Kaipaki School
Sue Quinnell is leading school curriculum development at Kaipaki School, a family-oriented, country school near Hamilton. Her story focuses on literacy and on the literacy-rich environment of the school.
At first glance
As Kaipaki School is situated close to Hamilton and Cambridge, we have a number of children who live on lifestyle blocks and some who live in town. Children attend this school whose parents are share milkers, farm labourers, horse trainers, and horse breeders. We also have some town children whose parents want them to have a rural education. We like to think that Kaipaki School is a rural school, and we promote that.
I felt this was a supportive community when I first came here, and I really wanted to capitalise on that as I've always felt that it is really important to have the community's confidence for a school to be successful. We're a very small community here. All we have is the school, the hall down the road, and a very small church. We don't have a shop, or a community library, or anything like that. So I wanted to become involved in our school community even though I don't live here, and I wanted this to be 'a great little country school'.
There had been four different principals here in the two years prior to my arrival and that had impacted on the school. So I made a commitment to the board of trustees that I would be here for at least three years.
Focus on literacy
I started by looking at the school's available documentation and the children's assessment data. It soon became clear that we needed to review the school charter and get a strategic plan in place. With the help of an adviser from the University of Waikato School of Education (School Support Services), we went through the consultative process with the school community. From that process, we identified that the community wanted our children to be strong in literacy, particularly reading and writing.
All our staff here have literacy backgrounds and I believe we have a strong sense of organised teamwork. So we all sat down and worked through the implementation plan together, and decided that our classroom programmes would include two hours a day, four days per week on literacy.
Literacy and reading are my real passions, so I was keen to get underway.
Where my ideas come from
I came from a normal school in Hamilton and I had some excellent role models there. I've also picked up ideas from the university papers I've done that relate to teaching styles.
Because I was a new principal, I was really eager to get some practical ideas on how to run a really good school, and I found that the publications produced by the Education Review Office have been really helpful and reader-friendly. For example, there are excellent publications on rural schools, one on poor schools, and another on good schools. I enjoy them, as I've been able to pick them up and read them for quick ideas.
I have found that the Ministry of Education publications are great in terms of helping us with our literacy developments. Books like Dancing with the Pen, for instance, have been really useful for us.
Talking the same language
When I first arrived at the school, I talked to ERO about my goals – one of which was to improve the reading level school-wide. Subsequently, the board of trustees and I put together the strategic plan, which had very strong emphasis on reading and writing.
We also looked at assessment practices in the school. I wanted to see consistency in that area, so it was really important to have the other teachers on board. To accomplish this, we looked at assessment models that were being used in other schools. We chose one that we thought would suit us, and adapted it to meet our needs. We consulted everyone in our community about it, and they agreed that this was a really useful model.
We wanted to make sure that we were all talking the same language as far as our expectations of the children's achievement went, so we started looking at benchmarks. We began by creating our own benchmarks, and felt that we were reinventing the wheel. So we ended up by purchasing a commercial package with suggested benchmarks for the school. With a few amendments, we felt those fitted our school pretty well. This process has helped us in talking the same language in terms of our achievement expectations.
We not only wanted consistency in teaching literacy across the school, but we wanted consistency with literacy homework too. So we decided on a school-wide spelling programme for homework, along with a school-wide home reading programme. Both programmes are working well.
Monitoring achievement
Next, we introduced achievement books, and we've been using them for about four years now. They have been really successful. The children's work samples are labelled with the particular level the children are expected to be achieving at, the achievement objectives from the curriculum, and also the specific learning outcomes which come from the benchmarks. The children are fully aware of what goes into these books and they can explain their work to their parents.
Setting goals is part of the process, and the goals are very specific and individual. Children, their parents, and their teachers set the goals at the beginning of each year, and we keep revisiting them throughout the year.
At the end of each year, the children's achievement books go home and become the children's school reports.
Through this process, we are helping to educate parents so that they can see what levels their children are working at and can more effectively support them. Children are becoming independent learners.
Rich literacy experiences
I was keen to give the children lots of really rich literacy experiences. To that end, we ensure print-rich classroom environments and quality teaching and learning resources.
To give children meaningful experiences, we've organised annual whole-school camps, and we all go away for three nights every year. We involve all our families and we even invite pre-school children. We develop lots of writing and oral language work from these experiences.
Four years ago, I approached the local community organisations for their support, as the school wanted to start a community newsletter. We call it the Kaipaki Chronicle and this newsletter has been going for a number of years now. Most of the work in it is the children's writing. Through this newspaper, we celebrate what's happening in the school, as well as celebrating the children's written work. We discovered that the Chronicle has been a really great advertising tool for our school.
At Kaipaki, we organise sharing assemblies. These include school and general notices, and lots of singing. We also use assembly time for the children to share the work they have been doing in their classrooms. For instance, at the last assembly the senior class children, who have been focussing on report writing, stood up and read reports about our recent whole-school camp. We value this opportunity for modelling effective practices, and find it's particularly valuable for the younger children.
We also invite the younger children to stand up and read their work to the older ones. Our children are so encouraging to the younger ones, it's a great confidence booster for their oral language. It also helps the development of their speaking skills in front of an audience.
We've set up a buddy reading programme that takes place every Friday morning after assembly. In the buddy reading programme, older and younger children share their reading with each other. They can share library books, classroom readers, or stories they've written in the classroom.
National NZ Fieldays at Mystery Creek are important to us as inspiration for our written ideas. At school, we organise an annual Ag Day that generates lots of stimulating moments for discussion and has generated delightful writing from the children. All of these experiences, along with the many inter-school events the children are involved in, impact on the children's learning, particularly on their literacy.
Next step
I feel that we have met the goals we had set with regard to the literacy programmes in the school. Children are more focused and have pride in their work. The school community knows what we are doing and what we have achieved. We think we are a great little country school.
So now, the rural schools cluster group I am involved in is helping us to further develop our literacy programmes.
We have started looking at benchmarking across all cluster schools and have begun by administering the STAR Test on reading comprehension, under the guidance of one of the local advisers. At the moment, we are analysing the resulting data.
