This document discusses key competencies from the New Zealand curriculum. It will: 1. Clarify the meaning and "big picture" of the key competencies which include thinking, using language and text, participating, relating to others, and managing self. 2. Provide opportunities for students to develop these competencies through authentic contexts like lunch ordering, sports, assemblies, and transitions. 3. Link the key competencies to the school's vision by discussing how they will be demonstrated and embedded in the school's culture and classrooms.

1. Key Competencies
Lake Rotoiti
Friday, 6 November

2. By the end of this session we will:
1. Know the requirements and challenges of the key
kompetencies.
2. Clarify the meaning of the key competencies. The “Big
Picture” - What are they about?
3. List the opportunities for students in our school to
develop the key competencies.
4. Brainstorm what it will look like in our school.
5. Link the key competencies to our vision.

3. Key Competencies
• Thinking
• Using Language, Symbols and Text
• Participating and Contributing
• Relating to Others
• Managing Self

4. The Requirement
The requirement is very simple:
The school supports students to
develop the key competencies set out
on pages 12-13.
NZCp.44

5. Where does it come from?
•It is based on work that has been
done by the European Commission.
The group came up with what they
consider to be a set of key
competencies.

6. Its list included the following:
• Communication in the mother tongue
• Communication in a foreign language
• Mathematical literacy and basic competencies in science and
technology
• ICT skills
• Learning to learn
• Interpersonal and civic competencies
• Entrepreneurship
• Cultural awareness.
European Commission, 2002. Working Group on Basic Skills, Foreign Language Teaching and Entrepreneurship.
It can be seen that these competencies are quite different from those in the
NZC. The competencies in the NZC were developed within New Zealand
through processes of extensive professional discussion.

7. What do they mean?
•
If we have a good understanding of what
they actually mean in an educational
context, it will help us with our teaching
practice.
Competencies are integrated, holistic
and complex. They include the knowledge,
skills, attitudes and values needed to meet
the demands of a task.

8. •Key competencies are the
capabilities people need in order to
live, learn and contribute as active
members of their communities.
Education Gazette, 18 September 2006

9. Some important considerations.
•When we get a bigger picture of what the
key competencies are about, it helps us to
lift it out of the micro-climate of the school.
We will then have a bigger view of what it is
that we are intending in our role in
supporting students to develop the key
competencies.

10. Task 1 (15min)
In your group clarify the meaning of your key
competency.
The Big Picture - What is it about, what it might
involve in our school?
Be creative and come up with a model that will
be typical of the key competencies in our
school.

11. Example:
Thinking in our
school might
look like this.

12. Context
• The key competencies (all of them) are relevant to
all learning areas and activities. They know no
subject boundaries. They are developed
simultaneously with all content areas of the
curriculum.
Example: We cannot do thinking key
competency at 9:00 on a Monday morning and
honesty at a whole school assembly on a Friday
morning.
• They need to be infused into the curriculum areas.

13. • The New Zealand Curriculum is non-
prescriptive about the key competencies. It
doesn’t set out what a school has to cover in
relation to those competencies. It does provide
very good ideas, in terms of what each
competency might involve.

14. Claxton describes it best:
• “Translating curriculum ideals like the key competencies into effective
teacher practice is an issue grappled with in many countries ... Get the
process wrong and it can end up on the scrap-heap of good ideas that
didn’t stick.”
• “... if New Zealand is to succeed, the key competencies must be
embedded in each school’s culture and most importantly in the
“microclimate” of the classroom.”
Claxton, Education Gazette, 15 December 2008

15. Task 2 (10 min)
List the opportunities (authentic
contexts) for students in our school
to develop the key competencies.

16. Possible Authentic Contexts
• lunch ordering / lunchtime procedures
• lunchtime sport & activities
• PE / Sports Shed
• visitors / relievers
• library
• culture, music, art groups
• assemblies
• corridors
• transitioning

17. Traps and Problems
1.Package solutions. (Costa’s Habits of Mind, De
Bono’s Thinking Hats)
2.Competencies not a stand-alone or a separate part
of the NZ Curriculum.
3.Multiplier effect, more documents.

18. Assessing & Reporting
• Our obligation is to demonstrate, with confidence, that we
are supporting the students to develop the key
competencies.
• Some key questions might be:
1. How will we see, in our school and in our classrooms,
the intention of these key competencies
2. What evidence will we see in our school and
classrooms that show that we are supporting our
students in developing these competencies?

20. Task 3 (10min)
In groups brainstorm and discuss what the
key competencies will look, sound and feel
like in our school (Y-Chart).

21. Our Vision

23. Task 4 (10min)
Find the connection between our
vision and the Key Competencies you
identified in your Y-Chart.