habits-of-mind-posterRecently Peter shared with me a blog from Hobsonville Point Secondary School about the “Hobsonville Habits – tracking learning dispositions”.

“At Hobsonville Point we believe that personal excellence and academic excellence are intricately intertwined. A part of holding high expectations is that we have a set of ‘Hobsonville Habits’ (Habits) which we use explicitly to help students engage in deeper learning and develop effective life-long learning habits”.

It did spark an interest in me and created lots of questions about assessing students learning… how do we assess all learning, in all context, in a timely manner and in ways that are culturally responsive and probably in todays times, politically correct.

Secondly, what is the purpose of assessment?… Is it to form an end result or to inform teaching? Is it for the students, whanau or me? Thirdly, do we spend to long on assessing the outcomes e.g. Curriculum Achievement Objectives as opposed to the actual learning… the key competencies (and even creativity).

I am a big believer in the learning pit, the rickety ladder, the learning hill or what ever you would like to call it. I do believe students learn the most when the fail and rethink about different ways they could achieve next time if challenged with the same or similar scenario or problem. So how do I incorporate this model of self assessment into my programme?

For me the Hobsonville Habits would fit nicely into our own PB4L framework and also in the direction I would like our school to head… student powered, fully engaged learners and global citizens.

Over the next couple of weeks I would like to investigate this idea further, incorporating the house leaders into this process to hear their thoughts and PMI on this assessment tool.

Habit Cards