Taking Time

On Friday we had a Teachers Only Day to take time to delve into the second half of the New Zealand Curriculum.  The minister has been generous in allowing schools this time.  

Over the last three and a half years we began this process by developing a shared vision.  The vision statement and picture took six months to create.  The following year was spent making sense of one of the vision concepts Life Long Learning.  Since then each key principle in the vision has been unpacked collectively, a huge amount of time was focussed on developing students learning capacity.  Julia Atkin's question "What is powerful learning?"

Hence it was now time to take the time to focus on "What is powerful to learn?"  

There has been an imbalance in schools interpretations of the previous curriculum developments.  Covering content has out weighed building students ability and capacity to learn.  We have before us an incredible opportunity to re think the balance.  Importantly as we were reminded by watching 'Did you know - 2.0' we must look to the future rather than our past to responsibly enable our students to thrive in their future world.

Questions we continue to ponder on;

What is the essence of .......? e.g science, maths, the arts

What are the key concepts, enduring understandings that students should develop?