Sports-Learning Journal for 'The Sporty Ones'

I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in the Manaiakalani MIT programme. Although my project pace was moderate, it allowed me to explore how to support sporty students in achieving academic success, a long-term endeavour.

My project evolved from surveys and conversations to personal motivational posters, then to parallel sports-academic learning posters and reflections, ultimately leading to a digital sports-learning journal. This journal focuses on ownership, responsibility, and accountability, concepts inspired by Gilbert Enoka, the All Blacks Sports Psychologist.

The primary objective is to facilitate the transfer of athletic aptitude to academic learning, with the journals serving as a scaffold for academic success.

With the invaluable help of our mentor, Matt Goodwin, who helped create the parallel posters, I put together a journal for each sporting event/code for intermediate students. Sources of the content were from various junior athlete handbooks and sports diaries.  In addition to this, are pages for the academic subjects for the sporty students to improve in: maths, writing and reading.

I anticipate co-constructing and refining these with students, teachers, coaches, and whānau.  We have already implemented journals for Sports Camp, Netball, Rugby League, and Volleyball. Upcoming journals for Term 4 will cover Touch, Basketball, Cricket, and Athletics. 

Scheduling dedicated time for students to engage with the journals and receive feedback is crucial for impacting their academic subject learning. Sharing their learning goals, strengths, and challenges with teachers, coaches, and whānau will further support their academic improvement.

My next step in 2026 is to begin a two-year study with a group of Year 7 "sporty ones" to analyse the journals' effectiveness.

Finally, I extend my huge, sincere thanks to Matt Goodwin and Dorothy Burt from Manaiakalani MIT Staff, and Justine Todd from KPMG, for their unwavering support throughout this journey.  Fa'afetai, fa'afetai tele lava.

In summary, please find the links to the:

Parallel Posters & Sports-Learning Journal here: Pt England School Sports - Sporty Ones

Presentation slides here: Sporty Ones - Sally's Pecha Slides

QR code to 'Sporty Ones'

MIT Innovative Teaching Programme 2025

The Sporty Ones -  MIT Update #4 

Today was our second visit to KPMG in Auckland City to share about our prototypes for our MIT inquiry.

I am still working on a prototype for my focus group of sporty students.  The last piece of data to collect is feedback from whanau.  The data I have so far are the sporty students responses, their subject area for improvement, current assessment data and evaluations from their coaches. 

In the meantime while waiting for whanau comments, I decided to try out the prototype. The process will help me understand what I would like the sporty students to achieve and that is, creating a poster that identifies your sporting strengths and transfer them into motivational statements and prompts as helpful strategies to refer to in a challenging subject area.

Today I made a start - identifying a favourite sport and skills that helped me do well in that code.  I then put those words into positive, affirmative statements that I can refer to for encouragement, motivation and support.  I then added a photo of my parents, a favourite spiritual verse and a picture at the starting race of a fun mini triathlon in Mt. Maunganui to add to the poster.  The next step is to make it look attractive so I will explore the software of Photopea (an online photo editor), Adobe and Canva before I meet with the focus group some time this week.  Stay tuned for more.