Why we do what we do the way we do it.
THE PROBLEMS …
1 How do we best equip ‘Waverley kids’ to live in a changing world?
The Waverley kids of today live in a world quite foreign to all previous generations of Waverley kids. The cause of the difference is digital technology. The Waverley kids of the third millennium are born and grow up surrounded by technology – technology that is developing at increasingly exponential rates. The direct result of this is information overload – we’ve moved into the ‘Age of Infowhelm’. (ref “From Gutenberg to Gates to Google (and beyond…)” – Ian Jukes; October 2005)
Even if we doubled the time Waverley kids spent at school, it would be impossible to have them learn even a small percentage of the knowledge available to them. Current conservative estimates have the World Wide Web doubling in size every 120 days – there is absolutely no hope or point in attempting to keep pace with that. We need to give the kids ways to manage this reality. How do we do that?
2 The brains of today’s kids are developing differently – so they think differently.
It’s a fact: the brains of the digital natives (children) develop quite differently to their “digital immigrant” parents. (ref “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Part II: Do They Really Think Differently?” – Marc Prensky; December 2001). Prensky: “Our children today are being socialized in a way that is vastly different from their parents”. Schools are still largely based on systems designed for yesterday’s children – systems developed in times when much less was known about how the brain works. Now that we do know more; we are duty-bound to create ‘brain-friendly’ classrooms.
To compound matters, the knowledge and learning that was previously the preserve of schools and libraries is now available 24 hours a day; seven days a week to anyone with internet access. (ref “The Perfect [Education] Storm” – Mark Treadwell; August 2004). It is imperative that we move from “Just In Case Learning” that has historically been the way schools operate; to “Just In Time Learning” that an engaged learner requires and prefers. How do we do that?
3 There is too much in the curriculum – we’ll never cover it all!
Absolutely true – there was; and we couldn’t. The New Zealand Curriculum has been rewritten to retain the emphasis on numeracy and literacy and, importantly: to allow schools and communities to develop a curriculum that best meets their needs. In short; schools have been given the ability to determine the breadth and depth of the curriculum.
Again courtesy of the internet, there are multitudes of curricula that kids can access at any time of day. They are no longer confined to learning just what their families and schools teach. And the challenges in engaging students are greater than ever. Schools must find approaches to curriculum delivery that engage students, and meet the requirements of the students, their parents, and the national curriculum - quite a challenge in classrooms of invariably unique ‘digital natives’. How do we do that?
THE SOLUTIONS…
Treadwell illustrates how learning has evolved …. and must continue to evolve. Schools must adapt to keep pace. Consequently, in order to best meet the needs of our Waverley kids, we have set out to develop programmes that do exactly that - meet the needs of every individual for whom we are responsible. Professional development to improve our literacy, numeracy, and inquiry learning capabilities has been, and continues to be undertaken by Waverley Park teaching staff.
Our aim is to equip Waverley kids with the tools, strategies, skills, processes, and attitudes they will need to progress in their life-long learning journeys. Just as adults do; kids learn best by being immersed in problems and situations – situations where learning something new is driven by the need to learn it ‘just in time’ to use it.
For years now, New Zealand kids have been “immersed” in language-rich environments when they come to school to stimulate interest, skill acquisition, and ultimately, deep understanding of reading and writing. Mathematics programmes are now based on the same ‘immersion’ and deep understanding principles.
To provide the structure and strategies to base the learning covered in the areas more traditionally known as science, social studies, health and technology, we have employed the model of Inquiry Learning developed by curriculum design expert Lane Clark. The Lane Clark philosophy - “preparing our learners for their future; NOT our past”TM accurately reflects our own. The tools, strategies, processes, and criteria inherent in the Lane Clark approach to inquiry learning not only provide rigour and structure to students’ learning; they also allow kids to develop (appropriate to age and stage) genuine depth of understanding, independence, and areas of personal interest.
Real learning requires real contexts driving real motivation. That’s how is for most adults – kids are no different. In this inquiry model, kids are immersed in a clearly defined inquiry process that sets out to provide students with means of answering their “wonderings”; answers that lead to “So What?”TM - using what you now know to make difference in your own life and / or in the lives of others. This is the expectation of consequence or action coming out of new learning. In other words, the new learning has an outcome; a point; a benefit.
Not too difficult to pull off…………if you say it quickly enough………...