Our Curriculum

At Heddon Bush School, the Board of Trustees, through the principal and staff, have developed and implemented teaching and learning programmes, which foster the development of key competencies through eight Learning Areas, with an emphasis on literacy and numeracy.

Through a range of assessment practices, teachers gather information that is sufficiently comprehensive to enable the progress and achievement of students to be evaluated, giving priority to student achievement in literacy and numeracy, and then to breadth and depth of learning related to the needs, abilities and interests of our students, the nature of the integrated unit and the scope of the New Zealand curriculum.

Each term there is a school wide integrated topic, which is based around a number of key concepts or 'big ideas' and is designed to hook students into their learning. Integrated units provide opportunities for pupils to seek, use and create new knowledge and understanding whilst developing key competencies. The Learning Areas are brought into particular focus when they are best suited to the learning needs of our pupils and the nature of that particular unit. Inquiry learning is a feature of our integrated units and students use their learning to take some kind of positive social action. Higher order thinking skills are nurtured and encouraged.

Our awareness of the unique strengths and weaknesses of our pupils and our understanding of Gardner’s theory of ‘Multiple Intelligences’ ensure that we cater for the differing abilities, interests and learning styles in our classrooms.

Click here to see our full curriculum plan

or

 Click here to download the curriculum plan