In this post I will look at:
- how transfer differs from understanding,
- developing our own transfer goals,
- how will the use of transfer goals fit into our school curriculum and the New Zealand Curriculum.
How Transfer Differs from Understandings:
Transfer goals and understandings. I was stuck for quite some time trying to understand the difference between these 2 terms. Put simply transfer is about doing. More specifically, doing in the long term. For us this means - when students leave Year 6 what do we want them to be able to do.
Understandings are about concepts. they tend to be abstract ideas. They can vary in complexity and lend themselves to differentiation. They must be framed with the following sentence starter . . .
Students will understand that. . . The reason for this is so the understanding can be framed in way that offers richer learning opportunities for learners. For example,
If we said:
"Students will understand the perspectives of the treaty partners" we can miss opportunities for scope.
If we said:
"Student will understand that perspective influences understanding" we would have a much richer idea to explore. That is the power of that.
Developing our own Transfer Goals:
Transfer is what we want our students to be able to DO in the long term. For Oratia this means, what do we want them to be able to do when they leave our school. When students leave Oratia at the end of Year 6, that is our long term. When the ODS Curriculum Working Group is formulating transfer goals they are being developed with the follow sentence scaffold. . .
When students leave Oratia, they will be able to use their learning to . .
The working group is developing school-wide transfer goals that are subject specific (NZC) and cross disciplinary (ODSC). In our last session we developed a range of Social Studies transfer goals. We are trying to have just 3. Trying to whittle them down can be difficult. Here is an example of how we may be able to whittle down our transfer goals..
Transfer goal 1:
When students leave Oratia, they will be able to use their learning to use their understanding of Tiriti o Waitangi to empathise, understand and relate to others,
Transfer goal 2:
When students leave Oratia, they will be able to use their learning to reflect on and make sense of their own identity and heritage.
Can we combine both of these transfer goals to have just one? Here is my attempt. . .
- When students leave Oratia, they will be able to use their learning to use their understanding of tiriti O Waitangi and their identity to empathise, understand and relate to others. or,
- When students leave Oratia, they will be able to use their learning to use their cultural awareness when interacting with others.
This is quite difficult! Does the term cultural awareness in this statement capture identity and tiriti o waitangi? Something to think about perhaps. As you can see, developing transfer goals can be difficult.
how will the use of transfer goals fit into our school curriculum and the New Zealand Curriculum.
Transfer goals can be subject specific or cross disciplinary. Therefore as part of our process we are prioritising the aspects of the NZC along with our school curriculum to develop our overview of learning that occurs at our school. All of this filters towards our graduate leaver profile that we spent a big chunk of last year developing. Slowly all of the different pieces of our new curriculum are coming together. It's getting very exciting.
