about how to give effect to the National Curriculum to best address the particular needs, interests and circumstances of the school's students and community.
• A school curriculum clarifies priorities for student learning, the ways in which those priorities will be addressed, and how student progress and the quality of teaching and learning will be assessed.
• At the heart of a school curriculum is the teachers making and acting on decisions, based on evidence about what to teach and how to teach it.

If you are not familiar with the NZ Curriculum and would like to learn more I recommend you visit the tki website by clicking on the link below: http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-documents/The-New-Zealand-Curriculum

Why not Projects like in Standard 4?

Teaching and learning these days is probably quite different to your experiences during your own primary school years. In fact there seems to be a lot of new terminology used these days that many of you probably find quite confusing? In this issue of the Bird’s Eye View I would like to share with you a model of teaching we call ‘inquiry learning’ and how it differs from the ‘projects’ model you and I experienced back in standard four. Inquiry Learning is best described as an investigation into an idea, question, problem or issue. Students are encouraged to take ownership of their learning as it involves asking questions, gathering and analysing information, generating solutions, making decisions, justifying conclusions and taking action. Inquiry-based learning provides wonderful opportunities for students to work co-operatively and collaboratively to solve problems. It helps to develop higher-order/critical and creative thinking skills to help students become connected and excited about their learning – where students learn how to learn. At Muritai we have created a 6 stage inquiry model which is used to break down the process of inquiry and help students gain a better understanding of what this involves. The model is displayed in every classroom as 6 waves that “Howie’ surfs along as the children move along each of the stages. A break down of the Muritai Inquiry Model is included below. Ask your children to talk to you through what it’s all about. Muritai School 6 stages of inquiry:
Stage 1: EXCITE (creating a sense of wondering)
Purpose:
• To engage students
• To find out what we think, believe and feel
• To gauge student interest and attitude - to ignite their interest
• To introduce or clarify language
Stage 2: EXPLORE (Finding out/knowledge)
Purpose:
• To take the students beyond what they already know
• To challenge students’ ideas, beliefs and values
• To enable students to use skills (eg thinking, communication, co-operation, research skills) and knowledge to collect new information
Stage 3: EXPLAIN (Sorting /Comprehension – what does it mean?)
Purpose:
• To sort, organise, represent and present information from the finding stage of the unit
• How can we help students make sense of the data they have gathered
• How will they process, sort and organise their ideas
• To provide opportunities for the students to use their preferred ways of learning to demonstrate their learning (knowledge skills values)
Stage 4: EXAMINE (Going further/ Analysis – what is the level of my understanding?)
Purpose:
• To extend/broaden the unit if time permits or appropriate
• To allow students to follow independent line of inquiry, where applicable or practical
• To consolidate through homework
• To allow for learning in preferred learning style
Stage 5: EXPAND (Making Conclusions - Synthesis/Presentation/Creation)
Purpose:
• To provide opportunities to present their work/findings
• To provide opportunities for children to think about their learning
• To draw conclusions and make connections between ideas
• To identify changes in skill, attitudes and values
• To refer back to initial brainstorms or ideas
• To assess if appropriate
Stage 6: EXPRESS (Evaluation)
Purpose:
• Reflecting on how well they think they did
• Receiving feedback from peers and teachers
• Teacher feeding forward – future learning goals

This process is not purely linear as there is flexibility for the children to move between the different stages at any time. If you have any questions or are interested in finding out more about Inquiry Learning in general, please feel free to contact your child’s teacher.

Muritai Family Survey - 2009

The survey is up and running and we really want to hear what you have to say. By completing the survey you are helping the school continue to be reflective and forward thinking so that we, as a school community, can continue striving to best meet the needs of each and every child. Last year we received valuable feedback from about a third of our parent community with results being used as part of an ongoing review of how well the school and Board is functioning and as input to our current annual and strategic planning. This year we want to hear from every family about how well things are going for your child/ren and for you as parents and stakeholders in our school community. We recommend that you first talk to your child/ren about their experiences in the classroom and playground and perhaps sit with them when you go through the survey. The information you obtain from their responses and your perceptions will hopefully better inform your answers to the questions. If you have not yet completed the family survey please do so as soon as possible.

GREEN GOLD!!! Top Enviro-Schools Award

Last Friday we held a Powhiri to welcome some very important guests to our school. The school has been working extremely hard towards achieving the prestigious Green/Gold Enviroschool award and Friday was our final assessment day. The atmosphere was amazing with voices from our Y5-8 kapa haka group ringing out on the senior school playground and a large majority of the school attending and supporting the team. The judges were blown away by the welcome, the senior school student leader speeches and the presentations from staff and students throughout the day. We are very excited to report that at the end of the day, we were awarded the Green/Gold certification. This is the highest level you can achieve within the Enviroschools award framework. This award recognises the huge efforts and commitment to sustainability from all the teachers, students and the Eastbourne community. Muritai is the second school in the Greater Wellington Region to achieve this prestigious award and we are all very proud. Although this is an achievement that reflects the efforts made by all areas of the school, special acknowledgement needs to go to Stephen Eames and his senior school enviro-team for their leadership and guidance throughout the process. I would also like to recognize past student leaders and all those parents who have contributed and supported the school to help make such an achievement possible. Check out the latest on the school enviro-blog: http://www.muritaienviro.blogspot.com

10-aside rugby

On Tuesday I was very fortunate to travel with a great bunch of Y5-8 students to Fraser Park for a 10-aside tackle rugby tournament organised by the Wellington Rugby Union. We entered three mixed teams (boys and girls) - two Year 5/6 teams and one Y7/8 team. They got to play three round robin games with a points system that established a semi finals draw. All our teams performed really well with one making the finals in their grade. I spent most of the day with the Y7/8 team who were a lot smaller than their oppositon. Their courage and determination to work together as a team produced some outstanding tackles and tries. One memorable moment was a tackle made by Lucy Stotter on an outstanding player (twice the size of Lucy) who seemed to be scoring tries at will. It was bone crunching and lifted the spirits of the team. They never gave an inch all day and finished 2nd after the round robin games. I was very proud of the way the students represented our school so positively. It was the best day of my week by far!

New Curriculum - Teacher Only Day

At Muritai we are having the second of two ministry funded teacher only days on Friday 21st August. The day provides teachers with a rare opportunity to work together to reflect on what progress has been made and to collaboratively plan for future actions in further implementing the new New Zealand curriculum. So far this year we have reviewed how we teach Literacy, Numeracy, Tikanga Maori - as a direct link to teaching learning languages, Health and PE and Science. We aim to use our findings to help rewrite these sections of our school curriculum framework.

The new curriculum does bring with it some changes to the way we go about educating our children. An example of such change is the Ministry drive for schools to promote what they are calling ‘Key Competencies’. There are five Key Competencies that have been identified: Thinking, Using Language, Symbols and Text, Managing Self, Relating to Others and Participating and Contributing. They are more complex than skills, drawing on knowledge, attitudes and values in ways that lead to action - the key competencies are becoming a rich and powerful component of our schools newly revised curriculum framework. I describe the key competencies as being the high level abilities that people need to be successful in life and engage in lifelong learning. This term we are focusing on learning how to ‘relate to others’ and ‘managing self'. It is my view that teaching that incorporates the key competencies helps to enable students to meet our school vision of "being the best that they can be"

For more information on Key Competencies click on the link: http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/the_new_zealand_curriculum_online/Key-competencies

Te Wiki o te Reo Maori - Maori Language week

Last week was ‘Te Wiki o te Reo Maori’ or more commonly known as Maori language week. The teaching of tikanga maori and te reo has been a teaching and learning focus area for the school throughout 2009 and has seen teachers and students learning and working together. The best thing about ‘Te Wiki o te Reo Maori’ this year was that there was little to no change to the existing classroom learning programmes, as te reo and particularly kapa haka have become embedded in to everyday classroom programmes. An example of this can be seen with what is happening throughout the school with inquiry and the connections with Maori culture. Learning about different places, languages and cultures is an important part of the Muritai Curriculum. This term the juniors are enjoying learning about myths and legends, while our Y3-6 are exploring 'Nga Iwi o te Whenua’ – The people of the land. The senior school students are enjoying learning about ‘Mana Tangata’ – The power of the person. I recommend you regularly visit our schools classroom blogs for updates and examples of student learning in this area of the curriculum: http://www.muritai.school.nz/classes_and_staff_2009.htm