Tena kotou katua! Greetings everyone!
Week 7 was a wonderful week. The @MatuaNgaru team have been engaging in a lot of ideating around curriculum design and induction for our growing team in Term 4. Here are the highlights.
Communicative....Whakaaro
On Monday, Amanda, Di, Wendy, Kirstin and Michael participated in administration professional learning with Linc-Ed to develop our understanding of the potential and usability of our Learning Management System. We are enthusiastic about how this tool will amplify our home-school partnership, demystify the ongoing assessment as learning processes in our school and foster collaboration in learning between our tamariki (children) and kaiako (educators). There is also Linc-Ed app which will enable ubiquitous access to each child's learning pathway. We are planning for all learners in our community to use Linc-Ed to house their ubiquitous learning portfolio which will serve as a launchpad for making the learning visible to parents, educators and of course our learners.
Creative....AuahaWendy and Kirstin continue to meet with providers of teaching and learning resources to heighten our collective knowledge of what is available, what is most relevant for our learning approach as educators and most importantly, what our kids will connect with most to enable ubiquitous learning pathways. We are employing a 'less is more' philosophy to procurement to ensure we are collating and purchasing the most appropriate learning resources for our foundation year and stretching our finances to get the best we can offer. We challenge ourselves with 'habit versus requirement' to ensure we procure what we actually need and provide our learners with the most useful, intuitive, innovative and engaging resources.
Collaborative... Mahi tahi AND Curious... Māhirahira
Our SLT is very grateful to our Board of Trustees for providing us with the opportunity to visit some remarkable schools in Melbourne, Australia. Heike and Michael were able to join Kirstin, Wendy and Di on visits to some of the most wonderful, warm and hospitable schools. Click on the school names to see a slideshow of our visits.
Jason Walker and his team were so welcoming and warm. They took us on a personalised tour to show and explain their pedagogical approaches and the learning journey they are on as a leadership team. We were blown away by their heritage building and clever use of spaces. Our key takeaways were: deliberate use of Maths Mindsets for problem solving in mixed ability groups including con-constructed shared language across the school, a thriving Book Club that is based on learner selected books, their Challenge Based Learning inquiry model, exceptional use of graphic organisers by and with learners and their 'tracking my thinking' notebooks that are used for reflection/just in time learning for the kids and for assessment as learning plus feedback mechanism by the educators. They provided us with the most wonderful lunch and we really appreciated their hospitality and open to learning conversations. Learn more on their website.
Jill Laughlin is an amazing educational leader (and business manager!). Her school is a large one that has undergone some extraordinary developments over the last decade. Their CHS Learning Model which is largely influenced by the Hermann's Brain Dominance Indicator and facilitation with Dr Julia Atkin is outstanding and at the core of their learning work providing their 'why' for deliberate learning space design as they remodel and build new learning environments. The school reports to parents on the dispositions as well as the curriculum areas. The school has revamped their approach to teaching and learning and created curriculum team to deprivatize practice and promote collaborative pedagogical approaches. Learning driven projects like the 'Connexhibition' and 'Melbourne Empathy Project' have developed a strong sense of ownership and external perspectives. The CHS Learning Model has evolved into their graduate profile and involved parents, learners and the educators. Other highlights included their amazing design technology and arts curriculum, co-construction of writing progressions with the primary school and the creation of 'home' spaces for each year level to call their own. Learn more on their website.
Marilin Smith leads the wholistic learning approach at Preshil School. She generously invited us for a cup of coffee and delicious biscuit in the welcoming front room of the original building where if we closed our eyes we could envisage this first cohort of 5 learners with 'Mug' - the founder of Preshil - Margaret Lyttle. A place that exhibits all of the amazing components of the Reggio Emelia philosophy and where the environment is clearly the third teacher here! The school is situated on a historical site designed by Kevin Bourland, working with kids in rambling gardens that were once the home of Margaret Lyttle and where she first began the school. All rooms ‘deliberately promote experimentation and imagination, deliberately provoking the five senses. The Preshil teachers engage in shared imaginary role play, and explicit teaching, to deepen the children’s learning around concepts, both social/emotional and scientific. Our key takeaways include their flexible, learner centric approach grounded in strong relationships, daily provision of uninterrupted play (including child built structures, sand/water play, animal care and loose parts), infusion of music (both the teaching of and playing of during learning time), democratizing the learning space, the embracing of technologies discriminately (is it collaborative? is it creative?) and of course the invitational environment. We wanted to stay and play all day! Preshil is a private school that offers a place where playing, making believe, acting, experimenting, tinkering, improvising, provide the pathways to new connections, generative mistakes, unintentioned outcomes and life changing inventions. Our visit was too short. Learn more on their website.
Dr Janet Di Pilla is an extraordinary woman, thought leader and advocate for children. We were so inspired by her vision for learning at Brunswick East Primary School. With an exceptionally diverse learning community the approach to teaching and learning is differentiated with the child at the core. While their New Entrants are in a separate learning space, the Year 1-3s and Year 4-6s worked in vertical groups of 60 learners with 3 educators who work collaboratively to ensure that the focus is on the learning process, not the product. The outdoor learning environment provides the backyard opportunities to play and explore that many of the 'city kids' are not exposed to at home and she employs a 'garden teacher' who works with all the kids once a week. This is deliberate and infused into everyday play and learning. She works hard to provide 'cuiosita time' where the teams design learning together for over 3 hours per week, clearly valuing this. The learning environments were varied, from a converted staff room in the original building to a sleek new buildings of flexible learning spaces. The backwards by design approach to teaching and learning empowers their vision and the deliberate 'deconstruction' of the library into 'mini libraries' in every hub has lead to more reading. They have a notion that any place can be a learning space and Dr Janet demands that all educators know all the learners in their hub. A focus on growing literate, numerate and curious learners involves a curriculum that teaches philosophy, ethics and empathy so they learn to think deeply and quite abstractly. The learning is personalised as the learners are given a fertile question and then encouraged to explore in their own direction, taking time to define what words mean. The learning was visible, dripping off the walls in inviting spaces that were clearly being used by learners and educators alike. Learn more about this world class school here.
As a school amidst a large scale renovation we were grateful that the team at Silverton could host us. Big thanks to Samantha and Karen. We were provided with a pre-brief of their approach to collaborative practice in their large flexible learning spaces and the school wide pedagogy. The naming of the learning spaces in each hub are learner created each year, as are the norms. These were visible everywhere and clearly owned by the learners. A full range of teaching styles were observed from deliberate acts of teaching with both smaller and larger groups, 1:1 coaching/conferencing, learner lead workshops, parallel teaching and highly engaged self directed learning at all year levels. Their school culture was visible and was interactively displayed on the walls, as was their learning model for Discovery Time. Their 'Reality Groups' are a recent addition to enhance the Discovery Time and often involve members from the community. Their goal for these are that they be authentic, involve student choice, student led, involve additional Specialist teachers, volunteers and parents helpers (depending on the activity) and are aimed to develop skills based on student interests. A range of staff were engaged in the teaching of ability groups for reading and maths and weekly maths investigations were a clear strength demonstrating their rich task, no worksheet philosophy. A high staff turnover has required a close reimagining of their induction and coaching processes and their response is the Silverton Passport which guides those new to the school in the 'why' of their pedagogy. Learn more about this thriving school here.
Woodleigh Munimbah was an inspirational delight. The campus is magnificent and the learning spaces were intelligently designed, well used spaces with amazing indoor/outdoor flow. The learning was displayed in a manner that managed to reflect the learning clearly, be interactive and contribute to the design of the spaces without blocking the natural light. Another school where we observed the environment acting as the is 3rd educator with 'deinstitutionalized' spaces. A school for adventurous minds where learning is a shared experience. Goal setting uses SMART protocols and everyday has deliberate play and opportunities for just in time learning. They believe that when a child asks a question they don't give the answer, just a question back. The school values outdoor learning with all children spending one day a week, rain or shine, at the local creek - they use 'puddle suits' when needed and also participate in the Stephanie Alexander kitchen garden program. They are a 'Mindful School'→ which involves community, curriculum, environment and practices and they teach the habits of mind. The teachers educated in outdoor learning ( how to teach outdoors) and they do a lot of shared professional development to talk about what they're doing -allowing teachers to explore and bring back. They do classroom and peer observations, work as teams, and keep each other accountable. The educators use pre-mapped WALTs but personalised and bring in multiple areas of the Victorian curriculum. They use the Round Square program and resilience projects and encourage 'narrative' projects to tap into educator strengths. Each new learner contributes a stick to their nest paying homage to the indigenous culture. Learn more about this school on their website.
A highlight for us was the visit to St John's Footscray with their wonderful principal Gemma Goodyear. So much of their approach resonated with our design for learning and approach to facilitating the NZC. Gemma was honest, articulate and very generous with her sharing of time, ideas and resources. So what did we love about this school? A learner driven inquiry with 4 options for entry: make / act/ do/ know, the relaunching of students wonderings from day before → “remember yesterday you said….”, the use of provocation for younger years and spark for older year groups, the different inquiry design models used and deliberately taught (scientific inquiry, arts & design process & problem solving process & field study & research question), the community garden, the way they 'group by age & teach by stage', the absolute visible learning and learning progressions on the walls, the focused use of a guardian group “Promoting safety, well-being and inclusion of all children.”, the third teacher environment to enable children for self directed learning, projects that enter through the story to create authenticity, their curriculum mapping tool, valuing teachers as designers and empowering the educators to 'set their own agenda', visible thinking routines, the relentless focus on stretching learning, a backwards by design approach that uses learning progressions proactively and retrospectively and using the children's own language to challenge the narrative. What is not to love? There are certainly lucky teachers and kids at this school! Read more about this innovative school here. 
We also enjoyed a quick visit to the Queen Victoria Markets, Botanical Gardens and St Kilda Beach before we flew home. While we had time travelling across Melbourne in the car to debrief about our school visits we had invaluable opportunities to discuss, ideate and re-imagine our key takeaways from these wonderful schools. We are so enthusiastic to put the many moving pieces together in our #waveofchange jigsaw of #ubiquitouslearning!
What's coming up:
- A visit to Parnell District School to learn and observe the affordances of Office 365 with a particular focus on Teams, OneNote and collaborative learning
- A uniforms meeting - we get to see our unique colour on our polo shirt fabric with Mandy from Argyle
- We're growing - pre-enroling 8 more learners, bringing our official pre-enrolled number to 16!
- Financial manual creation with Leading Edge
- APPA Beginning Teacher's Expo
- Meeting with Norton's Signs to finalise our internal and external branding
- Collaboration with our Before and After School Care provider
- Wendy meets with Travelwise
- Wendy and Heike engage in the second part of the professional learning series 'Reggio Conversation' coordinated by REANZ
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