Learning 2.0

L is for Learning 2.0 in the A to Z challenge:

At Hobsonville Point Secondary School, we want to personalise learning. We want our kids to love learning. And we want the learning for both academic and personal dispositions to be rigorous. You might be curious about how a public secondary school is trying to achieve this. So here is the cheat sheet...

Start with Claire's blog post that describes the different structures of our school. Then read Megan's blog post that describes the anatomy of our learning hubs. And then, read through the modules we are offering for term two. In short though, modules cover the curriculum whilst learning hubs is where we develop the whole learner and where we make and develop our connections with families.

We still teach maths, english, science and so forth. But we do things a little differently. For example, you can choose how you do your maths and science in term two... So everyone is learning about maths and science, but you can choose to do it it in a visual arts context, a food and culture context or a social science context.

You might wonder what this looks like in practice...Below is a comparison between one of the modules I taught this term with Ros MacEachern called Larger than Life. You can see that I still taught statistics, however I just wrapped it in a context. And this clever wrapping allow us to personalise whilst providing rigour and curriculum coverage.

What we do: Maths at HPSS	New Zealand Curriculum
Modules take the place of subjects at HPSS. A module combines two or three subject areas. Students who have additional interests in maths will be able to gain extra coverage in  SPINS (special interest modules) which focus on extended coverage of learning areas	The New Zealand curriculum dictates what all students across the country should be learning at school From the New Zealand Curriculum: In a range of meaningful contexts, students will be engaged in thinking mathematically and statistically. They will solve problems and model situations.
Larger Than Life: (combining English and Maths) Under the English component of this module, students produced their own blog or vlog. Students in this module: Analysed graphs based on the content of their blogs/vlogs. E.g. Students who were blogging about gaming looked at graphs of console prices over time. Entered the amount of ‘hits’ from each of theirs sites in a spread sheet Posed questions about the amount of ‘hits’ that we were getting as a class. E.g. Did YouTube channels or blogs of the students in our class have the most hits? Did the boys or girls in our class get more hits? Calculated the averages to determine the answers for the questions above Begin to manipulate a spread sheet to input formulae and produce graphs	In statistics students will: Interpret statistical displays Use a calculator to determine averages Undertake a statistical investigation Flow chart from NZ Maths http://www.nzmaths.co.nz/elaborations-level-five-statistics

Of course, because the learning for every student looks different, we need to make sure there is consistency across the modules. This is gained from the learning design model which was constructed by pulling the New Zealand curriculum to pieces and the putting it back together again. Just one term in and most of the students are able to verbalise the main parts of the model and understand its process on driving learning.