Saturday 19 September 2009

Expo 2009

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Last Thursday I had the pleasure of joining the community for the annual Burnham School Expo. It was wonderful to see the partnership that we have at Burnham School in action during this evening. The Wearable Arts Challenge this year involved families dressing up using recycled materials, culminating in a parade to show off the creations. Below are photos of many of the families having fun dressing up.

Here is the video of the junior dance performance and below are some photos from the evening.





Sunday 6 September 2009

Teacher Only Day - Burnham Curriculum

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The New Zealand National Curriculum has been revised and is updated so that schools can determine how it is implemented for their community. The vision for the new curriculum is very exciting, it states that we want lifelong learners who are confident, connected, and actively involved.

This is a great opportunity for us as a school, because we are able to design our future curriculum so that we best prepare our tamariki for the future. It is our chance to develop the competencies that work for our kids and will guide us in our partnership between home and school. It is also an opportunity to strengthen our partnership so we are all working towards the same goals and using the same language.

Our process started on Friday 4th September with our first Teacher Only Day. From my perspective as the new Principal this was a great opportunity to work with the teachers prior to starting on October 12.

The day involved staff coming up with ideas for what they want for our learners for the future, looking at the NZ curriculum and engaging in dialogue with tamariki and parents about what they feel is most important. The ideas was to interview families to look for ways in which we will consult more widely with our community in the future, as well as to generate some initial ideas.

Don't worry if you weren't able to contribute to this day, all families, children and community members will be opportunities to share ideas on what we want for the future learning for Burnham tamariki. We will take the amazing range of strengths of the school and build these into the new design for our future curriculum.

Some of the ideas generated include that children:
  • develop the confidence to be successful in high school and beyond.
  • develop strong ICT skills.
  • develop skills that are useful and practical, especially teamwork skills.
  • are able to take increasing control over their learning, having choice over both what they learn and how they learn.
  • have fun when they learn.
Please note that these ideas are by no means exhaustive, and you and your family will have your own, these are only initial ideas. There will be opportunities for students, parents and community members to contribute to the process of developing the Burnham School curriculum.

I invite you to make comments on this blog with your own ideas as comments to this blog post.