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PPTA Newsletter #1 Nov 08
PPTA Curriculum Support Days 2009Newsletter #1
This is the first of a series of newsletters that will keep you informed about planning for the Curriculum Support Days which will take place in terms 2 and 3 2009. You will also find the newsletters on the PPTA and New Zealand Secondary Principals? Council (NZSPC) websites.
PPTA and NZSPC are pleased to be working together on this project, which is also supported by Ministry of Education funding.
Spotlight on resources
The Curriculum Support Days will assist principals and teachers to bring together the different parts of the New Zealand curriculum into each specialist subject area.
Participants will be working with sample materials at the unit planning level that
demonstrate how the achievement objectives and the key competencies can be
brought together, taking into account also other aspects of the new curriculum such as the vision, principles, values and advice about effective pedagogy. People will be helped to develop their own teaching resources through working with these samples. The days will cover both junior (Years 7-10) in the mornings and senior (Years 11-13) in the afternoons, but those participants who don?t teach senior
classes will be able to continue working on the junior curriculum in the afternoon. The programme for the day will be flexible to meet teachers? diverse needs, given that each school is working towards its own customised approach to the new curriculum.
Costs
PPTA Executive resolved at its meeting last week to make no charge to nonmembers of PPTA who attend support days. School support services staff and initial teacher education staff and students will also be welcome at support days free of charge. This decision recognises the financial input of the Ministry of Education, which means that the union?s contribution will be substantially reduced.
Schedule.
Registrations
Everyone will receive a registration form in late January. Each school will be asked to indicate by mid-February:
? which location and date your school is choosing
? how many teachers in each subject wish to participate.
Registrations will be managed through PPTA national office. We will send a detailed schedule in late February which will include a breakdown of subjects and venues. Read this carefully, because smaller subjects may not have workshops in every centre. If anyone is affected by this, their principal may be able to support their attendance at a larger centre on another day.
The PPTA website www.ppta.org.nz will carry pages dedicated to the Curriculum
Support Days ? including all relevant resources ? so smaller subjects will find useful information and materials there.
We might use video conferencing in some cases. Participants may also want to
consider using this technology to support ongoing contact with facilitators and
teachers in other schools.
Travel costs
PPTA has asked the Ministry of Education to find a way to fund travel costs for the
more remote schools. While no solution to this has been found yet, we continue to
discuss the matter.
Venues and facilitators
We are grateful for the number of offers already received from principals willing to
host support day groups. A number of principals have recommended members of
their staff as local facilitators, and some teachers have volunteered themselves. We welcome further offers in both areas. Email Sarah Dalton about this sdalton@ppta.org.nz.
Working with existing clusters
Some schools tell us that they are part of local clusters that are already working
towards implementing the curriculum. They want to know whether their teachers will benefit from the support days. We are very happy to organise the days so that teachers from a particular cluster can group with the facilitators they are already working with. Also, we will make sure that the templates and resource material we develop for the support days reflect the diverse needs of different schools and subjects. We hope that the days will help existing networks, and may also support new ones.
Schools will be able to use the PPTA website for ongoing conversations and
resource sharing after the support days. Please let us know if you have particular local models or networks that we can work in with.
Thanks
We are grateful to all the schools who have responded to our emails with offers of
support, both as hosts and with recommendations for local facilitators. We need
collaboration on a large scale to make these support days work successfully for
teachers. Any offers will be gratefully accepted.
Robin Duff Graeme Macann
PPTA President Chair, Secondary Principals? Council