Testimonials

The experience that my students got was fabulous. They gained skills in manaakitanga, independent learning, and the ability to refine questions through inquiry. All my students, in particular my boys, thoroughly enjoyed the activities  Beforehand, a lot of my students did not understand the magnitude of sustainability but there was lots of information that helped students understand it in the context of freshwater ecology. As a bi lingual class my students enjoyed using the Māori kupu in our word wall, using them in conversations with their peers and asking lots of questions about the Māori kupu in general.

Outstanding programme. Children were able to visit another locality and compare it to our work with DoC on our local river. Added an extra dimension to our Inquiry. Our special needs students enjoyed the visuals and were able to contribute to class discussions.

It is real time, here and now as well as New Zealand info and presenters which all makes it more authentic learning for children. The field trips offer current visual, aural and authentic learning for children, without a huge amount of time and preparation on the teachers part. The teacher can learn along side the children.  It's easy to access, well planned and organised and encourages a passion for our beautiful country.

Supports the school curriculum in innovative ways. We live in this area and students recognised many visual features and people interviewed. It reinforced classroom learnings as it linked to this term's curriculum studies.

They are so relevant to the children who are at an impressionable age. They are now telling others what we should all be doing re health of our water sources.  They were so focussed upon the videos and the short reading tasks held their attention and were relevant to what we were doing. The cultural component was relevant to all children, not specifically to just Maori or Pasifika ones. It is such a great resource for teachers and students alike.

We particularly enjoy the videos and questions, as they are effective at any time. Followed on from our water study and reinforced our learning around water ecosystems. The field trips have relevance even when they don't exactly fit a planned topic. I am hooked!

Watching the students get excited about their role (we were a speaking school, which was a breeze) and then watching them make connections in their learning, has been a real highlight. They built connections with the area the trip took us to and linked it to our local community and loved connecting what they were reading and hearing with specific people.

Many of my students found the Māori Tikanga section the most interesting. I also liked that the learning was rewindable and allowed for student agency. The opportunity to experience a virtual field trip really excited the children and motivated them to want to find out more, as it provided a meaningful and authentic learning context that included SOLO and built on our own 'Freshwater Frolicking' field trip to The Groynes.

Embedded LEARNZ and then went on our own field trip to Cleardale Wetland. More on my Blog.  

The field trip provided good enrichment activities with plenty of scope for differentiation. The classes were involved, interested and thinking. They were able to relate the videos to their own experiences and knowledge. The field trips are useful for working collaboratively with other teachers and also as a basis for an enrichment model of gifted and talented education.

The students loved it. It gave me an easy way to extend the knowledge of my more able students while also engaging my less able students. Great for peer work. Because of the way this was set up, I was able to create links to my class page, which encouraged students to access the class page out of school hours. We are also currently in the early stages of Enviro-schools; this helped get students thinking about what is going on around us as well as human impact.