2018: the year vision-plan-action became a creative cycle

Making a review of a school year forces one to think about what was specially relevant for all of us who make Primary School a bilingual experience. What stands out like a landmark in the journey? As Head of Primary School I always felt I stood on giants’ shoulders, with highly qualified educators in the team and a school background of excellency, so reaching further and higher is a great challenge. I’m proud to say 2018 to be a stage in effective change management that meant for teachers the transformation from doing things to implement a learning approach to becoming creators of new solutions with a clear understanding of the key concepts within the school project.  I could see professional educators networking in a buzz producing planning by design, not compliance, and moving into a new cycle of improvement accelerated by their own impulses.

Learning to learn is like life itself, it thrives to make its way, and that is Primary School at its best.

We believe learning to learn to be our vision, the motto guiding all our pedagogical decisions. Let’s go for a walk and touch base on some of the basic drivers that gave way to students’ productions in 2018. Teachers who modified control over doing, and focused on spending time and effort in governance of their process through planning the roadmap.

• Setting clear learning objectives in terms of competencies, working for instance with rubrics and portfolios, thinking of evaluation as an ongoing process in which we help students map themselves on their way with formative feedback as a compass. Evaluation is part of the learning not the end of it.
• ICT is a powerful -if not an essential- ally. A blended learning or virtual learning approach allows teachers to answer efficiently to diversity in their groups of learners, creating their own materials, curating available resources or bringing in specialized tools such as online platforms for Maths (Mathletics) or Reading (Newsela) that adapt to diverse learning styles, interests, pacing and levels of achievement suggesting what’s next according to students’ responses. Technologies make personalization and networking possible. Easy is boring, difficult is challenging, as quoted by  James Nottingham. We have a broad opportunity ahead with Artificial Intelligence (AI) developments to bring in the exact level of complexity for each student. I hope to come back to this point in the near future…
• A project based learning strategy is flexible enough to incorporate students at different levels of performance, helping them develop their skills according to their personal interests and fuel curiosity. Monitoring one to one with quality information of students’ outcomes is one of the biggest assets of holding an extended learning environment -in our case, Schoology-. Connecting with the world to broaden our views and foster intercultural understanding would be impossible without including social networks.
• Autonomy and choice are the basics of planning with learning to learn in mind, which gets messy -or better said orderly free. There must be space for choice for self-awareness to grow and make use of one’s personal tools to succeed. Though this is tackled each year according to the level of maturity, Primary is rounded off with a setting in P5 and P6 where students need to make decisions constantly. Flexibility and adaptation to different scenarios is encouraged: where to go for my next lesson and get ready with the right tools, adapt to different areas in either language along the day, move around to look for my learning space, choose which area or project fits best into my weekly timetable bearing in mind my own needs or who can I ask for help are some of the questions students need to answer themselves to find their way through.
• People learn best when they actively participate in a reflective process. In this way learning is inductive, participants reach to their own conclusions based on experiences which include emotional development, positive social interactions and cognitive growth.

Leading forward a community which is always on the go is terribly exciting and rewarding, and forces the eye to look after everybody’s well-being. The results are in the air and constitute a springboard for the new year to come.