Outcomes of Holy Spirit Staff Meeting

Outcomes of Holy Spirit Staff Meeting

After analysing:

• our achievement information from the Jesus strand,
• the theology behind the Holy Spirit teaching,
• an overall SOLO progression for the Holy Spirit,
• some examples of activities we found inspired children in our past teaching,
• our key concepts at each year level for the Holy Spirit,

we decided on four key concepts we would like our children to develop and deepen as they move through our school:

1. How the Holy Spirit is active in people.
2. How the Holy Spirit is represented in the Bible.
3. God is a Trinity - God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and this is a faith mystery.
4. Images of the Holy Spirit.

These four concepts will be the context of the Holy Spirit teaching throughout the school.  Bearing in mind that we need to expose, strengthen and reinforce these concepts as the children grow.  We will continue to teach the learning outcomes for the Religious Education curriculum at each year level in the context of these four concepts.

The test for the strand with teacher's notes can be seen at this link (public): https://docs.google.com/a/stjoseph.school.nz/file/d/0B5kVPCsXjRbYUkxQQkdpb0ZCdzA/edit

Staff: Please enter assessment information at (private): https://docs.google.com/a/stjoseph.school.nz/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApkVPCsXjRbYdGI1TzRhTmdjZEFhclpJd1RYN0I1aEE#gid=0
by Thursday 6 June.

Holy Spirit Planning Meeting

Holy Spirit Staff Meeting - Term 2, 2014

I recently discovered the term "flipped classroom."  Its something I've been trying to do with my class for a while without knowing it actually had a name.  If you want to find out more about it have a look at:  http://t.co/g1W89hK27F - basically its the idea that students access the things they've traditionally been taught by the teacher through good quality video instruction (they all tend to prefer this because they can go slower/faster/replay according to their need and its there to go back to) and then use the classtime to question and clarify the learning and then for collaboration, creation, evaluation etc.

So if we flip our staff meeting this means that everything except the parts we need to collaborate on could be done in advance and we would come prepared to synergise!  It would cut our meeting times in half, or more.

We will try this for our Wednesday 21st May meeting.  The highlighted parts are the parts we will put our time into at the meeting.  Everything else is prepared beforehand.

AIMS: 
1. to develop an idea of what we want our school leaver to understand about the Holy Spirit.  This idea needs to be a core understanding that can grow with the child.  This will help children entering the school later on have a chance to access this understanding according to their stage of development.

2. Develop deep assessment which will benefit ongoing teaching and learning and which has continuity throughout the school.  

Any files containing student information are private to us.  Everything else is public.

1. What did our assessment on Jesus tell us?
Step 1: Have a look on the assessment data we have gathered about the Jesus strand: 
a) look at your own information in:  https://docs.google.com/a/stjoseph.school.nz/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApkVPCsXjRbYdHpCX0FFTExHTkJKWEdaR0g2Z3p3V2c&usp=drive_web#gid=6
b) look at the overall information in: https://docs.google.com/a/stjoseph.school.nz/file/d/0B5kVPCsXjRbYWGZzUFVzakdMSFk/edit

To discuss: how useful is this information?  Would it inform your teaching?  Could it help the next teacher?  Could you use it for reporting?
What does this data tell us?  Are there any trends we need to notice? 

2. Create an "end point" for our school leaver of what we would like them to know about the Holy Spirit
Step 1: read the theology about the Holy Spirit at the beginning of your strand book.
Come to the meeting prepared to discuss any tricky or challenging parts, or share anything you just love about it.

Step 2: Have a look at the key learning objectives for each year level: https://docs.google.com/a/stjoseph.school.nz/file/d/0B5kVPCsXjRbYdTJDMnZuOUxRQjA/edit

Step 3: Have a look at the SOLO assessment rubric - anything we need to change here? https://docs.google.com/a/stjoseph.school.nz/file/d/0B5kVPCsXjRbYOXVGamM5UDJYWVE/edit

Step 4: Bring a a succinct example to the meeting of something you have done about the Holy Spirit which has helped the students to feel or understand the Holy Spirit better in an affective way (doesn't have to be in the curriculum, or at your present year level).

Step 5:  At the meeting we will use all this information to come to agreements on some basic understandings about the Holy Spirit which can grow with the children.  Even though the basic understandings underpin the teaching and learning, we will still teach the content at our level and use that to access the basic understandings.

Step 6: We will have some discussion about the type of things we could use to assess this understanding, including SOLO and along the lines of what we did for the Jesus strand.  

Step 7: I will make a test for us based on what we agree and share it in the Google RE folder under Holy Spirit.

Step 8:  We will agree a date to enter data so that we can come prepared to the next meeting.

FINALLY: Reflect on this process - what do we keep, what do we change?