Financial inquiry connects classroom to community

A PTA market day gave ākonga the opportunity to see a real market day come to life as part of their financial inquiry.

Mairangi Bay School is creating young business entrepreneurs by encouraging creativity and local community engagement in their small Auckland suburb.

The North Shore primary school’s recent financial inquiry ran all term 3 and has proved to be a triumph for students and whānau alike.

Claire Worthington-Blair, deputy principal for the junior school, says the financial inquiry was chosen for the way it would teach financial capability, while also linking to numeracy and literacy.

“This topic leant itself to maths really well, but the strength of the inquiry came from looking at the context of money. We wanted to build questions and activities to help students extend their abstract thinking and connect with other areas of learning.”

Market days

Both the juniors and seniors worked their way through a business plan, beginning at product conception and market research, and finishing with a series of highly successful market days.

Whānau is key to engagement at Mairangi Bay School.

Creativity shone through all year groups, with products including bath bombs, tie-dyed T-shirts, squishy balls and games involving hoops, balls and even a maze.

Peter Stoner, deputy principal for the senior school (Years 4–6), says he saw students really taking on board the different roles and stages of creating and marketing a product.

“One of the things the children really enjoyed was integrating the project into other areas of school. Posters appeared around the place, sharing either the goods or services they were hoping to make a profit with, and you’d have interactions in the playground with students presenting their idea and asking how much you would pay for it.”

Market days brought ākonga, whānau and the community together.

The market days yielded positive feedback from tamariki.

Year 6 student Eva says she felt that it was a good experience for students to learn what it feels like to run a business, while fellow classmate Ethan reflected that since his fruit salad made $14, next time he would add more flavours.

Mairangi Bay School principal Nathan Janes says the steps from designing a product or service to delivering it at the market day had huge benefits for student learning and engagement.

“The children had to know what a business looks like, what the different roles and responsibilities are, key competencies and how to contribute to a business plan, all the while considering what the needs of the community were.”

There were two market days (one each for the junior and senior years) and together students raised over $1,600 which was donated to Starship Children’s Hospital.

From classroom to community

The Mairangi Bay School PTA team ready to support the community.

To encourage students to link their inquiries to local community, the junior school were taken on a class trip to the Mairangi Bay Village to check out the different businesses and complete tasks like buying books and morning tea for the class to share.

Claire says the trip to the village was a way for students to connect the dots between what they were learning about inside the classroom to life outside of school.

“It’s quite a small community, and many of the shops in the village are part of our whānau too.”

Mairangi Bay School is smaller than its neighbouring schools with about 480 students, so community and whānau engagement is crucial to student wellbeing.

As a shining example to students, a third market day was delivered the following weekend – this time organised by the school PTA.

There were about 50 stalls run by teachers and parents, and Nathan says the school also reached out to local businesses who wanted to hire a stall and be involved, to show students what their financial inquiry looked like outside the classroom.

Funds raised by this PTA market day went towards a new PE shed, which has since been built and is now being enjoyed by students.

Funds raised by the PTA market day went towards a new PE shed.

“It wasn’t just in-house teaching and learning within school sites. They saw a real market day come to life, as well as the benefits of a market day supporting their community,” says Nathan.

The parents and teachers market day and the student trip down to the local village illustrate the type of relationship the school wants to have with its surroundings.

Nathan, who only joined the school in term 2, says community engagement plays a huge role for his strategy with student learning.

“We’re very lucky to be able to use the local area as part of our programmes. Whānau and local community really want to be a part of what we do at school. It takes more than a village to grow our children.”

Ākonga made a number of different products to sell on market days, including cupcakes.

Onto new inquiry

The inquiry theme for term 4 is sustainability and how students can use kaitiakitanga to care for the environment, a topic well suited for a school five minutes’ walk from the beach.

Nathan says the school’s location and connection with its environment was part of the reason the new inquiry was chosen, to keep learning engaged with the local area.

“The beach and village is right on our doorstep – we’re a lucky, magical place to be.”