Learning through sport

Ākonga from Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Pukemiro checking out CRIC-KIDS at its launch at Waitangi Treaty Grounds.

Maiden overs, dive passes, penalty shootouts and foiling gybes are set to enter our daily conversations as New Zealand hosts three Women’s World Cups and the Sail Grand Prix over the next two years.
The excitement generated by these major sporting events is often intoxicating, and with a bit of imagination and steering in the right direction, they can provide a real motivation for ākonga to learn.
“We saw with the America’s Cup earlier this year a surge of interest from schools and kura wanting to learn through the context of sailing. Yachting New Zealand did a great job of delivering a programme called ‘Kōkōkaha’ that supported tamariki to learn about wind and to design technologies to harness its power,” explains Raelene Castle, chief executive of Sport New Zealand.

In our backyard

“To build on this momentum, we’ve set up a project called ‘In Our Backyard’ to help cricket, rugby, football and yachting to reinvent how they engage with schools and kura as a legacy of hosting their respective major events in Aotearoa.”
Insights from previous work, including the Sport in Education project, have clearly demonstrated the value of using sport and physical activity as a context for learning and student engagement.
However, education programmes generated for major sport events have tended to sit in isolation, and seldom lead to opportunities that endure beyond the event itself.
‘In Our Backyard’ takes a different approach with schools, sports and local communities working together in a collaborative way, to consider what value and opportunities can endure as a legacy of hosting events in New Zealand’s ‘backyard’.
It also complements the Healthy Active Learning initiative, a joint government collaboration between Sport New Zealand and the Ministries of Health and Education, within the context of the Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy, to improve the wellbeing of tamariki through healthy eating and drinking and quality physical activity.

Different approach

In Our Backyard project lead Dean Stanley says the sailing experiences in the Yachting New Zealand Schools Programme, Kōkōkaha, were embedded as part of a full term of work focusing on the science, technology, engineering, and maths involved in harnessing the power of the wind.
“This was quite different from the traditional approach of simply having a go at sailing,” he adds.
“We’re aiming to make the same shift with cricket, football and rugby by working with them and clusters of teachers to design, test and ultimately deliver quality local experiences that focus on learning through sport, rather than learning how to play sport.

Solving challenges

Dean says the idea is that sports provide a context for ākonga to help solve challenges faced by New Zealand society.
“In Kōkōkaha, the challenge was how can we harness more power from the wind to help reduce the impact of climate change. The sailing experience supported tamariki as they completed their inquiries and designed their technologies. We will identify similar society-level challenges as a focus for the other sports’ programmes.”
Four clusters of teachers have been established by Healthy Active Learning advisors in Northland, Auckland, Waikato, and Wellington. Each cluster is participating in workshops in which they help design ways for the four sports to engage with schools and kura, and support learning across the curriculum.
During term 4, the various activities and experiences will be tested and piloted with ākonga before they are turned into services that all schools and kura can access and use, not only during the upcoming major events, but well into the future.

Term 4 and beyond

Schools and kura can start getting ready now as the new services will be coming onstream from term 4 this year. The upcoming world sporting events are:

• ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup: term 4 2021 and term 1 2022.
• Sail Grand Prix: term 1 and term 4 2022.
• Women’s Rugby World Cup: term 4 2022.
• FIFA Women’s World Cup: term 3 2023.

For more information, go to sportnz.org.nz/schools-and-teachers/ 
(external link)

Ākonga from Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Pukemiro and Paihia School launch CRIC-KIDS at Waitangi Treaty Grounds.

CRIC-KIDS steps up to the wicket

Cricket is the first of three Women’s World Cups to be held in New Zealand over the next two years and ākonga across the country can get involved with the tournament through the CRIC-KIDS resource.
CWC22 has put the resource together to help schools and kura use the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup as a context for learning, from term 4 this year through to the end of term 1 in 2022.
Central to it, is the CRIC-KIDS resource booklet. The booklet is published in te reo Māori and English, with each version including 45 tasks for teachers to pick and choose from for their classroom programmes.
Tasks are targeted at Years 3 through 8 and span the breadth of learning areas in Te Marautanga o Aotearoa and The New Zealand Curriculum.
The resource booklet is supported by a set of activations during the cup itself. Schools, kura and community organisations can apply to receive CWC22 cricket sets to assist with physical ‘Have a go!’ tasks. They’ll also have the opportunity to secure tickets to attend matches in their host city.
For those that decide to run their own tournaments, there is an offer of branded bunting and other engaging collateral to bring their tournaments to life.
“This initiative is an awesome way for teachers and students from all over the country to get amongst the World Cup action – even if this is their first time engaging with cricket,” says White Ferns player Lea Tahuhu.
Meanwhile, New Zealand Cricket is also beginning to work with rugby, football and yachting, and a cluster of teachers to design how it engages with schools on an ongoing basis once the World Cup is over.
“We will be combining lessons learned from the CRIC-KIDS resource with our service design journey with schools and kura in the Waikato region and across New Zealand, to evolve how we engage with schools into the future,” explains Kent Stead, head of community cricket at New Zealand Cricket.

Register for CRIC-KIDS at nzc.nz/community(external link).

Ākonga from Royal Oak Primary School feeling the power of the wind at Royal Akarana Yacht Club.

Summer of sailing

Throughout next year, the world’s leading sailors will be competing in the Sail Grand Prix, providing ākonga with inspiration to design technologies to harness the power of the wind.
Buoyed by the strong uptake during the America’s Cup, Yachting New Zealand is once again offering ‘Kōkōkaha – Powered by Wind’ to schools and kura around the country this coming summer.
Classroom experiences include hands-on activities to help ākonga learn about the power of the wind. Sailing experiences include going sailing to feel the power of the wind and interacting with a set of resources to understand how sailing technologies work.
Royal Oak Primary School teacher Mel Topp says the implementation of the programme is a breeze. “It is all online for us to use, there is nothing difficult about it at all, and kids are really passionate about what they do and are really engaged.”
When asked whether she would recommend Kōkōkaha to other schools Mel replies emphatically, “Why would they not? Absolutely 100 percent.”
Yachting New Zealand sport development director Raynor Haagh says, “We are updating Kōkōkaha to align it to the Sail Grand Prix and have added some more providers to increase the sailing experience options for schools and kura, and are hoping to have even more schools involved with the programme this coming summer.
“We have also started working with the Motu Kairangi Kāhui Ako to develop a second module called ‘Kōrinorino – In Our Ancestors’ Wake’,” explains Raynor.
During this module, ākonga focus on the settlement history of their local area. Classroom experiences focus on the history of settlement of New Zealand at the national and local levels. Sailing experiences focus on what it was like for our ancestors to sail to New Zealand, with a focus on the science and maths used in a range of navigation approaches.
Kōrinorino will be available to schools and kura in Wellington from term 1 2022 and to the rest of the country from term 4 2022.

Register for Kōkōkaha at kokokaha-yachting.nz(external link).