Raising our Village
Mā te pā te tamaiti e whakatipu
It takes a village to raise a child
In our New Zealand Curriculum it states that community engagement is an essential component of student learning:
The curriculum has meaning for students, connects with their wider lives, and engages the support of their families, whānau, and communities.
At Hingaia Peninsula school we aim to deliver a curriculum that is meaningful, relevant, and connected to students' lives and community. For us, it is about establishing strong home-school partnerships where parents, whānau, and communities are involved and supporting students' learning.
The following pages will provide information about how you can continue to support your child(ren)’s learning at home as well as links to websites that can support your child to continue their learning at home.
Please note, if you have any specific questions or concerns regarding your child's learning and achievement we would encourage you to make an appointment as soon as possible to discuss these queries with your child’s whānau teacher in the first instance.
Ideas to help with Reading, Writing and Maths from the Ministry of Education...
You can help your child's learning every day, by supporting and encouraging them and being excited by their progress and new learning. Here are some simple ideas to keep them developing their literacy and numeracy skills at home. Have a look at the year group for your child and have fun together!
Click on the links below to read information about how you can help your child at home.
Click on the links below to read information in home languages.
Key Competencies:
Your child is learning a range of skills and abilities (key competencies) to help them to do well in life. There are lots of things you can do to help your child develop and use these.
The world your child lives in is very different to what it was like when you were growing up and is continuing to change. It is no longer enough to just learn 'facts', our children will be working in jobs, or more likely 'winning contracts' and are more than likely to have a variety of careers than we have ever experienced. No-one knows exactly what life will be like for today’s children when they become adults, but we do know that they will need to develop a range of key competencies, so that they can adapt and function well in the world.
The key competencies are:
Thinking.
Using language, symbols, and texts.
Managing self.
Relating to others.
Participating and contributing.
These key competencies are an important part of your child's learning at school. They are included in the New Zealand Curriculum and are woven into all the teaching that takes place.
Key competencies are not just for school, but for life. Your child uses these key competencies in many different situations at home, at sport, at church, at cultural occasions, and eventually at work.
The power of having a Growth Mindset...
At HPS we promote the “Growth Mindset” research by Carol Dweck. The language we use and the expectations we have can support our students to be the best they possibly can. Our teachers sometimes notice a student is not making enough effort to learn, becoming discouraged by setbacks or perceiving work to be too difficult. One powerful way to intervene is by being careful how we give praise. Offering praise for students’ work and efforts can alter the mindset so that students can begin to view their own intelligence as something that can be developed. This mindset of developing intelligence will increase the students’ ability to ‘bounce back' in the face of academic setbacks and other difficulties.
We have high and realistic expectations of all students and they are aware of what they have to do to achieve them.
BUILDING A CAN DO MINDSET
We have all kinds of thoughts flying through our heads all the time. Some of those thoughts are brilliant and will take us a long way. Other thoughts should be taken out the back and quietly thrown away. Children don’t know this and most of them believe that all their thoughts are true. It takes a while for a child to learn the difference between the thoughts and they tend to believe their thoughts absolutely and also hear criticisms very literally. We are starting to teach our students this but it may take several years before it really takes hold. Let's all speak the same learning language and talk to our children about how they can continue to grow.