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