Kia ora e te whānau, staff at Titirangi School had a great day of learning yesterday. We spent time looking at the new English Curriculum and the expectations at each phase.

These are quite different (in some cases harder and in some cases easier) than what we have been using previously.  This is a good thing in many ways as the expectations of what students will be learning at each level is much more specific but the negatives are that there are skills and knowledge that may have been expected at Year 4 and this has now been moved to a Year 3 expectation (as an example).  

We also learned about the science of learning and how the brain works - we had a lot of fun with this as we tried to master the skill of juggling!  The important learning behind this fun activity was that learners need to make connections with prior knowledge - the amount of existing knowledge and level to which it is interconnected influences the quality of the learning (more interconnected knowledge leads to easier and faster learning). If this topic interests you, check out...https://theeducationhub.org.nz/category/school-resources/science-of-learning/

The teacher only days are given by the Ministry of Education to help schools unpack and implement the new curriculum documents - however this is a challenge because as of Wednesday they were still in draft form - in fact we planned the detail of the Teacher Only day content at the start of Term 3 and on Thursday of last week we received an updated draft where content had changed!

Our philosophy continues to be a cautious one - we don't want to hurry to make big changes - we are taking a slower approach and want to make sure we get things right the first time rather than rushing things and constantly backtracking. We are really excited about the curriculum documents. We will be planning some parent evenings in 2025 to share with our community.

Whāia e koe te iti kahurangi ki te tūohu koe, me he maunga teitei - Pursue excellence – should you stumble, let it be to a lofty mountain.