The New Zealand Curriculum Te Marautanga o Aotearoa
The National Curriculum sets the direction for learning and guides us to design and implement a curriculum that meets the needs of our students. We aim to develop a range of values and key competencies which we believe they will need to succeed in life, and these are purposely interwoven throughout all learning or subject areas.
There is a focus on the foundation skills of reading, writing and mathematics in the primary school years as students progress through the levels of the curriculum in order to achieve NCEA Level 2 at secondary school.
There are nine learning areas in the New Zealand Curriculum:
- English
- The Arts
- Health and Physical Education
- Learning Languages
- Mathematics and Statistics
- Science
- Social Sciences
- Technology
- Aotearoa NZ Histories
The New Zealand Curriculum enables schools to offer students rich, real life contexts that are relevant and connected to their own lives, across multiple learning areas including Science, Social Sciences, Technology, Health and Physical Education and Languages. It offers the opportunity for students to see knowledge and skills as interconnected rather than as separate learning areas.
PROGRESSING THROUGH THE CURRICULUM
In each curriculum area, most students will progress through Levels 1-5. Once a student has mastered most of the skills, knowledge and understanding of each learning stage within each level, they will progress to the next level. The level that each child is learning may vary compared to other children in the same year.
Find out more information about our New Zealand Curriculum:
Ministry of Education’s parent portal for education
or
ENGLISH AND MATHEMATICS AND STATISTICS
Our goal for students in English is to become skilled and confident oral, written and visual communicators.
Our goal for students in mathematics is to:
- Use a range of thinking skills which will help them explore the world they live in and enjoy the intellectual challenge involved in using patterns, relations, quantity, space and time;
- Develop an understanding that maths involves solving problems in real life contexts and that they can communicate this using comparisons, generalisations, symbols, graphs and diagrams.
A FOCUS ON LITERACY AND NUMERACY
Our focus on English/literacy and numeracy at primary school is important because they are foundation skills. Students require these in order to do well in all areas of learning, at school and in life.
We assess each student’s reading, writing and maths skills regularly using our online management system ‘HERO’. This online system is allowing us to move to real time reporting where parent get notified when new content has been added. This system also allows for students to comment on work they are doing, as well as providing parents tohe opportunity to add comments on their children’s work/ progress.
