Term 1, Week 10, 2021

Discovery Learning

Many of us have often heard people say "there is nothing new under the sun", and people have lived on planet Earth for long enough for it to have a ring of truth to it. It's certainly said by many in education circles.

This year we are trying something a little bit new for us by making some changes to how we organise for "Inquiry". We are moving towards a project based learning model, although we are putting our own Ridgway twist on it, for learning in science, social studies, the arts, and technology. We are calling this "Discovery Learning".

Project based learning is not completely new, and certainly the idea of doing a project at school will be familiar to many parents. Our WHY | WHAT | HOW poster sets out WHY we've decided to use a project approach and lists some of the 'WHAT it look likes'. We've also created a poster that describes the things we expect kaiako (teachers) and ākonga (learners) to say.

We've been motivated to apply a project approach to our inquiry learning because we want children to have more say in what they learn and more opportunities to apply their learning in real contexts.

In Term 1 Discovery options included, Wearable Art, Bug Hotels, Nuts & Bolts, Writing Picture Books, Making Musical Instruments and more. There was lots of great learning happening across all Discovery groups and we are proud of the many different learning experiences that were offered. We've since gathered feedback from children and teachers and have used this to make some improvements to our organisation. In Term 2 the Discovery options are all related to the social sciences and children will be finding out what group they are in before the holidays.

Our teachers will continue to develop how we implement Discovery. In Term 2 we are working to ensure that children have opportunities to develop the dispositions and skills that sit with our school values. We'll tell you more later.

Some pics from the Bug Hotel group...