Example Projects
Taonga - Whole School - Maori Hill School
Whole School Driving Question: How can we as kaitiaki ensure Aotearoa continues to protect our natural taonga?
Project Summary from one class: In this project children work together to investigate an endangered species/habitat/ecosystem needs, structures, and functions, food chains, food webs, life cycles, text features, that are considered a taonga in Aotearoa. Using the scientific processes of investigating, understanding and explaining, children examine the living world around them to determine why a species is no longer thriving or surviving. Armed with the scientific skills of making observations, carrying out investigations, communicating and debating with others, children develop knowledge, understanding, and explanations about the unique biological species (including fauna and flora) that live within Aotearoa. Working to a client brief, children create a product that shares their scientific findings into how we can act as kaitiaki and ensure Aotearoa continues to protect our natural taonga.
Whole school Embarking Activity: Classroom visits to Orokonui Ecosanctuary.
Project Outcome/Product:
An exhibition of the project's process and products were held in the library for families to visit during Learning Conference evenings. Products included Pop up educational books, Information Reports, Dioramas, Interactive displays with Makey Makey and a whole school Yellow Dress Up day to support the Yellowed Eyed Penguin.
Let’s Do Business! - Whole School - Maori Hill School
Driving Question: How can we as community members raise funds to give back to our school community?
Project Summary: In this enterprise project children are challenged to design and create products to sell at the school fair. Financial literacy will be developed as children will need to look at costs of materials and pricing to ensure a profit can be made. Packaging and advertising to promote the product will also be essential elements of this project.
Embarking Activity:Varied across the school
Project Outcome/Product:
Funds raised at the school fair. Children show an understanding of financial literacy.
Classroom Products:
Room 1 - Plants
Room 1A - Mindfulness jars
Room 2 - Bookmarks
Room 3 - Stress balls and hacky sacks
Room 4 - Hama bead keyrings
Room 5 - Painted rocks
Room 6 - Playdoh
Room 7 - Varied (e.g. hair scrunchies, worm wee, pinecone animals)
Room 8 - Poi
Room 9 - Bath bombs
How can we celebrate who we are and where we come from? - Whole School - Kaikorai School
Entry event examples: Parent panel to foster excitement for different cultures in our school community. Expert visitors.
Milestone examples: Understand that there are 2 different versions of the treaty, research our cultural identity and practices, explore how to share our projects with our peers, and identify similarities and differences between classmates.
During this project, students explored different cultures in our school community. We had a lot of expert visits from the families, which encouraged us to ask thoughtful and critical questions. Students used ‘student voice and choice’ to delve into celebrating their own culture with others. Some students chose to create board games, others made accessories and some made digital books. Throughout, students were encouraged to give and receive specific feedback and self-reflect to take part in the process of iteration. This project worked perfectly at the beginning of the year to help foster connections between new classmates and celebrate Waitangi Day in NZ.
How can we, as innovators, explore space? - Whole School - Kaikorai School
Entry event examples: Using augmented reality apps on the iPads, watching a live rocket launch, bringing in a space expert, talk with an astronaut through Zoom.
Milestone examples: Develop an understanding of the planets, moon and sun, understand innovation, celebrate Matariki, and become innovators to explore space.
This project was perfect in relation to sparking creativity in students. Students explored innovation and researched famous innovators before designing their own creations. Many students chose to head down the route of living on another planet and how this may be possible. Students showed their learning through various ways, such as augmented reality on CoSpaces, Makey Makeys and Scratch, and cardboard construction. This was an amazing project to delve into the science curriculum with great connections to Matariki.
How can we encourage healthy living for ourselves and others? - Whole School - Kaikorai School
Entry event examples: Football tournament opening ceremony, sports day, Virtual Adventure
Milestone examples: Creating a balanced and nutritious diet, cooperating, participating and working as a team, building a growth mindset, and exploring what exercise our bodies need to thrive.
This project was all about exploring the health and PE curriculum. It included a focus on various sports, a balanced diet, drinking more water, building a growth mindset, and brushing those teeth, to name a few. All the life skills our tamariki need to thrive. Final public products included creating dance videos to encourage exercise, making videos for the elderly to use in the rest homes, creating new games and PE units for other classes, designing t-shirts and making meal plans for our families. These were great public products as they were then taken into the community. There were visits to rest homes to test out their workouts, classes mixed up to take part in new games and families invited in to encourage healthy living.
How can we, as retailers, design, create, and market a product to sell to our community? - Whole School - Kaikorai School
Entry event examples: Introduction to trade for the Seniors - they are no longer allowed to use chairs until they can persuade the teacher through an advertisement with a trade, juniors explored working in their own shop with fake money.
Milestone examples: Manage money and income, set goals, product design, feedback and revision
This project focused on the process of iteration. Giving and receiving feedback to create a final product to sell at a market day. This was a perfect real-world scenario that linked perfectly to financial literacy and an advertising unit. Students interviewed their peers (stakeholders) who would buy their products on market day to make sure their creation was sensible. Students thought of ‘needs and wants’ and what would sell better before creating their company's product, slogan and logo. The market day was a success, with the community getting involved and students working in their stores, running a bank and having a lot of fun.
Discovery - Planet X - Year 7 - Balmacewen Intermediate
Our PBL unit Discovery - Planet X tied in with our Science theme of the Living World. After spending the first few weeks learning about animals, classification, adaptations, food webs and a visit to animal attic, we moved onto the creative PBL project. Weta workshop zoomed into our classes with inspiration and ideas for the development of our animal characters that could live on our invented Planet X. Students researched ideas for their habitat of their choice and what animals already exist there to get ideas for adaptations for their animals. They then individually designed some ideas for their animals before seeking feedback, sharing with their groups and moving on collaboratively to complete the final designs.
Some students made models of their creatures. We integrated digital ideas such as using AI to generate images, created interactive links using thinglink, learnt how to use google sites and during our literacy times learnt how to write animal reports - when you read them they make their invented animals seem so real! Some of our work is not being shared back to Weta for their feedback on our design ideas.
Project Websites:
Turangawaewae - Year 7 - Balmacewen Intermediate
Kaitiaki of the Stream- Year 0-2 - Wakari School
Driving Question: How can we as the kaitiakitanga of our community protect and preserve the eco-system of our stream for the future?
Project: A tracking station
Spark it! : Short film/clip/trailer of footage from Wakari Stream presented to the tamariki. Mystery creature footprints around the room.
Question it: Questions-recap. Create what I know, what I need to know and next step questions. Display on PBL wall.
Passion and Imagine it: Videos, guest speakers, predator work
Make it!: Made and then used their predator tracks, these were put out at school and at the creek
Share It!: Syndicate walkaround classes-looking at all the project mahi covered (writing, art, video, books, drama)
Kaitiaki of the Stream - Year 3-4 - Wakari School
Driving Question: How can we, as kaitiaki of the stream, protect our local school creek?
Our learning journey:
Kaitiaki of the Stream - Year 5/6 - Wakari School
Driving Question: How can I as a Kaitiaki of School Creek teach my community how to care and protect it?
For this project the Senior Syndiacte began by taking part in an entry event with Tahu from Orokonui. She showed the syndicate an enviroscape and taught them about how different features affect the quality of our water ways.Next the children took part in a Stream Health assessment of School Creek by the Flagstaff community church. The children measured and tested a range of stream attributes such as water calrity, turbidity, water temperature, invertebrates and the stream habitat. We were lucky to have experts from Kaikorai Valley College, Otago Regional Council and the Dunedin City Council help us with this assessment.
The children then used this data to collectively make a decision on the health of the stream. Our assessment was that the stream’s health was good but could be improved. To further our understanding the children research more aspects of what makes a stream healthy or unhealthy. The syndicate then planned, designed and created their own dioramas showing either what a healthy stream or unhealthy stream looks like, or a combination of the both. We held an expo at school to celebrate all of the learning.
History Project - Years 0-2 - Wakari School
Driving Question: How can we, as historians, share stories about Wakari School?
Project: A now and then photo book
Spark it! “Olden day” games morning
Question it: Learning about questions, Smyth approach using photos with questions, question rubric
Passion and Imagine it: Toitu visit, History of Wakari School book
Make it!: Now and then book about Wakari School. Children took pictures of now and used Canva and an app to make a picture of them dressed in olden clothes. Children wrote facts for their books
Share It!: Books shared with their buddy reader
History Project - Years 3/4 - Wakari School
Driving Question: How can we as Historians teach others about Wakari School in the past?
Spark it!: My community - create a definition
Question it: Photos - Generate Questions from these images. Venn Diagram - now and then, what do we notice?
Passion and Imagine it: As a hub we revisited our crazy 8’s and what we would find in our community and how we could incorporate this on a possible learning street
Make it!: Workshops - Slit and slot refer to the cardboard construction poster. Circuits - for stop/go signs.
Video of the “Make It” stage in action!
Share It!: Celebration of our completed mat with the Junior Syndicate.
Road Safety - Year 5/6 - Wakari School
Driving Question: How can I as a responsible citizen share a road safety resource with the school community?
For this project the Wakari Senior Syndicate children were tasked with identifying the road safety needs within our community as well as educating their families with their own range of road safety themed products.
The project began with an entry event sparked by our local constable, Ross Greer and a design brief pitched by our principal, Stacey Gribben.
The children then took part in a range of activities to upskill their knowledge on our local road safety needs. These included hazard identification walks, traffic surveys and class research on safe practices around our roads.
The children worked in groups to create their products. The products included positive and negative tickets, brochures, videos, posters, improved signage, newspaper articles and websites. Many of the products also incorporated QR codes which linked to further information.
To complete the project, children shared their products with family members and also took part in a walk to school mapping activity run by the DCC. This mapping activity will see a 5, 10, and 15 minute walk-to-school zone marked out within our community.