Four minute walk through

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This walk through came off the back of me spending a day relieving in the junior school. I have been thinking a lot about the junior approach and how huge the transition into the middle school is. I love the junior approach of whole curriculum integration and self-regulated learning, I think this is something we could bring through to the middle school more.
  • What’s happening and why?
In our space we have been talking about lot about integration. At the moment we still break areas into curriculum subjects, although there is some integration through areas e.g. reading about olympics, inquiry into olympics but not a whole day exploration approach. How could we do this in the middles? We have such a large spread of curriculum to teach can we make sure there is detailed, specific coverage while teaching in a holistic, integrated way. I think some areas/topics lend themselves more to this approach other strategies not so much. I need to do some thinking around how we could integrate these subjects e.g. mult/div strategies as part of an overall project-based learning.
  • What’s not happening and why?
We feel there is a very fragmented approach to collaboration and integration throughout the school. We follow the 'middle school' model that has been built over time, is it time to have a whole school discussion about how we roll this out as a school? Now that we have had a few years of prototyping and getting to grips with collaboration as teachers is it time to revisit this and create an overall vision of where we are going?
  • What am I going to do to influence what is not happening and why?
I am going to research Jo Bowler and Bobbi Hunter to reframe our maths thinking.
I think there are some aspects of our practice that have great potential to grow, Dean and I need to reflect on this and discuss what we want to keep and what can be tweaked going in to next year.

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