Our Curriculum at Te Uru Tarata | Lemonwood Grove School

The Te Uru Tarata | Lemonwood Grove School curriculum is fundamentally built upon three core pillars: our diverse community, our tamariki (students), who are at the heart of every decision, and our staff, who are dedicated to creating meaningful and rich learning experiences.

We use curriculum mapping to establish a broad overview of the year, ensuring that all learning experiences are intentionally designed and focused on achieving key outcomes for every student based on the current New Zealand Curriculum.

Key Instructional Approaches

Our teaching and learning are grounded in evidence-based strategies to ensure maximum success for our students:

1. Structured Literacy

We use the Ideal platform as the foundation for our structured literacy approach. This systematic and explicit instruction is key to building strong foundational literacy skills and ensuring success for all our learners.

2. The Science of Learning & Explicit Instruction

Our effective planning and teaching opportunities are formulated using the Science of Learning and principles of Explicit Instruction. The Science of Learning is an interdisciplinary field that applies research from cognitive science, psychology, neuroscience, and education to understand how students best acquire, process, and retain new information and skills. Our teachers are expected to use high leverage teaching practices throughout the day to actively engage student in learning.

Core Principles of Learning in Action

In our school environment, we apply evidence-based strategies from the Science of Learning to optimize teaching and studying. These core principles help our students study smarter and our teachers design more effective instruction:

• Active Recall: We encourage students to actively retrieve information from memory (e.g., self-quizzing) rather than passively rereading material, as this significantly strengthens learning and retention.

• Spaced Practice (Distributed Practice): Learning is more effective when study sessions are spread out over time, preventing the less effective "cramming" approach.

• Interleaving: By mixing different types of problems or subjects within a study session, we help students differentiate between concepts and choose the correct approach, enhancing true understanding.

• Elaboration and Connecting Ideas: Students improve learning by actively connecting new information to their prior knowledge and explaining concepts in their own words, helping to move information from short-term to long-term memory.

• Growth Mindset: We foster the belief that intelligence and abilities can be developed through effort and strategy. This psychological approach encourages students to persist through challenges and embrace mistakes as valuable learning opportunities.

In essence, our curriculum at Te Uru Tarata | Lemonwood Grove School moves beyond intuition, providing practical, research-backed methods to ensure every student has the best possible chance to succeed.