Mr Hurst's Blog

We are linking with Parklea Public School in Glenwood Park, NewSouth Wales (Ross Sutherland, Principal)

Ross and myself are both Apple Distinguished Educators and will be meeting in Cork in July.

Parklea work hard at school improvement based on detailed research. Ross says they “have established a whole school culture that is being accepted with local schools within our learning community as well as our feeder high school. This will build a consistent and collective provision of current pedagogy and learning across our local area. Growing connections with New Zealand schools and looking to create ongoing connctionswith some schools which may be of benefit to Kaizen Group. Will be looking to move forward over this year and next on the following:
* continue parent/carer information sessions on 1-1 learning;
* establish and extend our work with guided inquiry and assessment;
* link technology more authentically into every aspect of our curriculum (differntiating learning);
* extend our work within our school learning community and feeder high school around innovation, thinking skills and guided inquiry;
* look to extend our use of iLife and apps K-12;
* sharing leadership and whole school learning systems with a growing number of schools in NZ; and
* continuing our sharing with Kaizen schools.”

Lever House – This links in very well with the work we have done:

Lever House has worked hard at using iLife throughout the curriculum for all year groups. We have introduced our own curriculum called the LHLE (Lever House Learning Experience) and devloped leadership roles through our local Kaizen schools

and plan to do:

• Extending the use of iTouches on a 121 i basis for all pupils in KS 2.
• Parental involvement for 1/2 hour every morning for all EYFS/KS 1 pupils
• Introduce a choosing curriculum for all KS 2 pupils for 1/2 hour at start of day -
• where pupils learn from each other, different adults (including parents) in different areas including tremote learning through skype
• Re-visiting our LHLE curriculum, making it more personalised