Tena kotou katua! Week 1 - Term 4
 Can you believe it is already Term 4? It is such an exciting and invigorating term for us. Six new educators joined the #DreamTeam and we had an amazing week of #ubiquitouslearning together. Here are the highlights...   |
Our induction focus has been Communicative - whakaaro this week. We welcomed the team on Monday with a mihi whakatau that included karakia, Kirstin, Di and Wendy sharing their mihi and the singing of our waiata 'Ko Matua Ngaru Te Tira Waka' which was written by Te Rongopai Morehu of Ngati Whatua O Kaipara specifically for us. Michael, responded on behalf of the new team members and they sang 'Te Aroha' in return to acknowledge our welcome. We have spent a lot of our time this week having discussions around our vision, beliefs, principles and practices threaded of course with a lot of team building fun. Kirstin and Wendy ensured that we all had a 'Blind Date with a Book' and that the team got a few #ubiquitouslearning pieces of swag!
A key area we are co-constructing is our approach to behaviour management using a restorative approach and we have Jenny Barker from the MOE and Sue Smith & Andrew Cowie from Upper Harbour Primary coming to guide us on this key piece of work.
We are also super proud of Kirstin, Wendy and Di who have successfully completed their Te Reo Maori course with AUT. On Wednesday they had their final korero assignment and celebrated the milestone with their classmates through shared kai (food).
Of course, some of our most important whakaaro discussions were with our families through the continued whanau interviews - with 107 learners currently engaged in our pre-enrolment processes.
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Our collective and individual creativity had opportunities to flourish as well. Kirstin and Michael kicked off our innovative Digital Induction Badging programme on Tuesday at Hobsonville Point Primary School. The purpose of this gamified approach is to empower the team to self direct aspects of their professional learning in a way that allows them to personalise their learning to suit their specific needs. It also enables them to model our school vision of #ubiquitouslearning while also learning about our school culture. Initially this will focus on professional learning as it relates directly to induction, with the aspirational goal of eventually being extended to include other professional learning opportunities. A huge amount of work and design has gone into this and we are all grateful for the contribution that Kirstin and Michael have put into this.
AND everyone has had a go at sketchnoting on their new Surface Pros.
On Wednesday, Michael lead Learning Coach Tinker Time where the team had time to explore and play with lots of 'makery' tools and explore their creative side through some thoughtful (and fun) provocations.
But perhaps, the most creative activity this week was when Wendy challenged us to make our Kāinga Cakes! We were blown away with the collaborative approach to cake design that our 3 teams showcased. Plus, nom, nom nom!
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Throughout the week the team was provided with deliberate opportunities to connect, cooperate and collaborate. Building our school culture requires knowledge and shared understanding around a few concepts such as change leadership, first and second order change and the FISH philosophy.
The team recognises that we are all responsible for this. We explored how to locate ourselves (see the video), ideated around the co-construction of our Norms along with discussion and reflection regarding the curation, conversation and celebration strategies that we can use to deliberately foster and build a positive, inclusive school culture.
Michael also had us explore our Super Powers in an exercise of learning how we perceive our own strengths, which is an important self awareness to have and leads nicely into our Hermman's Brain Dominance Indicator work that we will be doing with Luke Sumich in Week 2.
Diana facilitated some initial discussion and sense making activities around collaborative practices and ILE pedagogies to complement the self directed learning the team has been engaged with through the badging tasks.
Wendy met with a music provider who we will be engaging with for focused music lessons next year. She also met with Russell French from Travelwise to discuss opportunities and to schedule some dates. The building of these relationships now is key for designing 2019 teaching and learning experiences.
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Michael and Kirstin ensconced us with the Flexible Learning Fact Sheets through our #ubiquitous PLG - Professional Learning Group- in Flipgrid. This is an online tool that we can use to pose and answer questions around some of the key terminology that we use. And speaking of terminology, we all dove into our curiosities through the co-construction (draft) glossary for our kura. Our hope is that this glossary will be of use for future team members, but more importantly, to the families of our learners. The team finished Friday with the 2018 edition of the Amazing Matua Ngaru Race. Kirstin ensured that the teams delved deep through solving riddles, completing challenges and connecting with members of our community. Dinosaurs, paper swans, Hallowe'en costumes and heaps of selfies meant there was certainly something for everyone! It was a blast- thanx Kirstin!
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What's Coming Up in Week 2....
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