News and events

10 October 2019 - 4:46pm

The Summer Learning Journey digital literacy programme

Students who engage in sustained blogging over summer, in response to challenging learning tasks, make significant gains in Reading and Writing achievement.

The Summer Learning Journey (Toki Pounamu) is designed to reduce the ‘summer learning slide’ or loss of learning which occurs during the summer holidays. Developed by Dr Rachel Williamson from Auckland University, the innovative programme involves the students choosing an activity from a number of modules and blogging their responses – which receive feedback from a team of expert commenters: teachers, student teachers and former students of the programme.
The programme is for Years 4-8 children in lower decile schools. It started in three Auckland schools in 2014 and is now active in 100 schools throughout New Zealand.
Rachel’s presentation to the North Shore branch July meeting was well received by members who were impressed to see how social media can be used to support an effective literacy programme. Research has shown that students who take part in the Summer Learning Journey return to school after the summer break ready to learn, and achieve better results in reading and writing than students who do not participate.


Visit the Toki Pounamu website for more information and a link to the Summer Learning Journey website.