Message from the Principal Welcome to our first Reflections magazine of the year. At Ōtūmoetai College we strive to provide a learning environment that enables students to reach their personal best in their academic studies, the arts, sporting and cultural pursuits. Our goal is for students to Mr Russell Gordon, grow into powerful thinkers Principal and learners who will embrace diversity, resilience as well as developing meaningful relationships with others.
It is true that what students know, can do or believe will vary across our classrooms. I believe that it is our teacher’s relationship with their students that help to bridge this gap.
2020 was certainly a year that taught us much about developing resilience, it is my hope that 2021 will be an uninterrupted year that will allow us to focus more on embracing what it is to be a powerful thinker and learner.
We want every student at Ōtūmoetai College to believe that ‘THEY CAN’, in order that they get to that place where they can look back at their time at Ōtūmoetai College and say, “I DID!”.
Because of the different needs of our students, teachers are required to be more responsive by adapting their programmes of learning to better suit our students. The following link is an example of a Year 9 programme of work that was deliberately developed to help bridge this divide. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BlB wOWhvDkQOCEigHhZ2uQI35etoIcCIs7q33YF0yhc/ edit?usp=sharing
In order to achieve these outcomes, we recognise that teaching is not simply the transfer of facts and figures. Effective teaching involves a high level of commitment to our students so as to enable them to be able to think more independently and effectively. Graham Nuthall states that effective teaching is about knowing what students believed, knew, could do before they were exposed to a new topic or standard, and what these same students believed, knew, and could do after they learnt that topic or standard. He goes on to argue that learning, of whatever kind, is about change, and unless the teacher knows what has changed in the minds, skills, and attitudes of their students, the teacher cannot really know how effective they have been. 3
