At Riverhead School, our inclusive culture values the contributions of all learners, family, whanau, staff and community. We believe that all learners, no matter what their needs, deserve the right to achieve excellence and resilience in an equitable manner. Children with additional needs at Riverhead School are viewed as full members of the school community and it is expected that every child, no matter what their needs, will be included in all aspects of school life.
Our inclusive culture is driven by our four guiding principles: Manaakitanga, Whanaungatanga, Mahitahi and Ako.
Manaakitanga: All staff are committed to providing safe, caring and creative learning environments where everyone feels respected and treated with dignity. This is extended to ensuring all learners have the opportunity to learn and experience educational success. Through the equitable sharing of resources, we ensure all children have the opportunities they need to reach their goals and potential - physically, academically and culturally. At the core of the Riverhead School Learning Highway are authentic learner-centred approaches, which promote personalised learning opportunities. For those children that need additional support to access the curriculum, we nurture their success, whilst continuing to build/maintain a child’s independence, through in-class acceleration groups, adaptive strategies, learning assistant support, environmental adaptations and additional resources in order to enable them to feel valued members of the school community. In some instances, the need for external support may be required. In these cases, we ensure open communication is maintained with all stakeholders and, where possible, consultation with the learner will be a priority to ensure they feel like an integral part of the process.
Whanaungatanga: Caring for our learners’ well-being and achievement is paramount. We recognise that for us to truly understand the needs of each individual child we must connect with the learner themselves to build strong and meaningful relationships that promote a sense of belonging and acceptance. In addition, we also understand the importance of collaborating with parents and whanau to build strong home-school partnerships, which create a common purpose and bond. Our teachers and SENCO work to bring the school, our learners, their families and any external support together to create a cohesive unit, that will reciprocally support the individual needs of the child. This may include opportunities to provide feedback and gain information, developing IEPs, supporting through a referral process or simply listening to get a clear understanding of the needs, requirements and aspirations.
Mahi Tahi: Mahi tahi, or working collaboratively to achieve learner-centred education goals, is central to our beliefs at Riverhead School. It is essential for the overall hauora of every child, even more so for a child who has additional needs. Our teachers work in collaborative teams to identify Priority Learners and their needs, inquire into how best to fulfil these needs and engage with parents/whanau and other professionals to build a collaborative support network for the learner. By actively engaging in this collaborative inquiry process (data conversation), teachers are building collective efficacy and a shared responsibility for all learners by constantly reflecting on what the evidence says about quality teaching and learning, regularly reviewing the impact of our teaching practice on learning, actively seeking external observation and critique by colleagues and more experienced teachers and leaders, seeking and contributing to evidence of what works to improve learning outcomes and how we can apply that in our day-to-day practice and innovating when ‘what works’ doesn’t work for all learners or all the time. In addition to this, we actively seek to, “Actively achieve together, more than one could’” by building positive and reciprocal relationships with parents and whanau, other support agencies such as RTLB, MoE and RT:Lit and our Kahui Ako Learning Support committee.
Ako: We believe in our students discovering and developing their potential as inquisitive learners who are critical, creative thinkers. We encourage all children to take learning into their own hands by providing them with opportunities to make choices about what they will learn and explore, have authentic experiences through play or action based learning, passions, and our Riverhead learning model. We also recognise that some learners require more support than others to achieve this. Accelerated progress is achieved when new knowledge and understandings are grown out of shared learning experiences, where learners interact with their peers, teacher, tasks, and resources, and when learners are provided with opportunities to be the ‘expert’ and offer valued contributions. These are the foundations to our in-class acceleration groups. Acceleration has become a core part of ‘what we do’ at Riverhead. We believe in identifying learners who need support in order to achieve their potential at an accelerated rate. We expose learners to new learning, at their expected curriculum level, that is focussed on individual needs. Data conversations inform our targeted teaching, focussing on the need that will create the greatest shifts. This is achieved through identifying, planning, targeting, scaffolding higher levels of learning, front loading, timely assessment, student interests and home school partnerships. Research indicates that this is best practice and we have moved from using Teaching as Inquiry as the vehicle of accelerative practice to it now being embedded school wide in everyday teaching and learning program design.