Curriculum

The New Zealand Curriculum

Rangi Ruru follows the New Zealand Curriculum, which specifies eight learning areas:

• – English
• – The Arts
• – Health and Physical Education
• – Languages
• – Mathematics and Statistics
• – Science
• – Social Sciences
• – Technology

The learning associated with each area is part of a broad, general education and lays a foundation for later specialisation. As with the key competencies, this learning is both end and means; valuable in itself and valuable for the pathways it opens to other learning.

While the learning areas are presented as distinct, this does not limit the ways in which we can structure the learning experiences offered to students. All learning should make use of the natural connections that exist between learning areas and that link learning areas to the values and key competencies.

Learning areas

Each learning area has its own language or languages. As students discover how to use them, they find they are able to think in different ways, access new areas of knowledge, and see their world from new perspectives.

For each area, students need specific help from their teachers as they learn:

• the specialist vocabulary associated with that area
• how to read and understand its texts
• how to communicate knowledge and ideas in appropriate ways
• how to listen and read critically

In addition to such help, students who are new learners of English or coming into an English-medium environment for the first time, need explicit and extensive teaching of English vocabulary, and word forms.

As language is central to learning and English is the medium for most learning in the New Zealand Curriculum, the importance of literacy in English cannot be overstated.

Key Competencies – Capabilities for living and lifelong learning

The New Zealand Curriculum identifies five key competencies:

• – Thinking
• – Using language, symbols, and texts
• – Managing self
• – Relating to others
• – Participating and contributing

People use these competencies to live, learn, work, and contribute as active members of their communities. More complex than skills, the competencies draw also on knowledge, attitudes, and values in ways that lead to action. They are not separate or stand-alone. They are the key to learning in every learning area.

Successful learners make use of the competencies in combination with all the other resources available to them. These include personal goals, other people, community knowledge and values, cultural tools (language, symbols, and texts), and the knowledge and skills found in different learning areas. As they develop the competencies, successful learners are also motivated to use them, recognising when and how to do so and why.

The competencies continue to develop over time, shaped by interactions with people, places, ideas, and things. Students need to be challenged and supported to develop them in contexts that are increasingly wide ranging and complex.