 In response to work around culturally responsive and relational pedagogy with team solutions, Whangarei Boys High School have implemented several projects focusing on connecting students' learning to Northland's rich history using nearby archaeological sites and resources. I teach social studies at Year 10. One of the topics we teach is the Treaty of Waitangi and responses to the Treaty of Waitangi and we made a conscious decision a number of years ago to make our focus in Year 10 for that unit to be about the Northern Wars because often this was something that was left out of textbooks when I was a student and if you look at the sacking of Kōrararaka in the start of the Northern Wars that very much is a local story and ending in the battle of Rūpekepeka where many of our boys will whaka-papa back to either Tidoki Kawiti or Honaheke and so what we noticed in studying those wars suddenly you have an engagement not just amongst the Māori boys in the class but all because I don't want to generalise too much but boys in war, you know, it can be quite engaging for some of them and also to know that this was on their backdoor step and that when they drive past Rūpekepeka and they see that brown sign going, go and visit that's why because this was a phenomenally important time especially for Ngāpū and that resonates today. In the last year an old Māori stonefield garden has been discovered beside the Hāti River within walking distance of the school. We've worked with the archaeologists from Heritage New Zealand to understand what we're looking at and at the end of last year we took 22 staff from Science and Social Studies to visit the site. So we developed a joint unit between Science and Social Studies, a cross-critical unit and took each year 10 class down and did a joint study there and then came back and continued studying the findings and the significance of this within those classes. The joint unit with Science and Social Studies was developed and as we got into the planning of that, English wanted to join us in that unit so they had something to write about with all of the boys from Year 9 and then the Te Reo Māori classes both junior and senior used the visit as a topic to base the boys' writing on in Term 1. So we were able to take each class down there and back within an hour and a half so which makes that quite sustainable and it's now embedded in our Year 9 programmes as part of the introductory unit. The subsequent to this, working with the local museum Kiwi North, we discovered that they had a large supply of kō, which are digging sticks and other gardening implements and also toki, which are adds and then fishing weights and mooring weights for waka. So we convinced them that it would be a good idea to bring that down to the school which they'd never done before and so they brought that down to the school and over two days we rotated their 10 classes through that display with the archaeologist explaining what was there and its significance and we then started exploring the sources of the stone that these items were made from and it turns out that they've come from all over New Zealand as the stone was clearly traded around the place. So we've got stone here that has come from Nelson, from the Coromandel, from Mayor Island and local stone as well. There is a local quarry of chert, which is a type of flint and I've followed that down to Auckland Museum where there is a large selection of this was taken, their amazing collection of adds is and where that fits into. From that we are developing a wider unit into the technology that's involved in living at that time. Another part of the project is developing a cultural garden at school so I'm going to be given access to traditional Maori kumura which have come back from Japan and we're also in the process of getting samples of flax from the National Collection which have got known pedagogies going back hundreds of years for different uses in moka and weaving and also goods. So we're in the process of setting up a garden with this material growing in school which the flax in particular will be able to be used by a number of faculties who are very keen to get access to it and use it in a productive way when they're teaching. The student response has been really amazing. It's given the boys somewhere to stand something to be proud of. It has linked all of the students together so it's their place. So we've taken the sense of belonging to the school which is very strong to a sense of belonging and place within the wider landscape of the school. This part of Haka is clearly visible in the skyline from the school and so we've got this very significant sites which are fundamentally unrecognised in the community and we're able to teach our boys that these are significant places and there is a long history of human occupation in this area, something that everybody should be proud of.