– Destinee Macleod, Parent
“The new entrant classroom is the coolest classroom I’ve ever seen. It’s full of different ways to learn and has stuff I never got to do when I was at school.”
Horizon is an authentic community of children, teachers, whanau all learning together.
We value each person in our community and support each other to flourish holistically. Relationships are core to academic, creative and social ako (learning). Our learners feel they belong, and know that learning, while sometimes hard, is also fun. They grow in confidence to take risks and express their ideas. Tamariki (children) and rangatahi (young people) at Horizon are both seen and heard. As kaiako (teachers) we are curious about how we can bring the best out in each of them. Find out more below and book in for a Tour & Try Day of our kura (school).
Our Learning Environment
Children and their learning are the focus at Horizon. Junior classes are engaging places to explore.
Teachers work with children to broaden their experience of the world and to foster their love of learning. In the process, literacy and numeracy skills, character and the ability to manage themselves and their learning are developed.
Our Active Learning approach supports learners to be creative and curious, to think critically, to expand their capabilities, develop confidence, and become deeply engaged with using their growing knowledge in ways that have real life application. Children learn inside and outside, through discovery and workshops, on their own and with others. The neuroscience of learning changes everything about teaching at Horizon.
Growing Young Learners
We are passionate about providing authentic and relevant experiences that are also fun and engaging.
We are constantly inquiring after new ways to tailor learning experiences to meet the needs of each individual learner.
Our children learn the skills needed to investigate, to relate and to create! We teach them to reflect on what they are learning, how they are learning, and what might help them to make progress. They ‘own their own learning’, by developing goals and being equipped with tools to achieve their goals. We have an increasing expectation of students taking responsibility for their own learning.
We find that children naturally love to learn and to see their progress, and teachers love to celebrate successes with them.
“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
Connected Learning
At Horizon, children learn to see connections between learning areas and they see the relevance and value of their learning. Teaching and learning at Horizon is not strictly isolated to subjects that stop and start, but often in connected investigations. An investigation about trees is not just a science subject. It is likely to include the art of the tree, the poetry about a tree, the ways people use different types of trees (social studies), and to result in a collaboratively determined way that we could use the knowledge we have gained in the investigation, for example, through planting trees or having an art exhibition inspired by plants.
Purposeful Learning
Most of our learning has a real life outcome. At Horizon, while teaching the NZ Curriculum, learning contexts are developed in response to the needs of the learners, our families and local community contexts, Wherever possible, we seek to engage learners with authentic ways of using their learning to make our community and our world a better place. Examples in junior classes have included singing for the local rest home, performing a play to a local preschool, contributing to our school landscaping plan, participating in our own art exhibition, making gifts to give away, making a real book out of a story to put in the library.
Learning has a purpose at Horizon.
Optional Learning
Learning at Horizon is not something that happens only in structured lessons. There are opportunities to learn and contribute in the arts, sports, service, environment, and peer mediation, along with all the learning that happens in good old fashioned lunchtime playing!
In-School Opportunities Include:
- Musical instrument tuition
- Kapa haka
- Librarian
- Leadership
- Eco-Team (tree planting etc.)
- Tuakana teina – Peer support
- Lunch-time clubs
- Sports, including hockey, netball, touch rugby, basketball
- Online competitions (Australians Maths Competition, GROK Academy)
– Grace Presland-White, Parent
“To see my children here, happy, wanting to be here and learning, it’s a fantastic place for them to come to.”
