About Room 17

Welcome to Room 17

Your child will be in a teaching ‘pod’ with Courtney Martin, Suzanne Tawharu and Hannah Mort. We are very excited to be teaching your child during 2017. We are going to have a fun year together, filled with cooperative, student led, hands-on learning. We believe in creating a classroom environment that provides opportunities for every student to show their unique skills and abilities.  A classroom where everyone is inspired, supported and challenged. We will be deepening the knowledge of the students on the things that they find interesting and motivating.

Room 17 will run as a ‘Modern Learning Environment (MLE)’. MLE’s are classrooms which focus on delivering, applying, creating, communicating and decision-making. The space will provide a variety of opportunities for our learners where students and teachers have flexibility, openness and access to resources. We will maintain robust assessment gathering practices which we will use to continuously improve our teaching style. These practices will ensure  that no student will have the ability to ‘slip through the cracks’ or be overseen for their unique abilities and needs. Our aim is to deliver quality teaching and learning opportunities which include a combination of the following elements: personalised learning, socially constructed learning, differentiated learning, learning that is initiated by students themselves and learning that is connected to the physical world and authentic contexts.

The benefit from having more teachers and students within a classroom environment allows for a smaller student-teacher ratio during group teaching. During the core curriculum areas (reading, writing and maths) there will be a lower teacher to student ratio. This allows for more one to one time with your child during conferencing time and small group numbers during guided teaching. This model of teaching also facilitates opportunities for teachers to share their expertise in specialist areas such as The Arts and ICT and encourages students to develop self management skills while working cooperatively and collaboratively with others.   

During Term 2, we will be relocating to the hall and Room 20 where we will continue to provide meaningful and targeted teaching and learning opportunities to our students.  During this time, classrooms 17, 18 and 19 will be refurbished and reconfigured to align with the theories and practises behind MLE’s. When the build is finished, we will be moving back into the classrooms to enjoy the wonderful new space.