Spiral of Inquiry - leading us to look at gamification

After observing and interviewing our students we have come up with some common elements they have said about themselves:

• They like personalised learning
• They say they find it hard to listen
• They like competition and achievement

So we are specifically focusing on:

• Working with small groups or individually wherever possible - having eye contact at their level
• Reinforcements, or replacements for listening.
• Breaking achievement down into small incremental steps.
• How to reward achievement in bite-sized chunks.

Which has led into linking with the idea of gamification in education.  This is nothing new.  Good teaching breaks learning down into manageable steps and rewards progress and modern games give a whole new spin to this.



Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

Spirals of Inquiry

In our staff pld session next week we will be looking at starting a spiral of inquiry.  The first step is to decide on a "hunch" which we are doing at the moment.

Click this link to access the Spirals of Inquiry paper

Rubrics for pedagogy

These rubrics for pedagogy were developed in mid 2015 by combining the summary of findings from the OECD research into Innovative Learning with the Microsoft rubrics for 21st century learning.  This term we are working with Core Education on spirals of inquiry and we are using this rubric as a guide for what we want to achieve (double click on the image for a clearer view).

Young Catholic Leaders Day

Students from year 7 & 8 travelled to St Joseph's in Timaru today to meet with their peers from St Patrick's Waimate, St Joseph's Temuka, St Joseph's Timaru and the Sacred Heart.

They spent the day considering what it means to be a Catholic leader.  During the day we shared two liturgies with each school taking a part.  Our students were a bit nervous about taking the stage to sing "Awesome God," but did it really well.

Student leaders from Roncalli College talked about their leadership journeys.  Head boy, Jacob Mulholland explained that the key to being a good leader is being true to yourself and taking every opportunity that comes your way.

Josh South from WAVE was an inspirational speaker telling about his battle with cancer as a 12 year old which resulted in him losing his leg and how he went on to become a paralympic swimming gold medalist.  He explained that the major thing that got in his way when when he failed to achieve at his swimming was his own attitude.  He needed to focus on the swimming and not get distracted by ego.

Everyone also had the chance to take part in two workshops with a choice of ki o rahi, fun prayers, digital prayers, art, and a student workshop where each school shared their leadership opportunities.

Term 2 Science Inquiry

Term 2.2016 Science Inquiry

BIG QUESTION: God gave us the earth and all that is in it.  Our job is to look after the earth.  How do we look after our earth?

We are using a traditional inquiry model with a SOLO twist to help us support the children's independence

First 3 weeks

 Second 3 weeks

Third 3 weeks

Student Agency - a starting point

Our March 2016 staff meeting.  Student agency is the underlying focus of our inquiry/SOLO based learning and our digital PLD in 2016