Good Day Kunyung Families
Just to get people thinking this week I am asking you to consider the following questions………..do classrooms look and sound different to years gone by? Has the role of the teacher, student and the nature of the task changed? Has learning changed to meet the needs of our future learners?
It’s a huge YES to all of these things……..
I’m going to use an idea called ‘The Golden Circle’ by Simon Sinek to explain our developing curriculum and why it is important to change and adjust the way we teach and the way students learn?!
Why..…….because 
people require more than just knowledge to survive in the world as we know it and in a world that is ever evolving…….our students require so many skills, attitudes and learner attributes to live in a world that requires problem solving, innovation, creativity, curious and collaboration to be the successful global citizens they will be.
Why.…….because we want our students to ‘know how to learn’ and not just what they are learning!
Why.……we want our school to be providing the best education possible for our students!
The following is our WHAT and our HOW!!
WHAT.….We now use the Victorian Curriculum and PYP Essential Elements as our ‘What do we want to learn’.
This is what we want to achieve at the end of our journey- it is the result of our why- our proof!
HOW.…….’We learn best through’: INQUIRY LEARNING, PERSONALISED LEARNING, LEARNER AGENCY and we have a variety of ways to ‘now what we have learned’.
Not only are teachers aware of this but so are our students and, more importantly, they are involved in many of these choices and decisions.
By the sheer nature of this thinking, the role of the teacher is vastly different to what it used to be, the students have so much buy in, and engagement, in the learning that involvement and role is no where near what it used to look like when students were ’empty vessels that needed filling’. The task can no longer be the same as it was years ago purely because worksheets and repetitive activities just don’t make the grade if students are to have Learner Agency and tasks don’t work if they are aimed at ‘one size fits all’ learning.
Do we still teach Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, Maths, History, Geography, Science, Personal development……absolutely…….it’s the how that has moved into the 21st Century!
PYP Coordinators Day- The Buzz……
Melanie Woodland and myself shared an exciting experience at the PYP Victorian Coordinators Day spent with ‘Tracey Ezard’- author of the book ‘The Bu
zz’. Tracey was inspirational and gave us time to reflect on the learning environment we have created at Kunyung for staff! We were able to identify what we need to do to support staff and inspire them to want to be the best they can be…………we shared our thinking with many other PYP schools and were so happy with the learning environment we currently have at Kunyung. We are certainly not a compliant staff- we disagree on occasions and have stimulating and engaging discussions. We push ourselves out of our comfort zone- always looking to improve ourselves. Many other schools sit nicely in the comfortable zone and maintain the status quo………we are always questioning and dipping into the confused state of thinking, just so we can discuss, share and move back into the transformative zone!
We took a lot out of the day that has since been shared with staff but one thing we really thought was worth sharing with the whole school community was:
‘Emotions are contagious………what infection are you spreading?’
What an incredibly exciting time to be in teaching and to be at Kunyung!
Kim Jackson