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"FROM
CORE BELIEFS TO UNIT PLANNING"
A STRUCTURE FOR CURRICULUM INTEGRATION
Background
We belief that it is
important for curriculum integration to be embedded as part of a
school's core beliefs about learning and teaching. These core beliefs
are supplementary to:
. Legal requirements – National Education
Goals and National Administration Guidelines
. Our School Charter
. Our School Mission and Vision
. School Policy and Curriculum Statements
Ecology
of Learning:
Creating a school
culture and classroom ecology that is conducive to learning is of
paramount importance.
The following
extract describes such an ecology of learning:
“Create a
Genial (Genius) Climate in the Classroom – For more important to the
awakening of genius than specific resources and experiences are the
broader attitudes and overall atmosphere of the classroom.
The Compact Oxford Dictionary (1991) gives several interrelated
meanings for genial, including ‘festive’, ‘conductive to
growth’, ‘enlivening’, ‘jovial’ and ’pertaining to genius or
natural disposition’. Each
of these meanings captures an aspect of the mood every classroom should
foster to help students realise their full potential as geniuses.
A
person walking into a genial classroom knows almost at once that it is a
place dedicated to the celebration of learning and young minds; a
cognitive greenhouse, so to speak, that honours and celebrates the
capacities of each and every student…This contrasts sharply with the
non-genial classroom in which strictness, rigidity, boredom, criticism,
or anxiety stifles the creative impulse and strangles any possibility
for joy, humour, flexibility or vitality”.
-Awakening
Genius in the Classroom. Armstrong
Thomas, ASCD, Virginia UAS 1998. Page
61-62
The beliefs need to
be established with students each year as teachers develop their ecology
of learning. This should be
seen as an on-going process consistent with the core culture of the
school.
A
Collegial Working Environment:
To be a teacher at
Muritai School means that you actively seek opportunities to support
your colleagues. Our school
is more effective because all staff work together in collegial,
supportive and co-operative way.
An
Integrated Curriculum:
One of the principal
aims of primary schooling is to assist students to understand and build
on their experiences and to make sense of their world.
The integrated curriculum makes possible the exploration of large
and complex human issues, which rarely limit themselves to logically
distinct subject areas. The
broad topic approach employed in the integrated curriculum presupposes
distinct disciplines; however, it shows how different disciplines
interconnect in the pursuit of particular questions.
At Muritai School we
believe that the most effective learning happens when connections are
made between curriculum or subject areas.
Our Integrated Curriculum Policy provides guidelines to support
this belief.
Our approach is
Inquiry Based. Students are
supported to explore their own issues and interests within a framework
that provides curriculum balance and focus.
The New Zealand
Curriculum Framework (1993) re-enforces this approach of holistic
learning and curriculum integration.
“…Schools
may achieve a balanced and broad curriculum in a number of ways, for
example, by organising their programmes around subjects, by using an
integrated approach or by using topic or thematic approaches…
The essential learning areas are ‘inter-related’.
Any activity which students engage in will draw on more than one
learning area. In
planning programmes schools need to understand and make sure of
connections between the learning areas.”
(NZ Curriculum
Framework, MOE 1993. Pages
8 & 9)
The essential skills
to be developed by all students are generic to all curriculum
statements.
“All
essential skills are important if students are to achieve their
potential. The categories
are simply convenient labels for grouping the essential skills that all
students need to develop. These
skills cannot be developed in isolation.
They will be developed through the essential learning areas in
different contexts across the curriculum.
By relating the development of skills to the contexts in which
they are used, both in the classroom and the wider world, school
programmes will provide learning which students can see to be relevant,
meaningful and useful to them”. (NZ
Curriculum Framework. MOE
1993, Page 17)
Student
Centred Inquiry:
All teachers at
Muritai School use an Inquiry Based Learning approach to integrated
studies. Within a planned
framework students are given the opportunity to explore their own
interests, concerns and issues. The
‘Three-Story Intellect’ model of learning is a critical component of
this approach.
School
Organisation:
School and classroom
organisation aims to facilitate optimal curriculum delivery.
English and
Mathematics will be taught daily in the morning.
The content of these morning sessions may not necessarily
“fit” in with the theme being studies in the current integrated
unit.
Integrated Studies
will be taught in the afternoon and will encompass the areas of Social
Studies, Science, Health and Technology, and all essential skills.
Aspects of English will always be present.
Mathematics,
Physical Well-Being and The Arts will also be integrated if there is a
natural connection or an individual student’s inquiry leads into one
or more of these areas.
So
what are our core beliefs?
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