Newsletter

April 2010

HATA

is the Teachers Association dedicated to the teachersand teaching of Agriculture and Horticulture in New Zealand.

Inside this issue:

From the Horticulture President

Hi AllI hope that everyone as had a good break and are well rested after the holidays. This second termcan be a bit of a slog once the winter winds start blowing, but at least it is the meaty term when wecan get through the bulk of our courses, weather and students permitting!Over the last few months a group of teachers have been working on the Teaching and LearningGuides for Senior Agricultural and Horticultural Science. The idea behind the Teaching andLearning Guides (it is expected that over time there will be Guides written for all subjects) is thatthey will form a bridge between the New Zealand Curriculum and both what we teach and howstudents will learn. It is hoped that what will be produced will form the basis from which Years 11 to13 Agricultural and Horticultural Science courses can be developed from and will provide contextsand concepts that could be used in a similar (but not the same as) manner as the old DraftGuidelines produced in the 80s.If, like me, your school is starting to look at which standards could be used in 2011 you shouldkeep an eye on thesubject specific pageon the NZQA website. This page should be your first portof call for all things to do with assessments. Eventually the new internals to be used from 2011 willbe found there and they should give a good indication of the type of work that will be required byyou as a teacher and by your students. It is important to note at this point that tests are now seenas a poor method of assessing ability and will not be provided by either the Ministry or NZQA. Thiswill be the case with all subjects at each of the three levels.I have had a few teachers asking about the feasibility of organising Scholarship training for either their students or for themselves. What I have suggested is that if you know that a school close byto you is teaching Level 3, then get together with them to discuss topics, approaches etc. I realisethat this is not the most desirable way to go about teacher training but without the support from theColleges of Education (Massey seems to have stopped all subject related professionaldevelopment in favour of more literacy and numeracy based courses) this may be the only way to

go about it. However, I have discussed with a couple of teachers the idea of coordinating somesort of meeting in the lower North Island, perhaps in Palmerston North. Ideally of course therewould be meetings in each region but that is probably not feasible due to time and money issues.Also, Palmerston North is relatively easily accessible to most in the North Island and they do havean airport with regular flights to Auckland and Christchurch if you are lucky to be in a more affluentschool. The nature of this meeting would depend on interest from both teachers and students andat the moment I am not sure whether it would be only a teacher thing or with students as well. Atthe moment I would see it as being more teacher focused rather than with students due to therelatively small number of potential scholarship level candidates (at my school we do actually bringin a Professor from Waikato University who runs a one day training day for very keen and ableYear 13 Biology students from the Hawkes Bay and Manawatu which is very successful however itinvolves about 60 students which is probably more than the total number we have at Scholarshiplevel throughout the country). If you have any thoughts on this please email me to give me your ideas.As I have already discussed, there has been a reduction in the amount of PD available for subjectrelated material and with most of us being sole teachers or if really lucky have one other teacher towork alongside with we are disadvantaged compared with other subject areas. To that end I haveincluded a

I have, who has…?

literacy resource that hopefully maybe of some use for 90746. Itwould be good to see this newsletter being used as a portal for resource sharing of not onlyclassroom activities but also ideas on how to cover particular topics. If you have ANYTHING thatworks well in your classes then please forward it on to Kerry who can collect and distribute it in thenext newsletter. We all need to remember that we will increasingly be left behind unless we helpourselves.Mason Summerfield

HATA Conference Progress Report - Sunday 17

Aprilto Thursday 21

April 2011

Dear HATA members,The conference organisation is progressing well. The timetable is almost completeand now it is just a case of attending to the details. We are finalising arrangements for field trips,workshops and sourcing the appropriate facilitators and all important speakers for the conference.A copy of the promotional flyer is included in this newsletter. Pencil the dates in your diary for nextyear, Sunday April 17

to Thursday April 21

st.

One change that has been made is to fly peopledown to the conference on the afternoon of Sunday 17

April rather than people arrivingthroughout the day on Monday 18

April. Having everyone at Telford on Sunday evening meanswe can start the conference promptly on the Monday morning.Many of you may not have come this far south before so you might like to consider spending someextra time travelling around and exploring this area after the conference. There are lots of trampingtracks to explore e.g. Milford, Routeburn, Kepler, Hollyford tracks as well as Stewart Island tracksand the Hauroko Hump track.There are lots of places to see e.g. Te Anau, Manapouri, Milford Sound, Catlins, Invercargill, Bluff,Stewart Island, Queenstown, Arrowtown and Wanaka to name a few.There are lots of other best kept secrets as well e.g. Borland Lodge, Doubtful Sound, and the RailTrail through Central Otago.If you book early and pay for the conference TRCC would look at splitting the arrival and departurepoints e.g. you could fly into Dunedin, attend the conference then pick up a rental car from

Dunedin airport at the end of the conference then travel around and leave say from Queenstownairport.If you have any ideas or suggestions for the conference please get in contact with me.My contact details areemail andrew.thompson@telford.ac.nzPhone 0800 835 367 ext844Cellphone 027 275 8944

Australian National Association of AgriculturalEducators (NAAE) Conference January 2010

In January this year I attended the 16

Biennial Conference of the National Association of Agricultural Educators (NAAE). This is the Australian equivalent of New Zealand’s HATAconference. The conference was attended by over 80 agriculture and horticulture teachers fromthroughout Australia. The conference was in many ways similar to a New Zealand HATAconference, the main difference being the issues that they face over State versus NationalQualifications.Over riding themes at the conference included:

•

The place of agricultural education in the Australian National Curriculum. Thislooked at how Agriculture and Horticulture could be embedded into othersubjects and how topics could be covered using an Agricultural or Horticulturaltheme.

•

How to attract students into the subject of Agriculture and Horticulture andretain them throughout their time at secondary school.

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Making Agriculture and Horticulture a first choice subject option.

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Exploring pathways from Secondary to Tertiary education, Industry andVocational training.

The conference was held at Gatton University which is situated an hour inland from Brisbane. It isan Agricultural University very similar to Massey University. This year they have transferred the VetSchool out to this campus.The conference programme had keynote speakers who spoke on curriculum matters , developingpathways from secondary school through to tertiary training or industry training.There were a variety of workshops offered. At any one time three sessions would be runningconcurrently. Workshops included:

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Towards a solution for ruminant methane emissions.

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Establishing a garden for learning.

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Poultry trials in schools.

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Sustainable water use in schools.

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Property planning for sustainability.