History of Radio Kowhia 107.3 Fm

In 2006 at the Waikato Principals' conference, our principal Shirley Maihi And associate principal then. Lesley Elia approached Frank Chang of Sound field Systems, to inquire about sound systems for our classrooms, But found the idea of School Radio Station to have more appeal and potential for promoting teaching and learning within our school.

Our School Finlayson Park Primary School is a multilingual school within Manurewa. It includes a Total
Immersion Maori Unit, a Bilingual Maori Unit a Samoan Bilingual unit and 4 English medium teams.

Senior Management believed that running a radio station held the potential to
- Motivate students in their learning by providing and audience.
- Promote oracy and literacy in three languages  of instruction used with in the school.
- Provide and leadership role for our year 7 and 8 students
- Strengthen our home partnership by providing a "window" to our school through daily broadcasting.
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During the first 2 terms of 2007, we were racing to be ready for our opening day on the 25th of June.

This included :

- Selecting and setting up a suitable space
- Appointing Lead Teachers and hiring a station manager.
- Forming a radio Station development committee comprising of representatives from all teams
-  Dealing with legal requirements such as : Obtaining a broadcasting licence, understanding copy right requirements and parental permission for use of students' names.

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Our goal was to operate for 7 hours each week.

We built up a repertoire of materials including:

- Music play list including new hits
- Stories in our 3 languages read by students and staff
- Interviews of school visitors
- Our own stories
- Jokes, quizzes and a language idiom section
- Current awareness dates
- Events and notices for Finlayson Park School
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Our opening day marked the achievement of  the combined efforts of all member of the school, with the consistent support of the principal. It also marked the start of a continuing commitment to this exciting, stimulating adventure, which requires constant review and effort but provides hugely satisfying rewards for the teaching and learning at our school.

We found Radio Kowhai to be great way to encourage students’ collaboration, increase their engagement and participation, whilst at the same time allowing students to learn greater life skills by engaging discussions on a wide range of subjects in a fun and innovative manner.

Finlayson Park School Radio station is community oriented and serves as an educational tool for students, parents and teachers with particular focus on oral language in the New Zealand curriculum. This is achieved by developing a love for learning and sharing through the medium of radio. We found out through community surveys that radios are more common that television sets in our immediate community.

Some General items we play on Radio Kowhai are:

The Weekly Weather, News
Competitions,
Public Notices,
Birthdays greetings,
Music,
Quiz,
Story reading
Drama in three languages namely English, Maori and Samoan.
Awareness dates
Cultural dates like Matariki and Samoan language week
Interviews done by students
Poem reading
Kapahaka items
and much much more.

We now operate from 10am - 10pm
Monday to Saturday
So be sure to check out and tune in to Radio Kowhai 107.3fm. The voice of Finlayson. celebrating our community