Personalised Learning at HPSS

Posted on February 10, 2014 by stevemouldey

After many months of planning, today was the day that personalised learning really took flight at Hobsonville Point Secondary School. We have tussled with the tension between curriculum coverage and personalising learning for the past few months and today students saw what this has resulted in.

Most New Zealand Secondary Schools place students in form classes for the “core subjects” (English, Maths, Science, Social Studies and Physical Education/Health) whilst allowing some measure of choice over the “option subjects” (Technology, Languages and The Arts). All of these Learning Areas are compulsory up to Year 10 in the New Zealand Curriculum, so we had set out to avoid the ancient hierarchy of subjects that dominates NZ schools.
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Ready, Set, Go!

Posted on February 4, 2014 by stevemouldey

After all that time deschooling, deconstructing and designing we have finally crossed the start line this week. Monday was our official opening day as Hobsonville Point Secondary School became a real school!

Most of the first 2 days has been spent with my Learning Hub of 9 students (for a great description of Learning Hubs and how they operate see Megan’s post). These are the students for whom I will act as academic and pastoral mentor for the next 5 years and I am rapt to have such an awesome bunch.

My Learning Hub, now known as Reweti

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A Culture of Prototyping

Posted on December 15, 2013 by stevemouldey

I have been thinking a lot lately about the diagram below which covers the elements of a Design Thinking Mindset. This is the first post in a series I hope to publish over the next fortnight covering how I see these developing at Hobsonville Point Secondary School.

Elements of a Design Thinking Mindset from dSchool K12 Wiki

A Culture of Prototyping can be quite scary for teachers (and particularly school leaders) to start developing. This is because it requires all members of the staff to have no fear of failure. Continue reading →

Creativity as Disobedient Thought

Posted on December 10, 2013 by stevemouldey

Today we were lucky enough to have Professor Welby Ings speak to us as an end of year inspiration. This post will try to (briefly) cover the hour and a half master class on Creativity that we were treated to. (For an 18 minute version see Welby Ings’ TedxAuckland Talk here).

Learning outside school is not within traditional houses of thought (subjects) that schools put in place. For example when learning to drive we are not taught completely separate aspects of this without thought to the connections that exist. The hierarchies of disciplines that exist in schools are bollocks but unfortunately embedded in people’s minds.

Too often in schools we require students to Continue reading →

A More Powerful Inquiry

Posted on December 10, 2013 by stevemouldey

One of my core educational values is Curiosity. Yet, in the past I have fallen into the trap of Inquiry = Research instead of a more open curious discovery process. One of the biggest pedagogical changes I have made was when I shifted to an inquiry approach that was about allowing students more time to dwell, think and discuss their questions on whatever the topic of study was at that time.

A lot of this had been intuitive practice so I was stoked when I first came across the Galileo Educational Network website and their intro to Inquiry (thanks Karen for the link!):

Intro to What is Inquiry from Galileo Education Network

Prior to this I had usually thought of inquiry more as the information literacy type of inquiry where you are purposely following a series of steps in your investigation. Two of the best versions I had seen of this that had influenced my practice were: Continue reading →

HPSS Discovery Day

Posted on November 14, 2013 by stevemouldey

Yesterday our staff had a day out provoking minds before we plan our modules for next year. We started off at the National Library building in Auckland where we undertook some cross-curricular Guerrilla Geography (or Place Hacking) before moving inside to do some Design Thinking workshops. Lunch was at the Mind Lab in Newmarket before an afternoon Robotics challenge.

It was an awesome day out and will hopefully help everyone hit the planning next week with an adventurous mindset!

For more details on our day – here’s a Storify of tweets sent during our day:

[View the story “HPSS Discovery Day” on Storify]

Designing and Causing Learning

Posted on November 7, 2013 by stevemouldey

Wednesday morning as a staff we focused on what the learning will look like at Hobsonville Point Secondary School.

I shared a blog post by Grant Wiggins entitled Beyond teacher egocentrism: design thinking which is absolutely brilliant and provokes teachers to think of themselves as just one element that influences learning. This had really struck a chord for me and so I was rapt to see the rest of our staff enjoying the reading as well.

There are lots of good points in this blog but one line that sticks out for me and was mentioned by others in our discussions was:

we are in the business of designing and causing learning instead of merely in the business of teaching

Our activity focused on what Grant sees as the conditions necessary for optimal engagement and active learning to occur. Staff were broken into pairs or 3s to think about what that condition will look like for our specific context of HPSS. Below are the conditions and what we believe they look like for us: Continue reading →

Bringing Discovery Back

Posted on November 3, 2013 by stevemouldey

On Friday I was invited/gatecrashed a visit by our Deputy Principals to see the Mind Lab in Newmarket. It is an incredible space that really empowers people to discover science, technology and engineering. We are having a large MakerSpace built in our new school so were looking forward to seeing some ideas for how it could be set up and used plus work out what the Mind Lab could offer above what we could do in future.

Chris Clay met us and showed us around the amazing space while explaining what each area is used for: film special effects, 3D animation, robotics, coding, science…it was incredible as you can see from the photos below:

What a Science Lab can look like

The Coding Room and Corridor down to Robotics

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Enabling Constraints

Posted on November 2, 2013 by stevemouldey

Seeing your Principal send a tweet like this is so incredibly affirming and validating of the work you have been undertaking. Especially when it comes on a day where your team is sharing the outcome of weeks of work putting together the structures for learning to take place in your school.

The time spent on the vision, values etc. last term was the foundation for the structures coming into place over the past 2 weeks. All our decisions in putting these in place are well grounded in the school vision and values. Then in one day this week we introduced the staff to all the structures supporting the delivery of our curriculum: Continue reading →

Shooting the Rapids

Posted on October 26, 2013 by stevemouldey

In this context, the practitioner is less like the bulldozer driver carving a way through the landscape to a pre conceived objective, more like a combination of canoeist shooting the rapids and creative artist exploring possibilities and waiting for inspiration.

(Mike Radford, 2007)

The quote above is my favourite teaching metaphor and one that I re-read regularly. It came to mind several times through this week where it really did feel like we were ‘Shooting the Rapids.’ Continue reading →

Steve Mouldey

Emergent Reflections of a Secondary Teacher

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