Term 3 - Week 3 @MatuaNgaru Spotlight

Tena koutou katoa
We are now a third of the way through the term and feel settled into Room 6, at Huapai District School. John and the team at Huapai have made us all feel welcome and it is great being in the same community as our school, Matua Ngaru.

Communicative
Diana, Kirstin and Wendy have been meeting with After Hours School Care providers this week. Having a quality before and after school care programme was something our prospective families clearly communicated they wanted at our Community Consultation night. We have chosen to meet with 3 providers who provide the same services at other local schools. We will make a decision in the next week or two.

On Wednesday this week Diana, Kirstin and Wendy all took part in their first Te Reo oral assessment at AUT (Mahi-Korero 1). The good news is, of course, we all passed with flying colours! Our weekly attendance at the Te Reo course is part of our commitment to interweaving Te Reo and Tikanga through everything we do at Matua Ngaru in acknowledgement and celebration of New Zealand's bi-cultural partnership and heritage.

Wednesday afternoon saw Diana and Wendy meeting with Mandy from Argyle , our uniform providers, to finalise uniform design and colour. Mandy will return to us in the next few weeks with a final colour and design.

Some of you will be aware that Amanda, our office administrator extraordinaire, has been contacting families who have filled in the pre-enrolment form to arrange a family enrolment meeting time and to inform them of the next steps in the process for formal enrolment. We have been working hard on developing  the family interview questionnaire and creating a transition to school programme. We want to learn as much as we can about our tamariki, their passions, interests, needs and strengths before we teach them. It is all about building relationships and knowing our learners, the family interviews are an important  first step!

Collaborative
On Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons Kirstin returned to Oteha Valley School to participate in two staff meetings to update her First Aid Certificate. Wendy updated hers at the beginning of Term 2. Amanda also recently completed her full first aid certificate, we are feeling well covered and supported should a medical event occur!

As a result of our collaborative meetings with our community around our school uniform a preferred colour poll was put on Facebook and the results are in! Steel Blue was the clear winner and as mentioned previously we have met with Mandy from Argyle and are ready to move into the next stage of developing the Matua Ngaru School uniform.

Curious
On a wet and wild Wednesday evening Heike and Wendy attended a REANZ (Reggio Emilia Aotearoa New Zealand) Conversation evening. They were both very curious to find out more about the Reggio Emilia philosophy. The evening was about considering the agentic force of things and the material environment on learning . We discussed the term Intra active, which refers to the generative and interdependent relationship between living organisms and the material environment such as everyday objects, spaces and places. The discussion was underpinned by the book written by Hillevi Lenz Taguchi, called Going beyond theory/practice divide in early childhood. Introducing an intra-active pedagogy. The big take away of the evening was it's promotion of having a flexible and open mindset, while being in the moment and thinking ahead to what might emerge, whilst in the moment. Letting the child lead rather than the educator. Heike and Wendy attend a follow evening early in September which will focus on how things and the material environment may be affecting the learner's actions and meaning making

Our last scheduled meeting for the week was to meet with Michael and Heike to update them on what has been happening, to continue to ideate around curriculum and daily design and connect with them about how their term is going in their respective educator roles.

Creative
Kirstin has been working hard to transpose our school song from audio to written notation so we can create an instrumental track to accompany our singing. Diana, Amanda and Wendy have been doing their best to learn the words and practise the melody. This song has been gifted to us from a member of our eBoT and the local iwi, Te Rongopai Morehu.