“Room 6 absolutely loved the SVA School Kit! Our school Term 3 school wide focus was 'Community' so the kit could not have been more timely. I found it easy to link into many different curriculum areas, and a lot of rich learning occurred as a result of the kit. Using the supplies provided, students worked collaboratively to brainstorm, research and then vote on how they wanted to help their community. The eventual action decided upon was visiting a local kindergarten and volunteering their time there. My class were lucky enough to form a beautiful tuakana/teina connection with the kindergarteners and became buddy classes. The student agency and enthusiasm that SVA brought out in my Year 8 class was absolutely awesome for me to see, and the students said they felt it was rewarding and fun giving back to the younger children.”
“My class really benefitted from this school kit as they developed their leadership and service skills and it really linked with our PB4L values of respect and caring for others”
“How cool for the class to come up with an area of need in the community to work on. They chose the local stream polluted with rubbish and got to work cleaning it up and educating others to help
Control litter in the future. I am going to reuse the kit this year. It’s a great initiative!”
“Wheke thought carefully about our SVA project. We watched the videos and used the kit to identify a local issue that would make an impact. Kids got into the specialist groups and really enjoyed the project planning/management/ communication aspect leading up to Impact Day.
Here is Zane and Calvins quick report for the school community.
";Last Wednesday Room 7/ Wheke spent the morning on our Class Garden Project.
We got the idea from learning about the Student Volunteer Army. SVA is about how volunteers can help their community or school. We decided that we would weed the gardens around the bottom court, because it would make the school look a better place.
These gardens were overgrown with weeds, which made SFDS look messy from the road and footpath.
Like the SVA, we planned our project and had different project teams- groups of kids were in charge of different things.
We had the tool group, the organisers, the food group, first aid, the communication team and the storytelling group.
We really appreciate all the adults- Mums, Dads, Nana's and older brothers- who came in for the morning to help us out with the weeding.
We felt pretty good for finishing our project and think that the garden looks amazing now.";
What a super learning programme, my class got a real sense of the value of volunteering to a community.”
“This was the second time I have used this kit and thank you school kit for another success.
The boys decided to take on a project that helped other school children in our locality. The boys were involved in researching a family recipe, baking and distributing their baking to other schools through the organisation. NOURISH.
Thank you school kit for this kit - the boys loved their important roles and the badges were very special”
“In term 4, the students identified an area in the school where they would like to make a difference. Behind our classrooms was a large area of broom causing hayfever and not helping our environment. Our students decided they wanted to volunteer their time to make this area a native area for native plants and birds and for our school to grow our own trees. We wrote to the council and have had approval from them to transform this area. We are currently waiting on the council to eradicate the broom. Once this is done, we will have regular SVA days once a week to keep this area looking beautiful. We had one day where we repotted hundreds of plants donated to us from the Wakatipu Reforestation Trust. We love volunteering our time to make our community a better place. This is a huge project that we are looking at it taking 2020 to get established.”
“At the end of a very busy term, we used the SVA kit to clean up our school and the bush we are so lucky to have right beside us. The students had roles and were very good at communicating and organising the cleanup, right down to the finer details. We will definitely reuse the well-designed resources in the kit in 2020 to make connections with our community.”
“I've never seen kids so excited to clean up in my life. If only they'd do the same when cleaning our classroom! Loved all the roles students were assigned as to include everyone. Hope to do this one again soon. Thanks schoolkit!”
