Riccarton High School’s teaching and support staff are learners too. Our teaching staff have a regular professional learning session after school each Thursday.
This year we are learning how to:
- Build on and develop subject specific language knowledge and effective strategies which meet the learning needs of English Language Learners to enhance academic success.
- Continue to develop, with our ākonga, a range of effective 21st century learning tools suitable for a blended learning environment - including a focus on Digital Literacy and the skills required to be responsible Digital Citizens
As well as these two professional learning goals we are evaluating and reviewing our curriculum and pedagogy (the way we teach). Many parents and students participated in some focus groups last year and the work on this evaluation continues. At a recent Thursday session we transformed our Staffroom into a flexible learning space as we considered the key question:
Education is an ever-evolving process. Why exactly are we considering shifting how we educate students in our secondary schools?
Our staff engaged in a number of activities including:
- Considering the mega-drivers such as the digital revolution, globalisation, networked knowledge and the “post-normal” and whether our current education system can address these?
- Matching the New Zealand Curriculum’s Key Competencies with the 21st century skills it is believed young people will need in the exponentially-changing world
- How have the earthquakes impacted on educational change in Christchurch?
- Examining some schools interpretations on flexible-learning environments and what we can learn from their experiences as we head towards our own school renovation
- Sharing experiences of collaborative learning and collaborative teaching using our recent Year 8 day as an example of education outside our normal structures
- What will the graduate profile of future Riccarton students need to include?