Today we looked at the values in the new curriculum and how they relate to Room Ten. Annie modelled her list in the morning and we talked about what they meant. This after noon we came up with our own statements about how they relate to Room Ten. Annie thought we did better than she did! They have a lot of meaning to us and are written by us. They are in our words.
Our Key Values
The key values of learning in Room Ten

Excellence: Trying our best all the time and excellent work produced and created everyday.

Innovation, Inquiry and Curiosity: We are exploring, creating, taking risks, wondering, imagining, discovering, inventing and asking questions.

Diversity: Respect for and care about other people’s similarities and differences.

Equity: Include everyone, share and be fair to everyone. Make people feel comfortable and welcome. Be a good loser as well as a good winner.

Community and Participation: Everyone needs to feel happy and included. We need to be responsible in our class, our school and community.

Ecological Sustainability: Care about our world so that we have a green, healthy future.

Integrity: Believe in yourself and others.

Respect: For yourself, others and our Earth.

Life Long Learning: As long as we are living we are learning new things. Be excited about learning and learn as if we are going to live forever. We need to take risks and learn from our mistakes.

Humour and Fun: Learning and working with others needs to be fun! Be excited and enjoy learning new things.

Reflections about Key Competencies

I attended Lester Flockton's session in Cromwell on Friday on the implementation of the new curriculum. It certainly challenged some of my thinking, but also confirmed a lot of it. When talking about the Key Competencies need to be integrated, holistic and are complex. These KCs are capabilities to live and learn and help children develop the skills to contribute actively in the community. They are critical to sustained learning and effective particularly for successful life in society. Teachers are only able to assess KCs in the school context and need to be embedded into the micro-climate of the classroom. It is important t o remember that 70% of what children learn and know comes from the home and 30% from the school. Two of the KCs are intellectual ( about learning and thinking) - Understanding Signs, Symbols and Texts and Thinking; while the other three are relational (Managing Self, Relating to Others and Participating and Communicating) .

After thinking about the Habits of Mind, I have been reflecting on how we are going to integrate these into the KCs. Lester mentioned that if we go down this track it may be a lot for teachers and children to remember. He said that these HofM fit into 3 main areas:
Critical Thinking
CreativeThinking
Reflective Thinking
Maybe this is a better way?
Thinking routines were also talked about. As teachers we need to guide support and scaffold these until they become 'habits of mind'. There are different kinds of routines children need to learn - housekeeping, management, learning and talking routines.

The management team will be taking some of our findings to the staff to encourage discussion and reflection. The Curriculum Plan is developing well but we need to make sure we get it right for our school. Everything we do needs to be developed and owned by the whole staff. Lester said 2 things that are important for all schools to remember ...
'Time taken for THIS
is
Time taken for THAT'
and...
"Keep going back to the child. It's all about the child."
Important thinking in the development of the curriculum!

Linking 'Habits of Mind' to Key Competencies

Art Costa's 'Habits of Mind' Click on banner to view a list of these.

A Habit of Mind is knowing how to behave intelligently.

A Habit of Mind is knowing what to do when we are unsure or unclear of the next step or when we DON'T know the answer.

There are 16 0f these. Spectrum Education has a PDF to print off and it is easy to understand for both teachers and children.

At Wanaka Primary we are linking and matching these to the key competencies to benefit teachers and children's learning. We are a community of learners therefore integrate the key competencies (and habits of mind) into everything we do. We are working hard to develop life-long learners at our school. What we are trying to do is develop the key competencies in our learners through authentic, rich and meaningful learning situations and experiences.

Studies have demonstrated that successful people from different backgrounds regularly use these sixteen intellectual habits. Students who develop these 'Habits of Mind' lay the foundation for optimal intellectual adaptability and creativity when faced with intellectual challenges.

'Key Competencies and Habits of Mind both…

• Include knowledge, skills, attitudes and values
• Create and critique knowledge
• Aim to develop common good and social responsibility
• Enlist performance-based actions, behaviours, choices and assessment
• Develop dispositions for life-long learning
• Develop critical reflection skills
• Integrate the holistic and complex
• Focus on identity: the student voice
• Makes links to others, home and the world they live in
• Use knowledge to carry out meaningful tasks
• Explicitly train learners to think
• Value inclination, sensitivity, capability, commitment, motivation and discernment'

From BallanceClusterWiki

Setting Goals

This week we have been learning more about goal setting and goal getting.

Goals tell you where we are going, how we are going to get there and what we will do when we get there. When we’ve reached a goal we need to give ourselves a pat on the back. We can have all kinds of goals with different timeframes. We can make daily goals, like “today I am going to spend an extra half hour practising my throwing and catching skills for PE; OR we can make weekly goals, like “this week I am going to do most of my homefun BEFORE it is due’; OR a big whopping yearly goal, like ‘this year I am going to win an award at rugby prizegiving.” Setting goals – big or small – helps keep us focused on what we want to achieve.

The ‘how to’ part is really important. If we say, “I am going to be a famous singer’ then sit around and wait for it to happen, then we might be disappointed. We need to make sure we spend time on the ‘how to’ – the steps we’re going to take to make a dream a reality – and we WILL succeed!

Goal Setters and Goal Getters

There are all kinds of goals, from small ones to really big ones.

1. Write down a goal or goals you have set for yourself

2. Write down the steps you’ve planned to reach your goal or goals

3. Write down a goal you have achieved in the past

4. Write about how you reached the goal – the hardest and easiest bits

Key Competencies

We at Wanaka Primary, believe that our children are empowered through the development of the key competencies - Managing Self, Participating & Contributing, Thinking, Using Language, Symbols & Texts and Relating to Others. I was at ULearn 2008 and it was very reassuring to realise that we are well down the track, especially in the unpacking of these and what they mean for our school. Over the year we have been working with the teachers and children to unpack these key competencies in more detail. These key competencies are more than skills; they are the capabilities people need in order to live, work and contribute as active members of their communities. They are the 'glue' that sticks everything together. Capable people draw on and combine all the resources available to them: knowledge, skills, attitudes and values.
Managing Self has been our main focus for 2008. During Term One we focused on 'Goal setting', Term Two on 'Planning', Term Three on 'Taking Action' and this term it will be 'Reflection'.
http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/the_new_zealand_curriculum/key_competencies

We focus on the key competencies, values and especially goal setting this term. We have set goals for the rest of the term and are reviewing and self assessing these. Parent and child interviews are coming up soon in week 9 or 10. We can't wait! I will let you know the correct dates later in the term.