To view or download our full 2023 Projects Guide, please click here. The information in this guide is designed to help you carefully choose the projects that you will study at the end of term four, after the junior exams. Projects are a chance to study something new or to grow a passion you already have.
WHAT ARE PROJECTS?
Projects are an opportunity for Long Bay College students to develop their learning and explore and engage with topics that go beyond the limits of the New Zealand Curriculum. Projects are not general courses but specialised and relate to specific areas of expertise and interest.
Students will choose from dozens of project options to create a new time table for themselves in the later part of term 4 (after junior school exams have finished.)
Projects run for approximately 4 weeks and run in 2 hour blocks.
There are two types of project. A Major project and a Minor project.
Major projects happen 3 times every 5 day cycle. – A student would have 6 hours of contact with their teacher in a cycle.
Minor projects happen 2 times every 5 day cycle. – A student would have 4 hours of contact with their teacher in a cycle.
All students will choose to study 2 Major Projects and 3 Minor Projects.
For Year 9 students – One of the students Minor projects must be computational thinking based. This supports students in engaging with the New Zealand Digital Curriculum.
For Year 9 and Year 10 students five different projects must be chosen. It is not possible to choose to do the same project twice.
At the end of the project block (The last week of Term 4) students will showcase their project work to the school community as part of the Colleges Project Showcase Day.
An example of a student’s timetable when projects run is shown below:
In this example Project A and Project B are the students Major projects. Projects C, D and E are the students Minor Projects.
| Period | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
| 1 | Project C | Project B | Project A | Project D | Project A |
| 2 | Project C | Project D | Project A | Project D | Project B |
| 3 | Project A | Project D | Atawhai | Project E | Project B |
| 4 | Project A | Project E | Project B | Project E | Project C |
| 5 | Project B | Project E | Project B | Project A | Project C |
During the time that projects run; Atawhai sessions will take place on a Day 3 during period 3. This is the same as how Atawhai runs in the rest of the year.
CHOOSING A PROJECT: ADVICE
Projects are designed to fun, engaging and supportive of students finding and growing a passion and interest. In many cases they can help prepare a student for study in subsequent years but they are also designed to support students in learning for life, developing 21st century skills and embedding their ability to self manage, think critically, relate to others, participate and contribute and use language symbols and texts.
If you would like to know more about a particular project there are lots of staff who can help you. Your Atawhai Leader, Subject Teachers, Heads of Faculty and Deans. Mrs Thomas, our Careers Counsellor, has information on a huge variety of careers and tertiary courses. She is available on 477 9009 ext 839 and is happy to talk with parents.
CHOOSING A PROJECT: SELECTION
Students will be selecting their projects in term 2 via a Microsoft form. This will follow discussions with their Atawhai leader.
Students will need to choose:
- A Major, Minor and free choice from each of the groups in the Microsoft form shared with them by their Atawhai teacher.
- If they are in Year 9 one of their minor projects must be computational thinking based project. These projects are: Programable robots: Sphereos, Mathematical Minecraft, Python programming for beginners and Algorithms of marvelous MARVEL superheroes -Pseudocode adventures
Projects will then be allocated to students considering their selections and what the College can logistically timetable.
DIGITAL CURRICULUM & ATAWHAI
All schools in New Zealand are required to support students in learning and engaging with the New Zealand Digital Curriculum between Year 1 and 10.
At Long Bay College this happens in our junior courses and also in our term 4 projects. Students are required to develop an understanding of how to Design and Develop Digital Outcomes (DDDO) and how to engage with Computationally Thinking (CT).
To support a student’s development of computational thinking all Year 9 students are required to select one Computational Thinking based project. All of the computational thinking projects are minors.
Atawhai will continue during projects with Atawhai leaders working to support the Atawhai programme and the engagement of students in their “Major” and “Minor” projects.
STUDENTS WITH ADDITIONAL LEARNING NEEDS
Learning Support provision during projects –
The Learning Support Faculty will provide support for students with additional learning needs to enable them to participate and contribute to the best of their ability in their selected projects. This includes students in Years 11-13 who are welcome to continue to attend school and participate in projects with our students in the junior school.
Please contact Ms Kristen Evans, SENCo: kevans@lbc.school.nz for further information.
ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES
Long Bay College provides cutting-edge courses for all English language learners, based on individual needs and chosen pathways. Junior EAP students (year 9 and 10), along with year 11 international students with less than three external NCEA exams, will be fully involved in the Junior projects.
‘Life skills and survival in New Zealand’ is an end of year program to specifically cater for all senior international students (year 12 and 13) with less than three external NCEA exams. This program will cover a range of topics and activities relevant to students’ lives in NZ as high school students and beyond. See Mrs Jones for further information on this.
