{"id":5162,"date":"2018-11-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/cw_post\/pt-england-primary-manaiakalani-the-hook-from-heaven\/"},"modified":"2020-02-05T13:06:46","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T18:06:46","slug":"pt-england-primary-manaiakalani-the-hook-from-heaven","status":"publish","type":"cw_post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/pt-england-primary-manaiakalani-the-hook-from-heaven\/","title":{"rendered":"Pt. England Primary: Manaiakalani, The Hook from Heaven"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This is the fifth article in the series\u00a0Baskets of Knowledge from Aotearoa New Zealand<\/strong>, which\u00a0highlights insights from a totally different education system about what is possible in transforming our education system. Read the first article\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

A little background before I describe <\/span>Pt. England Primary<\/span><\/a>\u2019s pedagogical approach and strategy for accelerating learning. New Zealand\u2019s education system is designed around the assumption that students enter school at different points in their learning and development, and that learning does not occur in the same way or same pace. There are eight curricular levels outlined in the <\/span>New Zealand National Curriculum<\/span><\/a> that are bands stretching across three years with the expectation that students will be learning within those bands at a given age. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, every educator I spoke to except two, Russell Burt, principal of <\/span>Pt. England Primary<\/span><\/a>, and Andy Kai Fong, principal at <\/span>Haeata Community Campus<\/span><\/a>, to some degree assumed that students who started at a lower level would end up at a lower level upon leaving school at the end of Year 13. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong \u2013 every school I visited had a clear focus on \u201cpriority\u201d students who were not demonstrating as much growth as expected. However, there were few intentional strategies to make sure that students who started at an earlier stage on the curricular continuum would have an opportunity to graduate with the Level 3 certificate of achievement. One underlying reason for this is that the Tomorrow\u2019s Schools policy, which grants wide reaching autonomy to schools, also means that no one has the responsibility of looking at how students are doing across the full 13 years of schooling within any one geographical area. (See article <\/span>Why New Zealand? A Primer on the NZ Education System for description of key policies including Tomorrow\u2019s Schools.)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Designing a Strategy for Acceleration<\/b><\/h2>\n

Pt. England\u2019s pedagogical approach begins with respect and the assumption that students need to be actively engaged with minds turned on in their learning. The learning cycle \u2013\u00a0<\/span>Learn, Create, Share \u2013<\/span><\/i>\u00a0shapes the design of learning experiences. Students know that learning activities will likely culminate in a production of their ideas through a product, digital medium, arts, or performance. <\/span><\/p>\n

The <\/span>teachers at Pt. England launched<\/span><\/a> the accelerated literacy learning model that developed into the <\/span>Manaiakalani (The Hook from Heaven<\/span><\/a>) cluster of thirteen schools. The model is based on \u201chooking\u201d children\u2019s interest in writing and reading. In other words, they wanted to create a high engagement approach in which students would be putting forth effort in their learning. Teachers seek to develop learning experiences that have the <\/span>following features<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n