Muritai School Curriculum for Learning

For this blog entry I wanted to share with you what we call the front section of our schools 'Curriculum for learning'. This document has been developed through a collaborative process of self-review and consultation over the past few years. Its principle function is to put in action the set direction for student learning outlined in the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC p. 6) and to develop the competencies they need for study, work, and lifelong learning so they can all go on to realize their true potential. The 'Curriculum for Learning' document aims to improve children's learning through quality teaching and learning programmes, practices, strategies and opportunities.

It supports our children to:
o Interact with others who are outside Eastbourne and in the wider world.
o Develop the skills required to synthesize information and create useful knowledge.
o Improve their achievement in the foundation competencies of literacy and numeracy.
o Be competitive by nature, to improve and excel, but also collaborative and cooperative in their learning and social context.
o Embrace change and learn to be collaborative problem-solvers.
o Achieve across a broader set of domains: Tikanga Maori, Learning Languages, The Arts and Sport…
o Make connections so they can see real purpose for their learning, and enable students to perceive the natural relationships between the disciplines that makeup our comprehensive curriculum.

At Muritai School we recognize that achieving our vision, involves contributions from our whole school community and in particular the teaching staff. Through adopting a collaborative process when writing and constructing the schools curriculum aims to encourage teachers to:
o Utilize real life contemporary issues as a focus for their teaching programs.
o To plan and work collaboratively, utilizing individual skills and abilities and as a means of support for each other.
o Differentiate learning so that their teaching programs cater for the relevant needs of all students within the classroom.

I have attached the link to the page on our schools website where you can download a pdf version of our 'Curriculum for Learning'.

http://www.muritai.school.nz/pages/information.php

School Culture and Student Survey

As part of my Deputy Principal role I am currently writing a report for our Board of Trustees on what we call 'The Heart of the School'. The report looks at various aspects of the school culture with particular interest in reviewing how things are going, if strategies are working as intended and what we could perhaps be doing better for our kids. Put simply we want to reflect and review if our school culture is continuing to have a positive impact for students and their learning.

When writing such a report it is important to also consider the views of the students! To do this staff surveyed their students by having them reflect and feedback thoughts on 3 questions.

1. What do you like about Muritai School?
2. What do Muritai teachers do to help you be the best that you can be?
3. What could be different to make Muritai School an even better place?

Implementation of the survey was kept very simple. Junior teachers scribed student ideas and thoughts while the Y4-8 teachers organised their classes in to small groups. Scribers recorded group responses ensuring everyone contributed to each of the questions. I then collected each class’s feedback and have presented the findings for each question using the illustrative online resource 'wordle'. I have since shared the respective 'wordless' with teams and have displayed them in the staffroom.

Feedback from staff about the student survey process was very positive. General feeling was:

• There was high level of positive feedback about student-staff relationships which is extremely reassuring.
• Students enjoyed being able to have their say.
• Helped confirm staff feeling that the school is a safe, supportive and enjoyable place to be for the children.
• There were some interesting ideas for future improvement that teachers said they wouldn’t have thought important.
  

I have included 2-3 examples of the 'wordles' below.

What Y5/6 like about our school:

What our Y3/4 children think our teachers do well to help them be the best that they can be:


What our Y1/2 children though could be different to help Muritai School be even better:

Two thirds of Pupils Failing New Stanadards

An article on stuff.co.nz shares findings from a report analyzing the governments 'National Standards' education policy. The research was carried out by an independent education think-tank, the NZ Council for Educational Research (NZCER). The council used its pool of results from the Progressive Achievement Tests to model how many children would meet the Government's maths standards.

The report highlights that two-thirds of children are failing to met the standards in the first year of the implementation of this primary school initiative, with serious problems exposed over their consistency.

To read this article click on the link below:

Two-thirds-of-pupils-failing-new-standards

This week I was fortunate enough to attend a professional learning workshop where I was able to talk to teachers and Principals from other schools across the Wellington region, mainly about how they are going about implementing the standards. It was interesting to discover that there were noticeable variations in what levels of achievement were deemed to be 'at' each of the standards. This should be of real concern to the ministry as from the dozen or so schools I spoke to it would be impossible to make any comparisons what so ever on student achievement, not just between the schools I spoke with but nationwide. It was also felt that the subjective nature of the OTJ's was causing real concern for teachers, especially when trying to make mid year judgements.

League Tables

A recent stuff.co.nz article says that 'Primary school league tables are back on the agenda, with Education Minister Anne Tolley now saying they are inevitable.'

After setting up a think tank to try to find a way to stop data from the new National Standards being used to rank schools against one another the minister has now said no-one had come up with an acceptable solution that could stop league tables. To read this article click on the link below:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/3977280/League-tables-in-primary-schools-now-inevitable

Analyizing School Wide Data

At the end of last term teachers shared with parents their child's achievement against the three national standards at the mid-year interviews . Since then I have completed a school wide analysis of the results collected across all 8 year groups. The findings have been very predictable and have not highlighted any cohort groups with strengths or weaknesses that we weren't already aware of. This is largely due to the fact that our teachers already knew how well their students were doing through the implementation and use of tried and proven assessment tools such as AsTTle and PAT maths.

Having now gained a little experience working with national standards data I am still not really sure of what the benefits will be for improving student learning? I'd be very interested in hearing from other schools who have been able to achieve this.

Minister Speaking at Annual Principals Conference

Today Education Minister Anne Tolley is speaking at the annual Principals conference in Queenstown. This is the day after the NZ Principals Federation has overwhelmingly voted to oppose national standards. The standards were opposed in three remits:

1st =Stated the federation had determined national standards were not delivering the outcomes they intended,.

2nd = The only way forward was to seek a complete revision of national standards in partnership with the sector and the minister and that this process should be actioned with urgency.

3rd = Was a decision to advise the minister that it supported the regional associations of Southland and Auckland, which recommended principals withdraw attendance at national standards training.

To find out more click on the news link below:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/3877176/Minister-to-face-schools-rebellion

Mid-Year Reporting Process

The up coming parent-teacher interviews will be the first time parents will receive information about how well their child is tracking against the national standards. With interviews only being 15 minutes we wanted to maximise the time available to focus on each child's strengths and next learning steps. To help with this the school has created a movie that clearly explains the reporting process with particular reference to:

1. How teachers make judgements on student achievement against each of the national standards.
2. How teachers will present this information at the interview.

The movie was filmed by two of our senior students who are involved with Muritai TV.