Learning Powers

I have been part of a small team that has focused on building what Learning Powers look like for Ngatea Primary School students. We, as a staff had touched on what powerful learning looked like at our TOD at the beginning of the year.

Initially, as a team we looked at what learning was and then we took it to the staff.

• What is learning?     Learning is the acquisition of knowledge, skills and values through study, experience or being taught.

At NPS, Learning Powers are the traits and strategies that help us achieve in our lifelong learning.

Our NPS Powers

• I Care (social powers - values)
• Learning powers (academic)
• “High five” - brings our powers together. Can’t exist without the other.

The Learning Process/Capacity

• Shifting from the unknown to the known
• Unknown - recognising the problem, what is the problem?
• Swamp - What do I know already? What do others know? Who can I ask? Try it from a different angle.

As a team we took what the staff shared and notes from previous meetings and collated the information coming up with headings of Connecting, Curiosity, Resilience, Creativity and Being Me. The next challenge was coming up with a statement under each. There was much discussion around these - creativity providing the most.

From here research was undertaken, exploring what each of these meant in an educational context and to deepen our understanding. Part of this was collecting student voice. Each team asked their students to brainstorm what they thought each of these meant. It was very interesting to see the similarity of language across the teams - from 5 year olds to 13 year olds.

Next step was to bring together the main points and present them in a visual format. We spent a long time playing around with design and images, looking for the best representation of what we thought each power was. We had to take care not to make them too 'adult' but capture the essence of what it is to be a NPS student with learning powers.

After much discussion, feedback and tweaks we came up with 5 designs we were happy with - they are now being polished and will be ready for launching later this term.

Onto the SWAMP process!