Whangaparaoa College

Systemic changes and integrated curriculum

Whangaparaoa College is a large secondary school in Auckland, New Zealand. The school opened in 2005 and faced a number of challenges getting underway.

The school has been built with learning at the forefront and this is a continued challenge as we move forward. Keeping learning at the forefront while surrounded by so many other demands is a challenge. Being a new school we had several unique opportunities. We were not held down by the history of the past and standard ways of operating.

This has impacted on our curriculum in the following ways:

• The curriculum is integrated. Subjects are linked and in Years 7-10 there is no English, Maths, Science and Social Studies. There are integrated studies where those subject achievement objectives are covered.
• IT is completely learnt and assessed within the main learning programmes. There are no special computing classes or programmes.
• Thinking is embedded into the learning programmes. Thinking organisers and 3-level guides are displayed in all classes and are incorporated into the curriculum documents.
• Components of literacy and numeracy are taught as separate because of particular needs associated with those areas
• A programme called improved learning operates within the school to train teachers in formative assessment techniques. This is based on research that this is an influential way to improve achievement.
• Learning Behaviours based on Habits of Mind are discussed on a term basis through class learning, assemblies etc. This term, for instance, the Learning Behaviour is Striving for Accuracy.

To allow these changes to occur we have:

• Long lessons of 75 minutes
• Innovative building designs
• High quality digital resources
• Flexible approaches to planning needs

While there have been huge challenges around these developments it does put the college in a good place to implement the new curriculum. To view further information visit the school website.

Comments (1)

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• Jane Nicholls - Jun 29,2009 at 3:44pm

  Hi Brian,
  Thank you for sharing your school story. It is really encouraging to see snapshots in NZC Online about secondary schools who are implementing change. It is also fantastic to see your school using the new curriculum discourse, ie key competencies, and your discussions about curriculum integration.
  
  Can you tell us more about how the Improving Learning programme for formative assessment operates in your school? It sounds really interesting and others would benefit from hearing about it. It would also be very helpful if you could elaborate on what you have found to be the most effective approaches to curriculum planning, as well as the high quality digital resources you talked about.
  Jenny Keeton

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