Reviewing our school goal number 4

At our annual middle leaders planning day, our first session was a review of our school goals for 2017.  Part of my inquiry this year has been focussed on implementing school goal number 4:

To work across departments in Year 9 on an integrated unit of work with a community focus or context.

At the end of 2016, we decided to implement links to the 4 To remind staff about the lead up to the unit, I discussed the staff PLD around what that would like and decided on our term 1 unit to focus on 'Sustainability'. As a staff we developed 6 areas of focus, each designed to give students a choice as to which issue they wanted to focus on.

From there, department were shared a document to show how they could support the teaching and learning of the topic as followed: English

• Maths
• Science
• Technology

From there, an initial plan for the Middle Leaders was designed whereby HOD's were assigned to support a class on their blogs. A draft Unit plan and a student site were developed and this was taught to the year 9's in term 1.

Below is a swat analysis review of the unit:

• Process of integration during the unit (Teaching and Learning)
• Strengths:  
• Social Studies driven meant consistency in approach.  Weekly meetings with year 9 teachers.
• All year 9 Students were talking sustainability
• Sustainability day a success.
• ‘Just in time teaching’ happened eg. The River Talks and 9RMz’s trip to Ruapotaka (contexts outside of school where Science and Sos teachers expected to come)
• Student blogs
• High engagement for staff involved (Gene, Karen etc)
• Weaknesses:
• Not all staff/departments on board.
• HODs not able to check on classes.
• Project Templates not used because of difficulty in applying them in social studies context.  Staff not comfortable using them.
• Structure not totally clear
• Opportunities
• Fewer departments involved means more structure
• More student agency
• More learnings from this year
• Threats
• Loss of interest or enthusiasm from staff
• Lack of time

• End product from integration:  Te Taiao O Tamaki presentations.  
• Strengths:
• Positive feedback from the community
• High student engagement for students who presented and students who visited
• Collaborative, connected learning.
• Developed better relationships with students
• Weaknesses:
• Wish we could’ve taken more presentations
• Lots of Dot’s time taken on own
• Opportunities
• Have our own school presentations for all projects
• Threats:
• Limiting it to the best kids

Key Learnings:  Kids loved it.

• Evidence is seen in year 9 exams here (as part of Dot’s inquiry).  
• Feedback on blogs - regular student blogging
• Student survey (need to send to all year 9’s)
• Compared to 2016, term 1 year 9’s, this years year 9 less disruption issues

MOVING FORWARD:

We want to develop and looking at a model that will work for us:

• Howick College innovation stream - one class where students apply to be in it.  Involves 4 core subjects.
• Fusion at Oxford Area school -all year 9’s and 10’s.  Involves Maths, Technology and Social Sciences.  Project based.
• A partnership with the Liggins Institute from Auckland University is helping to lead a collaborative narrative/transformative learning approach developed  in the Cook Islands.  Ready made resources (Unit plan)

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