LIFFT Film Festival, Community Service, Knowing and Showing, Transitioning Mathematicians, WPCA Award, House Choir, "Heart of the Arts"

LIFFT Film Festival

Amberley, Broomfield and Leithfield Schools’ Short Film Festival.

Why: LIFFT - Learning Innovation Future Focused Technologies (The new technology project in our schools)

What: The three schools have combined children into collaborative groups to create short films for the LIFFT Short Film Festival. These groups have helped children prepare for their transition to Rangiora High School or any other High School. The children had a session with the Christchurch Court Theatre Actors on script writing, genre and character development. Then children wrote, filmed, edited and produced their short films to enter into the Film Festival Evening

How: The Rangiora High School Values is the foundation of this project - Aspire, Respect and Contribute - bringing three Primary School values together with Rangiora High School values to form a common language and behaviour for our children. 

Community Service 

Year 8 students at Leithfield School contribute to their community through participation in the William Pike Challenge. 

Why: Tomake a meaningful contribution to the local community. To help teach students the value of doing things for others.

What: As part of the William Pike Challenge our Y8 students are challenged to contribute at least 20 hours of their time to a community service project.

How: The students can work independently or collaboratively to seek out opportunities within their community. They can work on a single project or spread their time over multiple projects. The students usually choose projects that utilise their own strengths, skills or passions.  

Knowing and Showing

Blending disciplines in an authentic context. 

Why: To blend curriculum areas in an authentic and local context.

What: So staff spent time developing a specific unit of work, geared around, in this case, exploring the physical and environmental impact of a bridge across Rakahuri river. This included a site visit, and measurement.

Students then had to design and build a bridge, using specific items that were given real world costs/dimensions.

Why is this important? As historic “teachers of our subject area”we often need a provided, fleshed out example of how curriculum integration might look, in order to change our pedagogy.

Transitioning Mathematicians

Year 8 students are connecting with other high interest and able mathematicians.

Why: To extend and develop mathematical problem solving.

https://tinyurl.com/transitionartefacts

What: Each contributing school has been invited to send identified students to participate and connect with other like minded mathematicians.

How: Initiated by Rangiora High school and supported and endorsed by local primary schools.

WPCA Award

Year 8 Students at Loburn School develop their resilience, take risks and contribute to their community through the William Pike Programme.

Why: Challenging students to take risks, develop resilience and to contribute to their community and are open to new experiences.

What: Our Year 8 students participate in the William Pike Challenge award every year. This involves a number of outdoor education events: tramps, kayaking, high ropes. Students are also required to take up a new hobby, and contribute to their community by doing 20 hours of community service.

How: Hobbies have to be based on an activity that is new to the student. This hobby could be sport, arts, or cultural based. Some examples have included: dog training, learning hockey, knitting, painting. Examples of community service include: helping at a care home, library assistant, helping at pre-school, gardening for a community group. 

House Choir

#culturally relational pedagogy at Te Kura Tuarua O Rangiora.

Why: To celebrate Maori performing arts in the form of waiata

What: Each House group perform a waiata of their choice as part of the annual House Choir Competition.

"Heart of the Arts"

Why: We followed a hunch that a collaborative arts initiative may support transition of Y8 students in the same way that sports facilitates improved transition in at risk students

What: Supporting the transition of year 8 students to Rangiora High School

How: The creative Arts initiative provides us with an opportunity to support the transition process being undertaken by the collaborating schools. This is a deliberate act of responsibility for transition by collaborating partners.

The initiative is one that provides for purposeful and timely engagement. It is purposeful in that it gives an authentic context for sharing student’s work and timely in that it connects students prior to transition into the high school. To maximise the benefits this would need to be an annual event.

Puketeraki Kahui Ako Term 3 Presentation of Data