“…almost one in five students are leaving school without the basic literacy and numeracy skills that they need.”

Wow, that’s pretty fantastic!  That means that over 80% of all New Zealand School children are leaving school with the basic literacy and numeracy skills that they need!

Of the 20% who are not achieving at the expected level for their age group, I will safely estimate that a quarter of them are  special needs or have been identified as having learning difficulties.  So we could probably bump that 80% closer to 90%.

Let’s put this into a real classroom, my classroom.

Fractions, Proportions and Ratios Stages 5-6:

I have 30 students – Year 3 and 4 (7, 8 and 9 years old).

(Well actually I have 28, but we will use 30 as a nice round number, I don’t want to make this to hard for you Mrs Tolley, I know that you are too busy to speak to or listen to us) (Also 30 is closer to the average class size in little old NZ).

1 out of 5 of them is below expected age levels in literacy and numeracy.

30 divided by 5 equals 6.

6 students are below – yep that’s my lowest reading group.

Of those six almost two of them have been identified as having learning difficulties.

(Luckily for me almost all of my students come to school after having a good nights sleep, breakfast, are well dressed for the weather and have a good healthy lunch in their bag).

Which means 4 of them are below.  So that’s 4 out of thirty? (correct me if I am wrong Mrs Tolley).

Yep I knew that!

That’s why I differentiate my teaching.  That’s why I get them as much extra help as possible from the funding that’s available to my school.  That’s why I have spoken to their parents and have given them strategies to help their children.

If the government wanted to know this, all they had to do was ask.

Hey! Brain Wave!

Instead of wasting millions of dollars on reprinting existing resources and renaming them as National Standards.  Why don’t you use that money to reduce my class size to 22 so that I can spend more time with my struggling students.

Makes sense to me …

Much of what Mark was saying during the day was not new to me and I found some of his statements quite opposed to my own beliefs about imagination and intelligence. However I persisted with an open, yet critical mind and was pleased to hear one of my key beliefs, about best practice teaching, being validated by Mark.

Mark advocates that there needs to be a strong educational shift from teaching CONTENT (traditional themes and genre) to facilitating CONTEXTS (Values and Competencies). This view alines itself perfectly with what I refer to as the Fourth Stage of Formative Practice.

Stage One – Prescribing the Learning Intention and Success Criteria to the student for each lesson and self-assessment.
Stage Two – Collaborating with the student to create their own success criteria for each lesson.
Stage Three – Purpose is introduced as apart of the LI, SC process for each lesson.
Stage Four – Learning Intentions and Purpose become Global not genre specific – we are able to use these Global Concepts in every lesson we facilitate or teach and the children are able to adapt their person SC to suit the context.
Stage Five and On – I am not sure what is next but I am very excited about finding out.

I am still contemplating the shape of this model, however I do see Formative Practice as a series of learning stages an Educator must progress through. The New Zealand Curriculum now allows and justifies this fundamental shift in educational practice. The beauty of Global Concept Practice is that it fits perfectly with the Ministry’s vision for the 21st Century Learner – To be confident, connected, actively involved, lifelong learners.

So I was unable to ask him why he charges for such a antiquated website, but I was inspired to delve into the New Zealand Curriculum, Formative Research and my own practice at a deeper level so that I will be ready to take that huge educational leap when the time comes. And hopefully I will of been able to build up pair of sturdy wings so I may soar.

In Our Hands

“To be encouraged,

modelled, and explored”.

Recently we, as a school, have been exploring the Values found in the new curriculum document. While the document does not officially come into effect until 2010, it would be beneficial for all those involved in Education to carefully unpack the inevitable implications of this document.

Unlike previous curriculum documents, the new document is comparatively light reading. However it has been carefully crafted to emphasizes the need for these values to be “expressed in the everyday actions and interactions within the school”. It is also pleasing to note that the document specifically states that these values are neither “exhaustive nor exclusive” allowing us to tailor them to the needs and values of our own diverse community.

Within my own classroom this term, we have chosen to explore the values of Excellence in-depth. As a school we noticed that the value of excellence easily under-pinned the other seven values, the Key Competencies and conveniently coincided with Beijing ‘08. (Three birds with one stone!)

As a class we explored Excellence in our learning, our-selves, our peers, our community and those awesome

super-stars we all admire. We came up with synonyms, actions and affirmations. Check out Wordle for fantastic display ideas.

The unexpected benefit of this intense (almost a week and a half) exploration was how well the value of excellence fit into our classroom ecology. Students identified excellence in their relationships and interactions with each other.

Another surprise when unpacking excellence was how highly they valued the accomplishments of their peers. When asked to identify individuals who showed excellence, most of the names were of children in their own community who had done something selfless. How perceptive children are!