Flexible Learning Time (FLT)
In Flexible Learning Time (FLT) students get to have choice as to what, how, when and why you learn what you learn - they are on their own Waka journey.
In students 'normal' classes, the teacher creates the weather - and this dictates where the Waka floats in terms of learning!
In FLT students are in charge of, and responsible for their learning journey/adventure! Their learning journey is personalised, flexible, organic and authentic. Students get to take the paddle and choose the direction to steer in (sounds exciting huh?).
How does FLT work?
Students will do a bunch of super cool projects throughout the year. A project might last a day, a week, a term or a year. Sometimes you will have full choice in what project you do. At other times you will have a varying level of choice. It's all part of the adventure!!
Students will create a map (ie a plan) of where they are going.
They will work on their Heads/Hearts/Hands (HHH) Skills (ie the skills to paddle their Waka on the learning journey) and measure the progress in these throughout the year.
As students complete each project, they will be able to gain feathers for their korowai as a representation of their achievement. They will also get knowledge and experiences for their kete.
Student will plan your projects by noting 'what' they will be learning, 'why' they are learning about it, and 'how' they will learn it. Students will also note what specific HHH skills they will be working on during their project.
Why do we do FLT?
There are lots of things we need to learn for successful and healthy lives - and student will learn a lot about those things in English, Maths, Health, Physical Education, Science and Social Studies (the core subjects) and your options (eg. Food Technology, Art, Music, DVC, Māori....etc).
In FLT, students get to choose which topics you’d like to learn more about - perhaps it’s something that isn’t covered in your other classes or maybe it’s something that is covered, but they’d like to learn more about it (we call this personalised learning). Students might isolate their learning in a project down to one teeny tiny specific element, or they might pull in a bunch of elements from lots of different learning areas into one big project (we call this cross-curricular learning). Students will also be challenged to do 'real life' stuff (we call this authentic learning).
The focus in FLT is on the student learning how to learn, what they want to learn, and doing it! What we really want to achieve is students developing a set of skills that will enable them to paddle their waka anywhere across their life! We call these skills: Heads, Hearts and Hands skills.
