Pouakai Room 2026

Structured Literacy

At Midhirst school, we embrace a Structured Literacy approach to explicitly teach akonga in reading, writing, handwriting, and spelling. Structured Literacy involves clear, methodical, and step-by-step literacy instruction at various levels, including phonemes, letter-sound associations, syllable patterns, morphemes, vocabulary, sentence structure, paragraph structure, and text structure.

In Pouakai classroom tamariki will experience structured literacy through learning specific rules to apply to both reading and spelling from Liz Kane's 'The Code', explicit teaching of morphology and syllabication. Akonga explore a range of different texts such as novels, decodable text, classic colour wheel readers and picture books in reading to, shared and guided reading sessions. 

Pr1me Maths

At Midhirst School, our primary approach to mathematical teaching and learning revolves around the Prime Math programme. This program is founded on well-defined, structured progressions that guide students from year 1 to 8, drawing inspiration from successful methods employed by leading countries in international studies.

In Pouakai akomanga, our lessons are structured based on the Pr1me Math programme. Tamariki attend lessons and workshops depending on their learning needs. When not working with a kaiako in math time, akonga are applying their knowledge to open ended rich math tasks, recalling basic fact knowledge or working on independent Pr1me tasks. 

Term 1 -2 Korowai - Hauora / Wellbeing.

In Terms 1 and 2 we focussed on having positive relationships with those around us and looking after our environment. We are learning our School Values KAHA and how to be independent senior students.