Our Vision - To Grow, To Achieve, To Care

Our Guiding Principles, created by our whole community and revised every three years, explain what this vision means to us and what we strive to support all our learners to achieve in their time with us.

A Curriculum of Two Halves

Our Learning Areas

These are what you may have called “subjects” in your days at school and, as part of the New Zealand Curriculum, are areas of learning taught in all schools. We create and use our own local focus areas, contexts and approaches. Click to see our Pathways

Our Life Skills

Built around our four values (we are Kind, Adventurous, Responsible and United), these are the life skills we want to grow in our learners for school and life to help them be successful. These are taught, modelled and celebrated like the learning areas. Click to see our Pathways

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Our main approaches to teaching and learning

Building Blocks for Learning

Building Blocks: There are a whole range of essential skills and understandings that children need as a solid base for the foundation skills for reading, writing and maths. We call these the building blocks. They are in five areas: talking, listening, looking, print and moving. The main focus in our new entrant classes are on developing these so that children can then be successful in all other areas.  

Essential Learning

Once the building blocks are in place we can focus on daily learning in reading, writing and maths. These also provide the tools for learning in all other areas. Learners and teachers work together  to understand what they are learning, what they need to work on next, and the progress they are making.

Discovery learning

We teach the other learning areas through our discovery learning approach, learning through real-world contexts and problems using discovery, enquiry and exploration. The aim is to make learning deep, meaningful, relevant, challenging, hands-on - and lots of fun!

Spirals of Inquiry

This is a focused team-based approach to improving learner progress and wellbeing. We spend time understanding our childrens’ holistic development, strengths and needs. From this knowledge we learn more about what works, trial things, then design programmes that are most likely to help them. We regularly share our Spirals journeys so we can share ideas and offer support. 

Values and PB4L

Everything the school does is based on our core values; We are Kind, Adventurous, Responsible and United.

We are a proud PB4L (Positive Behaviour For Learning) school. PB4L supports us to develop and embrace a school-wide focus on promoting positive behaviour and creating inclusive learning environments. PB4L is built on the principles that we need to teach, reinforce and reward the behaviours we want to see and manage inappropriate behaviour in consistent ways that help children own it, fix it and learn from it. Click to find out more about PB4L at our school.
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Supporting Learners with Additional Needs

The school invests significantly in staff, training and resources to support children with additional needs. This helps us to create programmes and use approaches that can better support these children and their classmates.​

Collaborative teaching and learning

We work collaboratively as teachers and learners and all our teams learn in collaborative learning environments. This means we talk about how all the learners in school are going, discuss how we can better meet their needs, develop plans for action together and work together in different ways. Flexibility of staff helps teams use different teaching approaches with classes, individuals and groups of learners.
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Music, sports and clubs

We offer other learning opportunities in school outside of our everyday curriculum. We currently have a number of sports teams, kapa haka, singing club, craft club, music lessons (guitar, violin, piano, drums) and more.

Physical activity and adventure

Children complete regular energizers through the day to refresh brains ready for learning and they enjoy learning a range of physical activities. We have created an environment that encourages adventure and creative play. Children enjoy different outdoor education experiences that provide exciting and challenging opportunities.Our older students compete against other local schools in a wide range of sports.

Te Ao Maaori

Te Ao Maaori and everyday classroom programmes are how we help all our children understand and enjoy Maaori culture, te reo, arts, stories and activities. Each year we spend time at our local marae, Te Papa-o-Rotu, learning more of its importance, tikanga, stories and whakapapa. We have a strong kapa haka programme in place too.​

Digital technologies

We use technology as a tool for learning. We use a range of iPads, Chromebooks, tablets and laptops and use different applications within classes to support, engage and challenge learners.​

COVID-19 and home learning

Click this link to learn about school at Level 2
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Click this link to find out what we are doing and why.
Click here for the term 2 update.
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