Kia ora and welcome,

My name is David Grant and I have the very real privilege of being the Principal of Big Rock Primary School. A role where I get to work with amazing teaching and support staff, supportive whanau and most importantly incredible, hard-working, engaged, friendly, resilient, happy children.

Our aim at Big Rock Primary School is to ensure that we provide the very best educational and developmental experiences we can for all of our students.

We do this by having Rock solid foundations in Numeracy and Literacy and by working hard to provide an environment that is stimulating and safe for your children to learn and grow. Our success levels in the core areas of Reading, Writing and Mathematics are excellent. Our programmes are based on a topic based integrated approach where children’s interests and key learning areas such as Science, Social Sciences, Art and Technology are integrated into Reading and Writing and Mathematics programmes to add meaning and depth as well as creating engaging and relevant learning experiences. 

This is supported by modern teaching methods, plentiful modern teaching resources, sensible class sizes and highly skilled positive teachers.

To further support our Reading, Writing and Mathematics programmes we utilise a teaching model that we developed at Big Rock, that is based on the three concepts of Investigation, Explanation and Presentation. This allows and encourages the children’s inquiring minds to explore, share their thoughts and ideas, while developing their presentation skills and strategies.

Further to this, we understand that for a curriculum to be meaningful we utilise E.O.T.C. so that there are class trips to support all topic based learning. Learning experiences have to be real and meaningful.

We also have an in-depth adventure based Education Outside the Classroom programme that includes surfing, kayaking, mountain bike adventures and road safety, deep sea fishing and scuba diving. The benefits of these programmes is much more than just biking, kayaking etc, but they support self-esteem and mental health, which has led to improved outcomes for many children in core curriculum areas.

We also have a full biking programme as part of our curriculum, that involves all children, from early riders in the younger years, to Advanced Mountain Bike extension groups.

Our goal is to have happy, resilient, lifelong learners with Rock solid foundations in Reading, Writing and Mathematics. Our curriculum and curriculum delivery is achieving this, with excellent achievement levels, high levels of engagement and attendance and happy resilient children. Of course this would not be possible without the support of our amazing whanau and the incredible children.

Big Rock is a great place to learn, play, grow and develop. It’s a pretty cool place to come and work as well.