Fostering Curiosity and Life Long Learning

Kia ora e te whānau,

At TGS, our mission statement is "Our mission is to develop independent, life-long learners with strong foundations in literacy and numeracy through real, student-driven inquiry, using ICT as a tool." Inquiry and integration are the backbones of our programs.

We are very lucky to have designated times, spaces, and teachers for well-being and social-emotional learning in our school. We have specialist times that allow our music, PE, STEAM, Science, Food Tech, Hard Tech, Textiles, and Music Teachers come into our spaces to provide collaborative release for our team. In the middle block on a Friday, we meet across the school to have 'clubs'. Clubs are teacher-led explorations of a new skill, idea, or project. Learners sign up for clubs and take part in learning these new skills. Clubs are a time to showcase new ideas and skills and build curiosity and exploration of new concepts for our learners. My last club centered around digital fabric design, something that I had only explored in a small capacity myself. We model and explore new learning opportunities with our kids to reinforce that learning is a lifelong skill. We are also very open with our learners when we go on professional development. I will come back from this week with pictures, stories, and tasks to share with both my learners and our staff.