My Goal for this Year - 2018

My Smart Goal: 

By the end of Term 1 2019, the ODS Curriculum is realised and is a comprehensive document that has been developed and is being used by teachers at ODS.

Understanding by Design - Part 2 (31/03/2018)

In part 1 we looked at how we have to stay focused to ensure that everything in our plan tracks back to the transfer goal.

In this post I will look at:

1. how transfer differs from understanding, 
2. developing our own transfer goals, 
3. 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. . . 

1. 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, 
2. 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. 

Understanding by Design - Part 1 (27/02/2018)

Today we had a session to help our working group develop our understanding of Understanding by Design. Here are some of my take aways from the session.

We get scatter brain and loose focus: 
In the planning process we must ensure that everything filters back to the transfer goal. EVERYTHING.  I have created this mind map as my way of understanding it. This is somewhat different than the planning template and I think better illustrates the pathways towards transfer through each understanding. It separates out all the pathways towards transfer through each understanding rather than grouping all the understanding together, essential questions together etc. You can refer to the map towards transfer and the planning template below.

Map Towards Transfer.

Planning Template

Spend HEAPS of time on the stage 1. 
The first page which requires development of the Transfer goal, Understandings, Essential Questions, and Knowledge and Skills takes a long time to develop. The more time spent on the more focused the rest of the plan gets. Basically, put in the hard yards up front and then it gets easier.

Collaboration is easy with this process: 
A group of people can do the first page and then go in quite different directions after that. The fist page will normally develop a skill/concept and then the context can vary.

Works in well with our school curriculum and the NZC.

Curriculum Review - Part 2: Establishing a Direction

Establishing a direction:

In order to do our curriculum review we needed to have a clear understanding of what we wanted our students to 'be' when they got to the end of Year 6. We needed to consult with our stakeholder groups what they thought a learner should be when they left our school. 

On the NZC Online Blog, a post titled "Graduate profiles - a vision for future-oriented learners,' states: 

Viewable at: http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-resources/NZC-Online-blog/Graduate-profiles-a-vision-of-future-oriented-learners

This post states that a graduate profile describes 'skills, knowledge and attitudes that students will need to develop in order to participate in a range of life contexts beyond school.' In order to progress we needed to explore just what this meant for us. To do this we needed to use our vision (to create: confident, connected learners who make a positive difference) to guide our community in developing a graduate profile that identifies the skills, knowledge and attitudes we want our leavers to possess. 

Below is a picture of my understanding of the 'flow.' The vision informs the graduate profile which will, in turn, inform the school curriculum. 

Time to consult with teachers, parents, BOT and students. Time to explore those voices. . . 

Curriculum Review - Part 1: What can I expect?

Getting started: 

Reviewing the curriculum is very challenging and I have had a number of false starts. Please refer to image below:

As you can see from the model above, "false starts" are a result of not having an action plan in place. Although I very much agree with this model, sometimes jumping into change can prove to be difficult - I know I have a tendency to over read, and think, for instance. This has the inevitable effect of me procrastinating because I want to make sure that I am doing things 'just right.'

In order to help me get things 'just right,' I spent numerous hours looking at the Curriculum Review section on TKI, trying to educate myself on how best to proceed. I found the following statement helpful.

Available at: http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Reviewing-your-curriculum/Setting-the-direction

Like anything that involves taking abstract ideas and multiple view points, and making them concrete, curriculum review can be a 'messy business.' This statement gives me hope and allows me to understand that sometimes you just have to march forward! Another statement, shared with me at the NAPP Conference in 2014, was from a presentation by Richard Edmundson. He said quite simply that, "change: Sticky, messy." I take comfort from both of these statements as they are clear in what to expect: a journey where in order to get the best outcome, I need to be prepared to be uncertain and take comfort in being out of my depth.

So here I go. I'm holding my breath and about to get stuck into the madness of curriculum review! What can I expect? messiness!