Green is gold in Far North school

Liam and Bayden at the popular duck pond.

Oruaiti School, a Year 1-8 school in the Far North, has been on a five-year journey based on a legacy left by a revolutionary principal, Elwyn Richardson, between 1949 and 1962. The school was granted ‘experimental’ status by the Department of Education and Elwyn was allowed to develop his own teaching methods and curriculum based around the natural environment, personal experience, artistic development and the learning potential of every child.

Now, in the 21st century, the school is again using the local environment to frame learning in the classroom so that it is meaningful and purposeful to tamariki.

Teacher Rob Arrowsmith wrote in the school’s entry for the Prime Minister’s Education Excellence Awards that taking a strengths-based approach, which includes the passions and interests of teachers, students and their whānau, has resulted in improved engagement, achievement and resilience.

“Part of our vision has been to enhance Elwyn’s legacy, with a more experiential place-based local curriculum weaving all the learning areas of The New Zealand Curriculum together,” he wrote. 

Chips anyone? Atuarangi with a potato he has harvested from the school garden.

Integration and growth

Oruaiti School has grown from a roll of 60 pupils, when principal Diane Bates arrived six years ago, to 173 tamariki today. This has enabled the school to take on more staff, who are all on board for the school’s enviro-journey, she says.

“When we do our strategic planning at the end of every year, we involve the board and the community. The latest feedback was for us to carry on doing what we are doing,” she says.

Amiria checks the measurements of a rat trap she has been making.

The strengths-based approach has resulted in an increasingly integrated curriculum, improved critical thinking and problem-solving skills and students who are responsible risk-takers.

“We’re trying our best to integrate the curriculum as much as we can,” explains Rob. “We know the more time we take to integrate effectively, to really consider how we craft the learning with the students, the better the outcomes.”

“Take, for example, pest-trapping. The students make their own traps; there’s a certain amount of measurement, technology, research, reading and writing. They log everything they catch; they have to measure it and log into a national database: Pest Tracker(external link),” he says.

Engagement and results

Over the past five years, tamariki have learned how to be successful on their own terms, says Rob.

“If the students own what they are doing, the learning that comes from that is their choice. I’ve only ever done well in the things I really want to do, so if we can give the students and their whānau that much choice, I think we’re giving them the perfect opportunity to start their young lives,” he says.

“We’ve found that student engagement has increased, especially when we look at our boys being hands on, or being in the mud with the ducks or over at the wetlands,” says Diane.

“They can research things because they actually want to know. The senior class has been doing a lot around making environmentally friendly pesticides, and that snowballs into other science topics,” she says.

And they’re getting results. Between 2015 and 2021, writing improved from 40.9 per cent to 68.9 per cent at, or above, standard. During that time, mathematics improved from 68.9 per cent to 76 per cent at, or above, standard.

Ducks and responsibility

In 2019-20, 11 ducks were purchased to live in the dam on the school’s 4.8-hectare property. Student ‘duck monitors’ are responsible for feeding the ducks and collecting the eggs. To protect the ducks, tamariki designed and built a floating duck platform, made hawk scarers and fenced the ducks in to protect them and stop them wandering. Excess duck eggs are used for school breakfasts.

“Because we are positioning the students as experts and leaders of their learning, they own it and they feel like they own the space,” says Rob.

“Students come in during the holidays, in their own time, to feed the ducks because they love them so much. I get texts during the holidays when a new chick has been born, or a duck has gone missing – they are so invested.

“These students don’t treat school like a school in the traditional sense, they treat it like somewhere where they belong. I think we do as well as teachers.”

Nixon and Toa enjoy watering one of the vegetable gardens.

Student-led projects

Students have produced a range of products including eggs from the much-loved school ducks, a published book on sustainability, hīnaki to catch eels for smoking, pest traps to protect the ducks and trees, and kawakawa balm and honey to sell.

This year the focus has moved from teacher-led enviro-projects to more student-led passion projects. Rob says many of the children wanted to stick with the status quo – hands-on active maintenance like planting and working with the ducks. But quite a few tamariki wanted to start their own projects.

For example, some students wanted to turn leftover fruit from the Fruit in Schools programme into jams and preserves.

“The students decided that was something they wanted to do because they had quite a lot of experience with our honey production, which is a fundraising staple of ours,” says Rob.

“We have groups working on creating a student/community activity centre down at our wetlands area. There’s also a group working on creating a bike/pump/skateboard track. Another class is maintaining and restoring our wetlands. They’re creating their own sustainable and ecologically safe weed killers.” he says.

Where to next

So effective is the school’s mahi that Diane and Rob say it’s time to review the school’s strategic direction.

“Because the enviro-journey has got to a point where we are all taking part,” says Rob, “we need to sit down as a staff and redo the strategic plan. We’ve done a lot of it and we need to have another community consultation and nail down what the wider community wants – that’s whānau, teachers and children.”

The school has identified a need to focus on weaving sustainability and te ao Māori together. Deputy principal Kaiya Lafotanoa has returned to the school and is leading staff with professional learning development in tikanga and te reo Māori, says Diane.

Kaupapa and trust

The Enviroschools judges were impressed by the students’ confidence and knowledge and their enthusiasm for the many projects at the school.

The Prime Minister’s Education Excellence Awards judges liked the programme’s kaupapa and that it involved the whole school, with sustainability embedded. They also felt there were great examples of experiential learning and developing skills across the curriculum – the school had also provided examples of critical thinking.

“We’re so lucky that Diane trusts us to do all these crazy things,” says Rob.

“It must be quite nerve-racking to see a group of Year 8s go down to the wetlands to spend the day burning wood they have been chopping up and testing chemicals. It’s real-life problem-solving and we’re building resilience from the get-go,” he says.

It takes a treehouse 

A popular three-year project at Oruaiti School has been the development of a sustainable solar powered ‘treehouse’, which was completed in term 1, 2021.

It’s going to be the hub of a range of environmental projects that include a duck pond, beehives, vegetable gardens, wetlands and stands of kawakawa and mānuka. Students raised funds with a range of activities, including making and selling beeswax wraps, honey, screen-printed tea towels and recliner deckchairs, and producing a book about sustainability.

“We now have our outdoor learning space completed,” says Diane. “That started from the children’s ideas three years ago when they wrote speeches and contributed to the design. They can see that they can come up with these ideas, think them through and they can happen!”

“We wanted a classroom that was outside – but inside at the same time,” says Camryn (Year 8). “At the start we wanted a treehouse to play in and it evolved from there. It kind of feels like we’re in a treehouse. I like it because it’s peaceful — it’s not as busy and pressured as in the classroom.”

“I like it because it’s far away from school and we get to get out of school and get into nature,” adds Riley (Year 7).

“I like it because we got to design it as students – we had an input,” says Hayley (Year 7). “It feels good to see our ideas in the building. As students we feel pretty proud that we actually got to design it ourselves.”

While tamariki enjoy working in the new space, they say they learned a lot while designing the classroom.

“I learnt about angles and stuff to build it,” says Riley.

“It helped with learning around the time we were designing it because we had to figure out the perimeter and area,” adds Camryn.

“I’ve learned that students have the power to do what they have been wanting to do and have a say in their learning,” says Amara (Year 8).

The senior students are particularly proud of the legacy they will be leaving for tamariki in the future.

“I like how it’s going to be there for quite a while – we hope – so there will be students in future generations having opportunities to learn,” says Amara.

“I have been here all my life and I wanted to leave something behind for little kids coming in. We got to design and fundraise for it,” says Latiya (Year 8).

Rob says a key outcome of the school’s enviro-journey over five years is that, with the right guidance, the students have learned how to be successful on their terms.

“They know now that anything is possible – they’ve seen that for themselves. What is also amazing is this is now the legacy of the ones who designed the outdoor learning space and so they’re super proud that they’re leaving it for other generations,” he says.

You can read more about Oruaiti School and its proud legacy centred on the outdoor environment in Issue 9, 2020, of Education Gazette. 

Ākonga at Oruaiti School love learning outside, with one saying "it's not as busy and pressured as in the classroom"

Read about Spotswood College's junior impact inquiry programme(external link) where students follow their passions and develop sustainable concepts and products.