Images courtesy of Kamo Intermediate
passions made it easy to expose these enthusiastic students to the benefits and learning opportunities of ‘real life’ learning. Students of this age also have a keen interest in saving the planet, so upcycling was an immediate attraction. Adding to the schoolwide aesthetics made the students involved, very proud.”
How did pupils react to its introduction? Sloane says, “Students quickly became passionate about their projects, especially those who were upcycling items to
fit a new purpose for someone else. Other students saw what their peers were doing and very quickly wanted to become involved. Students continue to be encouraged to bring to school products that can be upcycled or redesigned in some way to become more useful.” Pupils have been transforming discarded wooden pallets into outdoor furniture and giving new life to other donated items by upcycling and repurposing them. The positives that have come from introducing projects that have tangible, real life
Curious about Caxton Educational CaxEd publishes the popular NZ Curriculum Mathematics – Stages numeracy series and the award-winning NZ Curriculum Mathematics – Connecting All Strands series, which weaves all the NZ Curriculum strands into one Student Text per year (Years 3-8) establishing a solid backbone for your maths programme. CaxEd offers Online Teacher Support via their website to complement the Connecting All Strands texts. Printable masters, interactive games, teaching strategies, and extra tasks for every Term 1, 2021 | schoolnews.co.nz
applications and value have been many and varied. “Students have learned new skills, co-operation, resilience and integration of learning from so many areas. Working alongside the community, developing self-confidence, self-belief, and a willingness to help others are some of the highlights. “We’re finding that students are willing, and wanting, to give up their own time to complete projects, so much so that often they are at school by 7am ready to work on their projects.”
Where have these STEAM project ideas come from? “Initially ideas came from various websites but increasingly they come from where individual students see a need, and/or a purpose, and act on it. The biggest advantage of this type of learning is that it enables all students to have success. They realise it is not necessarily an advantage to be the best at everything. They also realise that they have skills they were not aware of and this, in turn, creates many ‘Eureka!’ moments.”
AWARD WINNING
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free ONLINE TEACHER SUPPORT
chapter add more excellent activities for extension or extra practice to the highquality tasks in the books. Schools that have purchased this series can access these online resources at no cost. The Ministry of Education’s latest study shows that textbooks outperform computer or tablet-based learning. Email mel@caxed.co.nz or visit www.caxed.co.nz.
Give your students the best advantage to excel at maths. They use our textbooks, while you have all our free online teacher support.
YOUR STUDENTS DESERVE THIS! mel@caxed.co.nz www.caxed.co.nz
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