Teachers work with children to broaden their experience of the world and to foster their love of learning. In the process, literacy and numeracy skills, character and the ability to manage themselves and their learning are developed.

Our Active Learning approach supports learners to be creative and curious, to think critically, to expand their capabilities, develop confidence, and become deeply engaged with using their growing knowledge in ways that have real life application. Children learn inside and outside, through discovery and workshops, on their own and with others. The neuroscience of learning changes everything about teaching at Horizon.

At Horizon, children learn to see connections between learning areas and they see the relevance and value of their learning. Teaching and learning at Horizon is not strictly isolated to subjects that stop and start, but often in connected investigations. An investigation about trees is not just a science subject. It is likely to include the art of the tree, the poetry about a tree, the ways people use different types of trees (social studies), and to result in a collaboratively determined way that we could use the knowledge we have gained in the investigation, for example, through planting trees or having an art exhibition inspired by plants.

Most of our learning has a real life outcome. At Horizon, while teaching the NZ Curriculum, learning contexts are developed in response to the needs of the learners, our families and local community contexts, Wherever possible, we seek to engage learners with authentic ways of using their learning to make our community and our world a better place. Examples in junior classes have included singing for the local rest home, performing a play to a local preschool, contributing to our school landscaping plan, participating in our own art exhibition, making gifts to give away, making a real book out of a story to put in the library.

Learning has a purpose at Horizon.