Faculties

At St Patrick’s College Silverstream the purpose of our Religious Education Programme is to provide students with the opportunity to develop and experience a daily encounter with Christ:

The Social Sciences Department comprises the subject areas of Commerce, History, Geography and Social Studies.

Social Science education focuses on the study of people and their world. It enables students to participate in society as informed, confident and responsible citizens.

Ko tōu reo, ko tōku reo,
te tuakiri tangata.
Tīhei uriuri, tīhei nakonako.

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.

Ko te reo te tuakiri
Ko te reo tōku ahurei
Ko te reo te ora.

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 the language.

Understanding, using, and creating oral, written, and visual texts of increasing complexity is at the heart of English teaching and learning. By engaging with text-based activities, students become increasingly skilled and sophisticated speakers and listeners, writers and readers, presenters and viewers.

Ko te reo Māori te huarahi e mārama ai te tangata ki te ao Māori. Ka takoto i Te Reo Māori te tūāpapa o ngā pūkenga whakawhiti reo me te mātauranga ahurea e reorua ai, e kākanorua ai ngā ākonga me te whakaaro nui anō ki te tirohanga a te Māori ki te ao.

Te Reo Māori is the key to understanding the Māori world. Te Reo Māori lays the foundation of communicative skills and cultural knowledge to enable students to be bilingual and bicultural with an appreciation and consideration of a Māori worldview.

The Arts learning area comprises four disciplines: dance, drama, music – sound arts, and visual arts. Within each, students develop literacies as they build on skills, knowledge, attitudes, and understandings at each of the eight levels of the curriculum. Through arts practices and the use of traditional and new technologies, students’ artistic ideas are generated and refined through cycles of action and reflection.

Physical Education develops the social, emotional, intellectual, and cultural capabilities of ākonga. These capabilities inform the ways in which ākonga understand tikanga in movement contexts, provide diverse ways of participating in physical activities, and contribute to movement's wider benefits to hauora. At St Patrick’s Silverstream the explicit teaching of Food and Nutrition and the part it plays in the hauora of our students is woven throughout our learning programmes

Health Studies is about engaging in three key areas of learning — food and nutrition, mental health, and relationships and sexuality — in relation to hauora, and the health and wellbeing of individuals, whānau and communities. It is about the complex interconnections between the physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual dimensions of people’s lives.

Ākonga can explore Māori and Pacific knowledge bases, values and practices related to hauora and wellbeing. They can learn about hauora as a body of knowledge, and learn about models of health such as Te Whare Tapa Whā and Fonofale.

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 involve different ways of thinking and solving problems. Both equip ākonga with effective means for modelling, analysing, and interpreting the world in which they live.

Mathematicians and statisticians use symbols, graphs, displays, and diagrams to help them find and communicate patterns and relationships. They evaluate information to make informed decisions and create models to represent both real-life and hypothetical situations. These situations are drawn from a wide range of social, cultural, scientific, technological, environmental, and economic contexts.

Science uses the nature of science strand from The New Zealand Curriculum to teach ākonga what science is and how scientists work. Science involves generating and testing ideas and gathering evidence in order to develop knowledge, understand it, and explain it. Scientists do this by making observations, carrying out investigations and modelling, and communicating and debating with others. In this way, science, as a discipline, is practiced by every culture: it drove the journeys of the wayfinders who explored and populated the Pacific, and informed understanding of the interwoven nature of the taiao.

Students should also be able to recognise the creativity, curiosity, collaboration and other attributes of scientists. Strongly founded in evidence, scientific knowledge can change over time with new technology finding more information and with new perspectives altering how the evidence is interpreted. It is important that ākonga understand that science knowledge, and the processes by which it is derived, both evolve. Science is not a static discipline. This subject area also includes Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Agricultural and Horticultural Science and Earth and Space Science.

Technology includes Digital Technologies, Materials and Processing Technology and Design and Visual Communication.

Kaua e rangiruatia te hāpai o te hoe;
e kore tō tātou waka e ū ki uta.

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.

With its focus on design thinking, technology education supports students to be innovative, reflective and critical in designing new models, products, software, systems and tools to benefit people while taking account of their impact on cultural, ethical, environmental and economic condition.