Papanui High School
Learning Areas
The Arts
The arts are powerful forms of expression that recognise, value, and contribute to the unique bicultural and multicultural character of Aotearoa New Zealand, enriching the lives of all New Zealanders. The arts have their own distinct languages that use both verbal and non-verbal conventions, mediated by selected processes and technologies. Through movement, sound, and image, the arts transform people's creative ideas into expressive works that communicate layered meanings.
Head of Dance - Ms Alys Hill | Head of Drama - Mrs Jay Grubb | Head of Māori Performing Arts - Mr Te Haere Stirling | Head of Music - Mr Joseph Thomas | Head of Visual Arts - Ms Anjie Connon
Careers & Pathways
The evolving patterns of work and education make it essential that every high school student has access to career education and guidance that is future-focused and personalised. Our team can help with exploring interests and strengths, and then helping a student match these to possible career options. This can be for short-term goals, such as choosing an option, or it can be for long-term goals, such as meeting prerequisites for a potential career pathway.
Head of Careers / Pathways - Mr James Stewart
Commerce
The Commerce Department at Papanui High School aims to deliver teaching and learning programmes that offer authentic learning experiences, that enable all students to meet their full potential. Our focus is to develop the commercial capabilities (skills and knowledge) of our students, to enable them to make informed and rational decisions, in order for them to participate effectively in the rapidly changing world they live in.
Head of Commerce - Mr Justin Warren
Design, DVC, & Technology
Technology is intervention by design. It uses intellectual and practical resources to create technological outcomes, which expand human possibilities by addressing needs and realising opportunities.
Design is characterised by innovation and adaptation and is at the heart of technological practice. It is informed by critical and creative thinking and specific design processes. Effective and ethical design respects the unique relationship that New Zealanders have with their physical environment and embraces the significance of Māori culture and world views in its practice and innovation.
Technology makes enterprising use of knowledge, skills and practices for exploration and communication, some specific to areas within technology and some from other disciplines. These include digitally-aided design, programming, software development, various forms of technological modelling, and visual literacy – the ability to make sense of images and the ability to make images that make sense.
Head of Design Technology - Mr Daniel Greenwood | Teacher in Charge of Digital Technology - Ms Cia Winter
English & Media Studies
English is the study, use, and enjoyment of the English language and its literature, communicated orally, visually, and in writing, for a range of purposes and audiences and in a variety of text forms. Learning English encompasses learning the language, learning through the language, and learning about ourselves.
Understanding and creating oral, written, and visual texts of increasing complexity, is at the heart of English teaching and learning.
Students will engage with text-based activities to become increasingly sophisticated speakers and listeners, writers and readers, presenters and viewers.
Head of English - Ms Anna Sullivan
Food and Textiles
In Food Studies, our focus is on the well-being of students themselves, other people and society through learning in health-related contexts. There is an emphasis on promoting good health, understanding attitudes and values related to others and also the changes that are needed to ensure social justice. Students also learn about how issues are interrelated by learning to see nutritional issues using the socio-ecological perspective. They are given opportunities to engage in their own practice to find solutions confidently when making food products in the kitchen. Senior students are given the option of taking Hospitality and working in the commercial kitchen to produce high-quality food and beverage items that can be presented for sale or for various functions within the school.
Textile Technology is a creative and purposeful subject where students develop the skills, knowledge and confidence to create individual solutions to identified needs and opportunities. Students solve practical problems within society when encouraged to engage in risk-taking, creativity and lateral and divergent thinking. They also work through focused, practical tasks to develop and practise particular skills and knowledge that allow them to take ownership of their own learning. Key to Textiles here at Papanui High School is the successful expression of self-belief through the designing and making of Textile Art, pattern drafting and garment construction.
Head of Food & Textiles - Ms Tina Williams
Health, PE, & Outdoor Ed.
In this learning area, the focus is on the well-being of the students themselves, of other people, and of society through learning in movement and health-related contexts.
Four underlying and interdependent concepts are at the heart of this learning area:
- Hauora a Māori philosophy of well-being that includes the dimensions taha wairua, taha hinengaro, taha tinana, and taha whānau, each one influencing and supporting the others.
- Attitudes and values a positive, responsible attitude on the part of students toward their own well-being; respect, care, and concern for other people and the environment; and a sense of social justice.
- The socio-ecological perspective a way of viewing and understanding the interrelationships that exist between the individual, others, and society.
- Health promotion a process that helps to develop and maintain supportive physical and emotional environments and that involves students in personal and collective action.
Head of Health & Physical Education - Mrs Natasha Marshall
Languages & ESOL
Learning a new language provides a means of communicating with people from another culture and exploring one's own personal world. Languages are inseparably linked to the social and cultural contexts in which they are used. Languages and cultures play a key role in developing our personal, group, national, and human identities.
Every language has its own ways of expressing meanings; each has intrinsic value and special significance for its users. This learning area provides the framework for the teaching and learning of languages that are additional to the language of instruction.
Head of Languages - Ms Michelle Dalley
Mathematics & Statistics
What is mathematics and statistics about?
Kei hopu tōu ringa ki te aka tāepa, engari kia mau ki te aka matua.
Mathematics is the exploration and use of patterns and relationships in quantities, space, and time. Statistics is the exploration and use of patterns and relationships in data. These two disciplines are related but have different ways of thinking and solving problems. Both equip students with effective means for investigating, interpreting, explaining, and making sense of the world in which they live.
Mathematicians and statisticians use symbols, graphs, and diagrams to help them find and communicate patterns and relationships, and they create models to represent both real-life and hypothetical situations. These situations are drawn from a wide range of social, cultural, scientific, technological, health, environmental, and economic contexts.
Head of Mathematics - Dr Maarten McKubre-Jordens
Science
Science is a way of investigating, understanding, and explaining our natural, physical world and the wider universe. It involves generating and testing ideas, gathering evidence, including by making observations, carrying out investigations and modelling, and communicating and debating with others, in order to develop scientific knowledge, understanding, and explanations.
Scientific progress comes from logical, systematic work and from creative insight, built on a foundation of respect for evidence.
Different cultures and periods of history have contributed to the development of science.
Heads of Science - Mrs Sarah Hanlon | Mr Daf Williams
Social Science
Classical Studies ✻ Geography ✻ History ✻ Social Studies ✻ Tourism
The Social Science learning area is about how societies work and how people can participate as critical, active, informed, and responsible citizens. Contexts are drawn from the past, present, and future and from places within and beyond New Zealand.
Head of Social Sciences - Ms Tanya Sapwell
