Ensuring access to the curriculum

Published: 15 Jun 2017
Audience:
Parents
Schools
Topics:
Video
Improvement in Action Te Ahu Whakamua

Summary

We expect everybody to be successful who comes through our door.

Curriculum approaches in years 9 and 10 are designed to set students up for success.

Key messages:

  • Assessment prior to school entry is the starting point for tracking students’ achievement and progress
  • Mixed ability groupings operate at years 9 and 10
  • All students work to individual goals and teaching is differentiated
  • Priority is place on students achievement and progress in mathematics and English to ensure all students have opportunity to succeed in NCEA
  • Role modeling by senior students enables year 9 and 10 students to develop the confidence to achieve equitable outcomes
  • “We are all the same, we all have our strengths and our weaknesses, we all move forward, there is no difference between us”     

Things to think about:

  • How do you ensure that the design and implementation of your curriculum enables every student to make the progress needed to achieve curriculum expectations and be successful beyond school?

The evaluation indicators this video illustrates

  • Domain 4: Responsive curriculum, effective teaching and opportunity to learn
    • Evaluation indicators
      • Students learn, achieve and progress in the breadth and depth of The New Zealand Curriculum and/or Te Marautanga o Aotearoa 
      • Students have effective, sufficient and equitable opportunities to learn  

This video is part of a series

This video is part of the series Improvement in Action Te Ahu Whakamua. We created this series to inspire schools with examples of success in action. These examples highlight the benefits of fulfilling the evaluation indicators we use to review schools.

Remote video URL

(The video opens on a woman standing in font of a large window, speaking into the camera. Text along the bottom of the screen reads “Rachel Williams, Deputy Principal Curriculum, McAuley High School”. As she says ‘we invite’, the scene changes to her and another woman at a table in an office. The table is covered in papers and they make notes on some of them as they speak. Rachel’s voiceover continues.)

 

The tracking starts for our students when they come in for their Year 8 entrance tests, and we invite the RTLB cluster in, to be part of that testing process. They're observing the students while they're doing the test. They're looking for students that are not putting pen to paper. They're looking for particular characteristics.

 

(We return to Rachel in front of the window.)

 

We get a lot of information in from the feeder schools, but we still start collecting our own information so that we can start to build up a really big picture of where the students are at.

 

(A new voice takes over as we see a teacher in a classroom. A student raises their hand, and she points to them, smiling. The camera pans over the students.)

We abolished streaming in Year 9 and 10.

 

(As she says ‘bottom class’, the camera shows the speaker. She is one of the women from the first scene, and she sits in the same office. Text along the bottom of the screen reads, ‘Anne Miles, Principal, McAuley High School’.)

Some people saw themselves as the elite, and others saw themselves as the bottom class, even though you may disguise it with a name that you give them. So we mix them.

 

(Anne’s voiceover continues as the camera changes to show a girl in a classroom, writing into a workbook.)

And it worked really well.

 

(Rachel Williams takes over the voiceover as the video shows several other students studying.)

You'll see a lot of students working at very different levels.

 

(We return to her in front of the window.)

In some of the classes, you'll have students working from curriculum level 2 all the way up to curriculum level 6 within the same class.

That is a huge expectation on the teachers to prepare the work to make sure that the students can do this.

 

(Three girls sit around a table, working from books. One of them holds a paper reading “Probability Level 3”.)

But it's a focus that we've had, because it gets back to that whole expectation-- that we expect everybody to be successful that comes in our door.

 

(We are back with Anne in her office.)

And they know that someone may be more able than someone else, but that doesn't really matter.

 

(We see a close-up of a girls face, someone flipping through a workbook, and then the camera pans across girls working in a classroom.)

What matters is that I'm achieving to the best my ability, and I'm moving forward, and I can get there, and I will get there. That's what's important.

 

(The video returns to Rachel.)

Our focus, in Year 9 and 10, is making sure that they have extra maths, extra English. And then what we find is, by the time they get to Year 11, they can cope a lot better with their subjects at Year 11, and certainly into Year 12 and 13.

But if we didn't spend that extra time in Year 9 and 10 addressing the literacy and the numeracy needs, then I don't think our success at Year 11 would be what it is.

 

(We are briefly back to Anne in her office before switching to the two woman’s meeting.)

We changed the reporting system, so that parents knew honestly where their students were at.

 

(They continue writing as they speak amongst themselves. We can faintly hear it in the background but not enough to make out what they say.)

And it's not a focus on: Josie's well-behaved, it's about: What is Josie doing in English? Where does she need to develop further in to develop her reading skills," or whatever.

 

(Rachel’s voiceover takes over before the camera changes back to her in front of the window. As she says ‘as well’ the video changes to two girls in a classroom. One puts a piece of paper on the desk and points to something with a pen as the other watches.)

Even our very best students have comments in the Feed Forward section, as well, getting that mind-set that we're all here to learn, every single one of us in the school.

 

(Anne’s voiceover returns as the girls continue their work.)

I tell the students that we're all the same, and that we all have our strengths, and we all have our weaknesses, and we all move forward.

 

(We are back with Anne in her office.)

There's no difference between us.