Essences

Thursday began with the HPSS Ukulele Orchestra performimg Happy Birthday for the lovely Karma. We then fed on a beautiful birthday cake which she had to bake for herself!

The other highlight from Thursday was presentations from the Specialised Learning Leaders and the Learning Team Leaders on their work so far in developing their areas of our curriculum.

 The SLLs began with the task of explaining how the walls of the cave depicted their view of what the essence of the NZ Curriculum is.

Lisa explained that the essence statements from the NZC represented the Why of the NZC. She also pointed out that when key words from across all of the Learning Areas were naturally grouped the cycle represented above formed the How of the NZC. The cycle on the wall grouped these words into exploring, making sense of learning, thinking, generating ideas, refining ideas, taking action and evaluating. Hello! This looks like a design thinking model!

The remaining stickies on the wall behind her describe the contexts and concepts for learning or the What of the NZC. The great news was that the dispositions that fell out of their analysis of the NZC looked remarkably like the Hobsonville Habits! Inspirational work!

The LTLs described how they began grouping their thinking in a linear fashion and after a little while they discovered it wasn't making sense so why not try a circle!?

Yasmin and Lea then told us how they then began expanding on the practices in the outside circle.

The wall wasn't big enough so Sally created this wonderful thingy which has captured the 6 major areas of practice we expect in our Learning Hubs.

Their job is to now create frameworks to support these practices so that the Learning Coaches have a 'curriculum' and set of tools to use with their learners. Check out Sally's blog post on this work.

My mind was buzzing as I headed off to the Museum for a LATE talk on Dionysus and the topic of Intoxication. How fitting as it matched the state I was in (metaphorically)!

The metaphoric hangover from this intoxication meant I don't even know what happened on Friday: it was a daze of Talking Heads Stop Making Sense!, Duran Duran, Yasmin Le Bon, George Michael and a staff member modelling school uniform.

I need to go and lie down!