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We have finally made it to our inaugural Year 9 (Grade 8) Signature Work Celebration, which takes place this evening.
I still have much to reflect on here, but thought I would share my brief introduction to the event and the poster template.
In writing the introduction I have had in mind Neil Postman’s assertion that “non-trivial schooling can provide a point of view from which what is can be seen clearly, what was as a living present, and what will be as filled with possibility” (1996, p. x).
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Seymour Papert, the visionary founder of the Future of Learning Group at the MIT Media Lab, said that we cannot teach students everything that they need to know, so the best we can do is position them where they can find what they need to know when they need to know it. This is truer today than it was when he first said it, and it is not a simple task – in fact, doing this properly will take our collaborative efforts over all of your child’s time in school.
Signature Work – an interdisciplinary inquiry-based exploration of a significant topic of deep personal interest – is vital to this task, and is now in place for:
Signature Work is central to our efforts to ensure that students leave Blanchelande as independent thinkers and learners, ready to strengthen, as Jonathan Rauch puts it, the reality-based community of error-seeking inquirers upon which democracy depends.
The Year 9 Signature Work combines work in ICT on digital inquiry with work in English towards the GCSE English Language speaking and listening Non-Examined Assessment, which is centred on a formally presented speech followed by a Q&A session with the audience. Each class voted for a student to represent them tonight, and you will hear these speeches in a short while.
The Signature Work posters that are on display truly reflect a Heroic journey, for all students overcame very real dragons along the way. Superficially, the posters look nearly identical, which is deliberate – academic writing makes certain demands on the author, and the posters reflect the formal nature of the English speeches. This superficial similarity couldn’t be further from the truth, though. Upon closer inspection, each poster is as unique as the signature it bears, which brings me to what we are celebrating tonight – not the Signature Work, but the students whose Heroic Inquiry led to it.
To give you a fuller taste of this, Miss Flood and I take great pleasure in introducing the students who were chosen by their classmates to represent them.
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