United we teach
Kia ora, Mฤlล e lelei, Talofa lava, Taloha ni, Kia orana, Fakaalofa lahi atu, Namaste, Ni sa bula and Hello.
Weโre School Kit. Nice to meet you.
We make beautiful resources, provide support to teach them well and celebrate the powerful learning experiences that result. Our teacher member network shares a common goal of seeking innovative, unconventional and challenging teaching experiences for our students.
Classroom teachers really like us
We design high integrity, compelling, student-centred learning opportunities that teachers love.
Our kits are beautiful, physical, tangible, tactile things but we also provide support to teach them well and celebrate the powerful learning experiences that result.
A secret club for teachers
When you register for a School Kit you are placed in a private dedicated kit space. In here youโll find your teacher support materials but youโll also find every other teacher that has registered to teach this kit. Theyโll be using the space at the same time you do and experiencing similar roadblocks, having similar questions and (we hope) sharing similar successes.
Itโs a chance to address that professional loneliness. To share a teaching experience with hundreds, even thousands of classroom teachers who are creating the same powerful learning experience for their students as you are, right now with yours.
Every kit comes in three parts.
The Box
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Our kits are designed to be used - each kit comes with enough contents for up to 32 students.
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Once a teacher has confirmed their registration, kits are delivered to your school.
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The Community
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We call our private, online, teacher-only network The School Kit Squad. Itโs here that we deliver our teacher support materials and online professional support to teach them well.
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In here youโll find your teacher support materials - professional readings, explainer videos, how to guides, cheat sheets and digital copies of everything you find in your hard copy kit.
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In your dedicateh kit space youโll find every other teacher that has registered to teach this kit. Theyโll be using the space at the same time you do and experiencing similar roadblocks, having similar questions and (we hope) sharing similar successes.
We know teachers don't want worksheets, colouring in sheets, word-finds or 'Design a [insert word here]' competitions. We also don't believe any professional teacher worth their salt needs a 10 page step-by-step teaching guide. But our kits are more than a box.
The Support
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Contact our hosts at anytime to answer kit queries, to seek teacher support or share your progress.
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Book a zoom / call with one of our Teacher Champions here.
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The support isnโt just online. We visit 800 schools every year giving us a chance to meet, chat, troubleshoot and celebrate with quad members in person.
Register for a kit
โSchool Kit is like the My Food Bag of great teaching resourcesโ
โ Enthusiastic Squad Member
Learn about our latest kits here
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Examining our community through the lens of food and food waste
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Going back to the future to correct money mistakes and harness the power of compound interest.
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Four fairytale characters have arrived at the vet. Your students will train as vets and then use lab results, patient notes and basic tests to determine what is wrong.
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Our Top Secret Kit contains an in-class statistical inquiry and supports ideas and learning around water literacy.
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Focussed on the fact that our strength lies in our differences not our similarities this kit contains tools to help you critique media messages, co-create an exhibition, class poem and social action
Our Manifesto
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Teach to connect. Teach in your way. Find your magic. It is teachers (and not the technology we use) who are the designers of powerful learning experiences. Think with your mind (forget the technology). Every kid in New Zealand deserves to have at least one teacher that changes their life. Be that teacher.
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Find inspiration everywhere. Start by copying what you love. Copying is about reverse-engineering. We learn by copying. Then break it, flip it, stretch it, crack it and turn it inside out till it works better for you. Know our curriculum well enough to connect what youโve designed with what needs to be taught. Add the tech last. The tech is just the tool, itโs the idea that matters.
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Story works every time. Search for the narrative, a way of telling that cements the learning in the hearts and minds of your students. Make everything connect. Become the type of storyteller that holds their students spellbound. Story works for any age of student. Story never fails.
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Be passionately curious. Be widely read. Watch films. Examine artworks. Be informed. Get your news from more than one source. Think. Learn to ask questions. Break your algorithm. Start conversations with strangers. Know more than you need to about the thing youโre teaching. Know yourself. Be self aware enough to realise the areas where you personally need to learn more. Do that. And be aware of always needing to be teachable.
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Do good work and share it with people. Find good people who will share the way they work with you. Make the thing that was missing for you in your teacher journey. Find a teacher you admire and talk to them about how they teach. Problem solve with others. Share your enthusiasm. Celebrate the efforts of your fellow teacher.
Squad Member only
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Teach with Toitoi
For 10 years and over 36 beautifully designed issues, the Toitoi team has worked tirelessly to honour the writing and artwork of our students. They have an archive of thousands of fabulous pieces of artwork and heart-stopping writing. Squad members receive free access to samples from the Toitoi Archive. New teaching activities are released weekly accompanied by PDFs of previously published student work.
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The Huddle
Each term Squad members follow the journey of eight classroom teachers as they road test one of four books in their classroom. Youโll see updates, progress, successes and failures as they unpack the book with their students. When they're done, we wrap it up into a single unit and share it with everyone in the Squad. Squad members receive a special squad only discount when purchasing Penguin books.
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