St+Brigids+Milestone+5

Principal – Chris Hogue Lead Teacher – Deborah Charleson
 * St Brigid’s School **

Our staff has attended a number of Cluster workshops during Term 1 and Term 2. These were five Wikispaces workshops, four School Master workshops (as well as a Ministry roadshow on SMS and e-asttle), folder and photo management, and visits to other schools our ICT Cluster see their ICT and Inquiry programmes in action, a Jamie Mackenzie seminar, two inquiry planning sessions and a TKI workshop. Sarah has also visited our school to take a day session with two of our teachers looking at Powerepoint, SMS and Wikispaces. Two staff members also attended the Learning @ School ICT Conference held in Rotorua. St Brigid’s teachers are more enthusiastic and confident with regard to ICT now. They are prepared to try something new for their own skill mastery and also with the children they teach. Throughout Term 1 and 2, teachers have been provided opportunities to take the lead at staff meeting and have also been encouraged to find their strength and share and their knowledge with others. People share their ideas regularly on both a formal and informal basis. SMS is being used everyday to record attendance and we are beginning to record other data such as running records, S.E.A. and Six Year Net results. We are also currently developing our class Wikispaces. The staff at St Brigid’s are very committed to improving our skills, knowledge and understanding of ICT, Web 2.0 Tools and Inquiry Learning. This has been apparent with the level of attendance and the development of our new inquiry plan throughout Term 1 and 2. Photos of ICT and Inquiry Learning in the classroom. Senior children working in our computer suite. Our value for the term. We use the ‘Y chart’ (Thinking Tool) to explain this. (What Tolerance: Feels Like, Looks Like, and Sounds Like.) We use De Bono’s Thinking Hats (Thinking Tool), as part of our Inquiry Programme.