Our drive to action, our will to act, is driven by what we say we value and believe – our ‘heart’. If a practice is suggested from outside, our first question should be WHY? - How will doing this, using this practice, help us achieve what we say we value? As we explore new practices we constantly reflect on how well it enables us to achieve what we value.

As we created our future focussed curriculum, we used this process to develop who we are from our vision, values and beliefs, principles and practices. We are able to identify our values and beliefs which are the basis for particular practices, and we are engaged in reflecting upon how particular practices help us achieve what we value and believe.

Strategic Direction

Our Annual Strategic Direction influences ‘The Riverhead Way’ - how we do things. The Riverhead Way permeates our Charter, school wide targets, Teaching as Inquiry, and curriculum design/implementation. This is part of our self review annually with the staff and formally reviewed through consultation with the Board of Trustees, every three years. You will find this on the Riverhead Portal.

Powerful Learning

We believe powerful learning and innovation occurs through Thinking, Doing, and Discovering. We want our learners to think about, do something about it, and discover something new. Our ‘why’ is driven by this and we have 5 key components that are underpinned by our Riverhead School vision. They are:

Our purpose built Innovative Learning Environments (ILE), allow for this to be a reality. Traditional approaches to teaching and learning are no longer enough on their own to give our children the best education to prepare them for life. Innovative learning approaches such as collaboration have not replaced familiar teaching approaches. Rather, they have expanded teaching and learning practices to suit our learners.

We are constantly collaboratively reflecting on what the evidence says about quality teaching and learning by:

• regularly reviewing the impact of our teaching practice on learning
• actively seeking external observation and critique by colleagues and more experienced teachers and leaders
• seeking and contributing to evidence of what works to improve learning outcomes and how we can apply that in our day-to-day practice
• innovating when ‘what works’ doesn’t work for all learners or all the time.

Community of Learning - Whiria Te Tangata

Riverhead School is part of the Whiria Te Tangata Community of Learning with 9 other Norwest Schools. This is a collaborative working group who focus collectively on Key Drivers of Change.

• Powerful Learning Connections - Strengthening learning connections with parents, families, whānau, ākonga and teachers
• Powerful Community Connections - Developing a local curriculum utilising the context provided by the local community, and economic opportunities.

Through the Bump@r Learner Capabilities and Learning Progressions our students are developing autonomy and agency in their learning. Students are ‘Spectators’, ‘Passengers’, ‘Navigators’ or ‘Drivers’ of their learning and these are informed by the Key Competencies of the New Zealand Curriculum.

Extensive research has proven that students learn best when they are:

• actively involved in decision making
• initiating learning
• collaborating together
• making connections within and across learning areas.

Through purposeful use of varied digital tools, we promote multimodal learning to achieve authentic learning outcomes. This manifests through informed decision-making about the effectiveness of tools, and creating new tools based on problem solving whilst demonstrating responsible digital citizenship. Digitally fluent learners experience opportunities to build on their capabilities through exploring, creating, accessing, analysing and problem solving in range of contexts.

This is achieved through identifying, planning, targeting, scaffolding higher levels of learning, front loading, timely assessment, student interests and home school partnerships. Research indicates that this is best practice and we have moved from using Teaching as Inquiry as the vehicle of accelerative practice to it now being embedded school wide in everyday teaching and learning program design.

• Riverhead School Inquiry Learning model - process driven
• Problem/Action-based learning - exploring real world problems
• Passion projects - like genius hour
• Play based learning - exploration and discovery

We believe in our students discovering and developing their potential as inquisitive learners who are critical, creative thinkers. We achieve this by encouraging students to take learning into their own hands. They are responsible for making choices about what they will learn and explore. They have authentic experiences through play or action based learning, passions, and our Riverhead learning model.

Learning Highway

Our Curriculum design and implementation ensures we have coverage of the different learning areas and strands of the New Zealand Curriculum across a 3 year cycle. It is child centred by design and is embedded with the components of - Curriculum Overview 2018

Our curriculum has the following components across a year:

Riverhead School Learning Model - Inquiry framework

Our Riverhead Learning Model encourages reflective thought and action. It facilitates shared learning, promotes connections with prior knowledge and provides a broad range of opportunities for learning. Riverhead School’s Learning Model scaffolds students’ learning in order for them to become independent learners who think deeply. The planning of explicit teaching combines higher thinking and questioning skills. These include Bloom's Taxonomy, Thinking Hats, Solo Taxonomy, Graphic Organisers, and Multiple Intelligences.

They spend several weeks researching the topic before creating a product that will be shared with the class/school/world. Deadlines are limited and creativity is encouraged. Throughout the process the teacher facilitates the student projects to ensure that they are on task.

Play Based Learning

Play based learning at Riverhead School is guided by the Walker Learning Approach. It is an exciting and refreshing philosophy that places the child at the centre of the curriculum and teaching strategies;

Walker Learning Approach

The main aims of this learning approach:

• To build a bridge between the preschool years and early years of school.
• For all children, particularly boys, to engage deeply and meaningfully with their learning environment.
• For children to learn that the skills of literacy and numeracy are meaningful and useful parts of everyday life.
• For children to have more authentic opportunities to learn social skills, conflict resolution, problem-solving, decision-making and independence.
• For children to enjoy school.
• For children to have opportunities that reflect their own culture as well as to have exposure to new concepts and experiences.
• To move away from pre-planned sequences or predetermined topics.
• For children to have more authentic and frequent opportunities to have their learning personalised and to build skills of personal reflection, intention and evaluation early in the school life.

-Play Matters (Walker, K. 2011).

Frequently Asked Questions:

What happens to formal literacy and numeracy blocks?

These still occur 4 days a week in a similar manner to the way they always have. Timing is more flexible with this way of learning. Our timetable rolls, allowing us to ensure that all groups we plan on seeing for the day, are. Modelling books are an important part of our literacy and numeracy learning - we use them to make notes about individual learning and ongoing goals. The groups are rotated on a fortnightly basis to ensure we have a good understanding of where ‘our’ children are.

Will the children be ready to move to the next year level and will they reach the standards or benchmarks?

This approach does not claim to get children ready any earlier or later than other approaches, the best determiner of that, is the child themselves. WLA does however see higher levels of engagement and enjoyment at school.

Parents have noted to us about how happy their child was and that they were more able to talk about their day than in the previous terms.

How will you get curriculum coverage?

While this is predominantly a child led approach, there is still plenty of space for teacher initiated investigations to ensure we are meeting our curriculum requirements. Teachers can add to interest areas, to ensure children are being extended and are moving on in their investigations.

How do we know where they are at?

Through anecdotal notes in modelling books, daily conversations about the learning that has taken place. We are looking at how we can ensure information is shared amongst ourselves so that there is consistency in teaching and learning.

A Typical Day:

Home Room - Roll, lunch orders etc…

Fitness

Brainfood - poem, big book

Morning Meeting - Learning Priorities and workshops for the day

Investigations - Teachers observing or working with target children

Reading Workshops

Writing Workshops

Numeracy Workshops