*Activity 6: Contemporary issues or trends in New Zealand or internationally

*Activity 6: Contemporary issues or trends in New Zealand or internationally

Assessment for learning

In my context National Standards are a major driving factor for education. These results are analysed and reported to our school BOT regularly, once a term. This reporting is related to increased standardised testing. I use standardised testing to inform my teaching but  despite I feel a degree of frustration also as it has led to increased amount of time in my class being devoted to literacy and numeracy. This is often at the expense of other areas of the curriculum, often the arts and science or technology pursuits. This is frustrating for me as I feel like I teach more content and students don’t get equitable access to the area of our curriculum. National standards and the scope of our curriculum don’t marry up for me. My personal point of view is to move towards focus assessment on the demonstration of skills identified in the national curriculum, specifically the key competencies. I think a demonstration of how these are related to learning sets students up to be life-long learners. My personal feeling is that relevant and specific feedback around the process of learning is more relevant and beneficial for students that receiving a grade or nation standard.

Responsive, rich curriculum

I think that New Zealand has a broad and engaging curriculum. I have been lucky through my teaching career to plan and teach in a school where we look to integrate curriculum areas and focuses to maximise teaching and learning opportunities. That being said, I think we only focus on a narrow band of the curriculum. In the current educational climate, the predominant focus is on numeracy and literacy.  This has become the focus with reporting of school results. While appearing to make schools accountable, I think it has had a negative impact on learning. Students with strengths in different areas or interests in the curriculum may not have equitable access to share their particular talents and feel success. Through this post graduate paper I have been exposed to and become interested in the maker movement and the learnings that can come from this (Poppler and Bender, 2013) and the passion that can be facilitated through learning. I am in interested in learning more about how this approach can be integrated across curriculum areas to provide rich, responsive learning experiences for students.

Student centred learning

I am in the exciting position of teaching in a 1:1 digital device environment next year. The integration and set up of this in our school will be a shared responsibility but something that I will play an important part in. The most exciting thing about this transition for me is that it will help me on my way to provide students with the opportunity to pursue truly autonomous learning. In the past, pursuing student voice has proved useful for me. At the start of my career I thought compliance and control in the classroom where the desire. Now I see that this really shuts down the thinking and reduces the curiosity of kids. I have moved from year 2 to year 5-6 and one of my biggest issues is that students are disengaged. I hope this digital device supports me in the transition away from one size fits all. I also aim to employ the GENIUS HOUR, an hour a day set aside where students have the opportunity to pursue their passions and interests (EFE world news service, 2014).  Flipped learning is a method I have researched and would like to try, with the focus on flipped mastery to help with some of the areas I have to get through as discussed in the assessment and curriculum areas of this blog post.

References

Key competencies (2014) retrived from http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Key-competencies

Initiatives seek to tap into children's creativity. (2014, November 26). EFE World News Service.

Peppler, K., & Bender, S. (2013). Maker movement spreads innovation one project at a time: lessons learned from the grassroots spreading of the "maker movement" can help us reimagine schools and foster a mindset of creativity and innovation in educational settings. Phi Delta Kappan, 95(3), 2.