Our Learning
The Basics of Literacy & Numeracy
We believe it is important to educate our children to be strong in the basics of literacy and numeracy and that it should be fun! In the first years at school students will be immersed in written, oral and visual language and taught to master the basics of reading and writing. We start to develop oral literacy and oral performance skills in the children from Year 1.In the senior school, children then extend their reading and writing skills and experience a range of genres. They apply their literacy skills to research projects, performance and speech and refine and develop these so that they are fully independent and confident by the time they leave us.
Students are taught how to approach mathematical problems in a range of ways and apply their basic knowledge of number to a range of increasingly complex mathematical problems, using strategies developed under the National Numeracy Project. The basics of counting, time, money and times tables are still emphasized.
The Pak Heights Learner
The Pak Heights Learner incorporates the vision and key competencies of the New Zealand Curriculum as identified by the Pakuranga Heights learning community. These dispositions preparestudents for the challenges of being a confident, connected, actively involved life-long learner.
Our Bee Valued programme is the foundation in which students will also foster the dispositions.
Our Pak Heights Learner dispositions are:
- Self Manager
- Investigator
- Communicator
- Challenge Taker
- Team Player
- Thinker
Staff promote the use of the dispositions through focussing weekly on one disposition and identifying when students show that disposition. Classes have modelling books to show their thinking about what each disposition looks, sounds and feels like. Students and staff are encouraged to use the vocabulary of the dispositions. At each three-way conference in May and November teachers report to parents on how well students are working towards using the dispositions.
Our iLearn - Inquiry Learning Model
Whether students are doing a long intensive inquiry unit or a short lesson the three steps of our iLearn -Inquiry Model help guide students through the learning process.
- Ignite: students build on prior knowledge and are motivated and immersed in the topic
- Investigate: Students seek answers to their questions or task
- Inform: Students report and present their findings
The model is circular because the process is constantly evolving by going back and questioning, reforming and re....