Curriculum Statement

School Curriculum 2024
NGUTUNUI SCHOOL
Curriculum Document The what?, why?, and how?
Updated Jan 2024

Introduction
The aim of this document is to give parents, stakeholders an idea of what learning looks like at Ngutunui School.
We believe that every child should have the strongest start to life, and we work hard to create a school culture that nurtures our learners to grow. We work together to achieve this as a teaching body, a school Board, a parental community and as a pupil body. Everyone has a responsibility.
We are proud of the small, rural nature of our school. We don’t say that Ngutunui is like a whānau; we are whānau. We believe that this contributes enormously to the development of our pupils both academically and emotionally.
Protecting the sanctity of childhood is part of the school’s mission, and we are privileged to have such a diverse area around our school into which we can tap to deliver interesting, relevant and rigorous learning experiences for our pupils. We hope that you will get a flavour of this in reading our curriculum document.

Our Vision
Learning & Growing Together
Ako Tahi me te Tipu Tahi

Our Mission
To inspire curiosity, creative thinking and a love of learning in a safe, respectful and sustainable environment where diversity and individual success is valued.

Our Values

Be Kind, Be Respesctful, Be Curious

How do we achieve this?
The journey to achieving this vision starts by employing, retaining and developing a quality teaching staff. We take seriously the employment of all of our staff, ensuring that each person is thoroughly qualified and checked in order to secure the highest possible standard of educational outcomes for our pupils. We are privileged to have a staff that cares for and knows each pupil, collaborates with each other in planning for learning experiences, has a depth of knowledge and experience, is passionate about educating young people, and offers a diversity of experiences that can be brought to the classroom.
An important piece of the jigsaw puzzle when seeking to provide a successful educational programme is to consider the interests of the children. Every year, the interests of each group of children change. This is due to age (growing up), changes in the make-up of the classes, and heavily influenced by family activities and the media. This is important to recognise because it highlights the importance of flexibility and change in a school’s curriculum, such as ours. We constantly review what we are teaching, how we are teaching, and why we are teaching it, in order to ensure that we are meeting the needs and the interests of the children, wherever possible.
We seek to recognise and encourage cultural understanding. The Ngutunui community has changed a lot over recent years, and with the change in community has come a change in cultural influence and interest. We are pleased to work alongside the Nga Awa ki te Moana Kāhui Ako, Te Awamutu Rural and Roses and our local iwi, Ngāti Maniapoto to strengthen our ability to nuture our Māori pupils.
How Does Learning Happen?
We believe that learning happens when learners are engaged and happy. We want them to understand what they are learning and why they are learning it. We want them to be interested and motivated to learn. Their ideas, opinions and values are welcome here, and we work hard to allow our learners to have a voice in our school. 
We want our learners to understand an important part of the learning journey: learning is the learner’s responsibility - learner agency and agentic learning environments is at the core. Our teachers work hard to develop individualised learning that can cater for the needs of every learner. We plan interesting and relevant learning experiences, but ultimately, each child must make the conscious decision to learn. They must think, ask questions, read, respond, write, speak, share and try.

New Zealand Curriculum Key Competencies
The New Zealand Curriculum document outlines five Key Competencies that all children in New Zealand should develop:
Managing self
Relating to others
Participating and contributing
Thinking
Using language, symbols and text

Ngutunui School has used the Key Competencies as a base for developing its own, relevant values that relate particularly to our own community. We have six values that will form part of an emerging graduate profile

Our Own Curriculum
The unique design of the New Zealand Curriculum is the fact that this is a guiding document. It is created to give a compass direction for schools. However, each school can travel its own direction and create its own curriculum that reflects its own community and pupil body.

So, what does the Ngutunui Curriculum look like?

English
Our English learning at Ngutunui promotes:
Enjoyment of reading
• wide, adventurous and sustained reading, across a range of cultures, periods and literary forms, including prose fiction and non-fiction, poetry and drama
• reading for depth of understanding.
Learning through collaboration
• opportunities to further understanding through constructive collaborative work
• articulation and explanation of thought in discussion; active listening and considered response.
Mastery of Skills
• development of a confident and engaging personal voice
• appreciation of writers’ craft; development of expression in pupils’ own writing
• confidence and accuracy in spelling, punctuation and grammar, so that writing is clear, accurate and coherent
• adaptation of language, form and tone, according to purpose and audience
• oral and written articulation of a well-structured, independent and critical response to literature.
At the junior levels, there is an emphasis on oral language. Being able to speak well and to share ideas is key to being able to develop good reading and writing skills.
Alongside this is a strong foundation in essential words: sight words that must be learned by heart. Lots of repetition in saying letters and words, as well as reading them and writing them helps children to place them in their long-term memory. Children read and write daily, with 1:1 teacher support, group support and independence which are all features of a good programme.
It is important to highlight to parents the importance of the phonic approach to spelling that we use at Ngutunui School. This starts on each child’s first day of school. We teach children the letter sounds, as well as the letter names (for example, we teach children “a-” for apple, “b-” for banana, “c-“ for cat” alongside the letter names, “aye, bee, see...”). The phonics alphabet is also ordered differently to the traditional alphabet, so children will not necessarily learn the letters in the order with which parents are familiar.
In the senior levels, we mix our approach to teaching English skills. We understand that there is still a need to teach reading and writing, but that, also, reading and writing will become tools for learning. Reading and writing groups are still offered, but there issome whole-class learning, too, which allows for a different context and approach to learning, much more in keeping with the style our pupils will encounter as they move off to their future schools. We see this as an important step in preparing them for this change.
Pleasingly, Ngutunui School has worked to create a consistent phonics approach that is used across the school.

Mathematics

The mathematics programme at Ngutunui School aims to:
• enable pupils to become fluent with fundamental mathematical concepts
• encourage the development of investigative thinking, problem solving and reasoning skills
• develop pupils’ analytical skills, enabling them to select appropriate methods
• encourage pupils to work logically and express mathematical ideas clearly, correctly and succinctly
• instill confidence and resilience through an appreciation of the value of learning from mistakes
promote the idea that everyone can be successful in mathematics
• motivate and reward pupils by enabling them to recognise and take satisfaction from their progress
• instill in pupils the importance of the subject and its associated skills, including the applications of mathematics in other disciplines
• enable pupils to recognise the beauty of mathematics through an appreciation of the simplicity and elegance with which mathematics expresses profound and interconnected ideas
• provide a solid foundation for future progress.
Our mathematics curriculum is delivered using a variety of different approaches, but we have started supporting our programmes with PR1ME (Y4-8) and Numicon (1-3/4).
Importantly, we also recognise the significance of transferring pupils’ maths skills with other learning areas. We are strong believers in the teachable moment, where something relevant springs up. It is encouraged to leave the textbooks or classroom for the lesson and focus on something different, something, perhaps, more meaningful for the children. The strength in our mathematics curriculum is that we have the ability to do both.
We are believers that a strong mathematics curriculum is reinforced by regular practice of basic facts (similar to our approach with early phonics). Children are expected to undertake weekly practice of their addition and subtraction facts (in the junior years) and their multiplication and division tables (in the middle and senior years). This practice is done daily in class and encouraged at home, too.

The Sciences
Our science syllabus aims to stimulate pupils’ interest and enjoyment of science, recognise connections between different areas of science, evaluate and communicate scientific evidence and develop an awareness of science as a social and cultural activity. We believe that science is an important subject for pupils to learn as it is one that allows pupils the opportunity to experiment, observe and explore in a safe, controlled way.
Health and Physical Education
Pupils at Kiwitahi School regularly participate in physical activity. We acknowledge the importance of movement and encourage all pupils to engage with sport. Physical education is taught explicitly during the course of the week, with skills being developed to help children prepare for specific inter-school sporting events. We have a swimming pool which is used during Terms 1 and 4 with a swim / water safety focus.

Health 
Ngutunui School acknowledges the importance of a strong health curriculum that supports the emotional needs of our children. We encourage an open dialogue where children feel safe to ask questions that they want answered. This is an example of where the small nature of our school allows each child to have their questions answered and to have their voice heard. We are welcoming and tolerant of people of any ethnicity, sexual orientation or religion and offer an environment where all children are welcomed and valued. 
Our health teaching is broad brush and focuses on age-appropriate material which helps enhance the lives of our young people.

The Arts
We weave our arts curriculum into our learning at Ngutunui School. Where possible, we try to connect the current topics of study with the four strands of the arts: dance, drama, music, visual art. This means that we can offer further ways for children to connect with the topic of study. Some children find it hard to express themselves through the written or spoken word, but expression through the arts curriculum can allow some children this opportunity. On top of our integrated curriculum, we also encourage a balance of stand-alone arts lessons which allow our children to understand particular concepts that need to be addressed.

Te Reo Māori
Te reo and tikanga Māori are woven into the tapestry of Ngutunui School. This has been acknowledged by our local iwi, Ngāti Maniapoto, who are supportive of our reo and tikanga practice. Our learners are taught explicit reo Māori lessons. Teachers use a variety of resources recommended to us by the online learning platform to give a broad brush of reo and tikanga, which interests pupils and up-skills teachers.
Importantly, reo and tikanga are not taught in isolation, but are also included in the daily commuication to give real effect to the importance of our country’s native language. Karakia and waiata are everyday practice and te reo Māori spoken within the classroom setting and playground encouraged. We encourage and celebrate the use of te reo Māori.
ENVIRO SCHOOLS & Localised Curriculum
We value the Enviro Schools curriculum and teachers utelise this tool in their planning and learning. We encourage learning in our local environment and have been involved in learning on a local farm experienceing: Trees for Survival (nutring seedling to planing), planting on the famr, swampland creation, bat studies and eel studies on the farm.
We have a localised curriculum that encourages utelising the strengths and interest of out learners, our families and our community, opening the doors to diverse learning.

LEARNER AGENCY
Learner agency, creating agentic learning environments is at the core of our teaching and learning at Ngutunui School.