Back for the new year!  Welcome to 2007.  I deliberately stayed away from the school work after the term ended to give myself a break, but my mind’s already started thinking about where to head to this year.

One thing that needs to be carefully considered is how and why we will do the learning that needs to occur in the class this year.  There are existing units of work that are part of a whole school program.  What I suppose is the focus for me is relevance.  Not that what we’re teaching is necessarily irrelevant, but sometimes (or perhaps often) we fail to see the relevance of it, and therefore fail to make the learning relevant to our students.  Often we can assume something needs to be taught simply because we’ve always taught it.

Not only does the content need to be relevant, but the methods of learning as well.  We live in quite a different age nowadays where the ability to negotiate change has become one of the most essential life skills.  There is a need to carefully embed technology into classroom learning.  Yet it cannot be more lock-step, observe and reproduce methodology that has prevailed in the past.  Children need to be taught how to take control of, and responsibility for their learning.  If we complain that children want to be “spoon-fed”, then who do we really have to blame?  After all, if these children are with us for six hours a day, 200 days a year, then we have a significant opportunity with which to change the assumed norms of our classrooms.

So, the next challenge is to creatively structure how the learning will take place in our key learning areas for Term 1, 2007:

Religious Education: Talking & Listening to God (Prayer), Lent, Easter Triduum
English: Exposition text type (had a blank on the literary text)
Mathematics: TBC
Human Society and Its Environment: Living in Communities
Science and Technology: Built Environments
Creative Arts: My Dream House (painting), Music (specialist teacher)
Personal Development, Health and Physical Education: Social Skills