Term 4 Week 9 @MatuaNgaru Spotlight

Tena kotou katua!

Week 9 has come and gone. We can't believe how quickly this term has went, but it must be because we've been working so hard and having so much fun making our school the amazing place it's going to be!

After having spent the end of week 8 on retreat, we have forged stronger bonds on our team and are getting down to lots of work that will have a direct impact on our teaching and learning in 2019.

Curious 

Week 9 was a week where a lot of our curiosity was piqued because on Tuesday morning we officially started moving in to the new space. Though there is still a good amount of work to be finished, we're very excited with the new space and can't wait to get it ready for our new learners! We've spent lots of time learning how everything works and exploring the new spaces, all the while discussing the wonderful learning opportunities we can provide in our new building.

We have also been spending a lot of time developing our curriculum maps for term 1. These will serve as an outline of the learning experiences we will provide for our first ten weeks. Our two Kāinga teams have been discussing all of the different things together and fitting everything into our overarching theme for the term, which is  Ko wai au? Ko wai tātou?→  Who am I?  Who are we?


Communicative....


At the very end of the week, on Saturday, we were excited to have a Whanau Focus Group in our new building, which afforded us the chance to not only share our vision for both innovative assessment, Te Ao Māori, Te Reo Māori and Tikanga Māori at MNS and get feedback on those aspects of our school, but it also allowed us a chance to share the building with our new learners alongside their families and whanau. It was a great day with lots of positive conversations and many excited faces!

Creative....

Another bonus of moving in to the new space was that a lot of the resources we have ordered have arrived. We have spent a portion of our time this past week, unboxing and sorting some of our new resources that will enable us to deliver high quality teaching and learning. Seen here are the 15 Sphero Bolt robots which will be a part of our STEAM program at MNS.

We have also been working diligently to develop a number of inquiry processes that we will use for our Transdisciplinary Projects. We recognise that not all inquiries are the same and that each one will require a different approach. So far we have identified: a research inquiry, a scientific investigation, a statistical inquiry, a field study, a design thinking process and a few other ones. We're excited to refine these and then put them into action in 2019!


Collaborative...

One of the first things we did when we moved into the new space was to put our learner wall up. We use this as a way to start to get to know our learners so that on day 1 we know as many names as we can. It was also a popular stopping point on our tour of the school on Saturday.

Most of the week was spent in our Kāinga teams. We have been working on our MATES agreements (which are put in place to help us through the difficult bits of teamwork) and have been having a lot of discussions about how to use the advantages of our unique school (the amazing spaces, the incredible educators and our future outstanding learners).

We also spent some time early in the week, discussing our as-yet-to-be-named approach to PB4L (Positive Behaviour For Learning). We have had some great discussions and are beginning to define our systems so that we can teach, encourage and acknowledge behaviours that promote positive relationships and thus learning.

We also had the privilege of meeting with the Arohanui team which will be working on site and began some discussions as to not only how we can use each others' strengths to serve all of our learners, but also how our learners might work together to enhance everyones' educational experiences.

As the calendar approaches 2019 we are getting more and more excited. The idea of starting a new school became very real this past week and many great ideas that have been discussed over the past months (and more than a year for some of us) are starting to crystallise. It's not an easy journey and there will certainly be some bumps along the road, but we have an incredible team and the future is certainly looking bright!

Term 4 - Week 4 @MatuaNgaru Spotlight

Tēnā koutou katoa,

We have carried over our focus from Week 3 into Week 4 'Curriculum & Inclusive Practices' as we continue to develop our curriculum, and creatively design our collaborative action plans for enacting our vision. We have also begun to prepare ourselves for our trip to Christchurch coming up in Week 5.

Communicative...  

Thank you so much to the parents who attended the Curriculum Whanau Focus Group on Tuesday. It was such an awesome opportunity to get to hear your awesome ideas and opinions on what we can do as a school.
An extra thank you to parents who offered resources/contacts to anything that can be of benefit to Matua Ngaru. We really look forward to strengthening this community relationship.

The leadership team would also like to thank the families who came to our 'Curiosity Quencher' session to learn more about our school.  It was a wonderful opportunity to connect with members of our community.

As part of our emerging curriculum work, we worked together to ideate and design what the various pedagogical approaches would look like in action and then on Wednesday we all choose which pedagogical approaches we would like to share and design on our curriculum website. We are excited that the input from our whanau aligns with our emerging curriculum design and have some exciting new ideas to weave throughout. We look forward to to sharing our final product with the community.

Creative...   

This week we have been working on getting our curriculum programmes up and running. We divvied up our action plans an each learning coach is leading and contributing immensely. We have allocated these out so that each member of our team can work on areas they are most passionate about. We have lots of exciting ideas to implement for next year.

We have also begun our device procurement for 2019 and have been working alongside New Era IT who will be our technical support provider in 2019.  We are excited to use a variety of powerful devices and digital technologies in creative ways within our future focused kura.

Collaborative...
On Thursday we had Spotless, our property management team, come in and go through

some training with us. It was lovely to also be joined by some of our Arohanui Special School
team. We are really looking forward to working with them more closely.

Through our Spotless training we got to know some of the quirks and exciting features of our school. We are looking forward to continuing our positive and collaborative relationship with them.

As a team we have had time to discuss what we want our Home - School Partnership to look like, sound like and feel like. We ideated how we would get everyone involved and feel welcome. We also looked into the idea of narrative assessments and how we can use our Linc Ed Ubiquitous Learning Pathways to flip learning and assessment @MatuaNgaru.

In other news, we worked together to co-construct our role descriptions for 2018-2019.  
This was an empowering process that provided us with some clarity within our 'greenfields'
situation. And we had some great bonding time this week with our first team photo. We
certainly felt a sense of belonging to our #DreamTeam with everyone wearing our Matua
Ngaru shirts and a crazy hat.

Curious... 

On Tuesday we got to visit the stunning Garden School in Manurewa. We were absolutely blown away by the awesome systems and homely environment. All of the staff and learners at the Garden School were enthusiastic, which was great to observe, especially after all the tough challenges of unsafe buildings they have been faced with along the way. We were impressed to learn that 19 of the staff participated in the Mindlab Post Graduate Diploma programme together. A real committment to staff professional learning and providing time to develop their approaches.

We definitely got lots of ideas that we can implement at Matua Ngaru School. Thank you for your hospitality! :)


On Tuesday afternoon the Learning Coaches worked together at Hobsonville Point Secondary School. As a staff we got to further explore Minecraft with the experts who attended the workshop in Week 3. There was lots of perseverance involved and new learning. We are looking forward to using Minecraft as a learning tool. We also spent time working on our Self Directed, Gamified, Badging Induction extravaganza of learning. We are all learning so much, collaborating and creating amazing artefacts that we can use with our learners in our kura to help uncover the cultural narrative and foster learning with digital technologies.

This week we also looked into UDL (Universal Design for Learning) with Kirstin and Wendy. A very powerful way to have our team visualise how to employ the principles of UDL was to embark on the challenge of designing a menu for a dinner party for 30 guests with many, varied, dietary requirements. Check out our sketchnote  for key ideas we discussed and activities we completed.

Our BEAUTIFUL school - site update!!

Our curiosity continued as the remaining Learning Coaches and John the Principal from Huapai School were able to get the latest viewing of our school construction site. Kate and Michael were especially excited by all the maker spaces available. Anoushka loved the garden outside and the outdoor music equipment, which is part of the sensory playground. We can't wait to visit our kura more in the coming weeks and the expected handover remains as December 10 - fingers and toes are crossed!

Coming up:

• Educators visits to South Island Schools
• Effective Educator Matrix drafting
• Learning Model drafting
• Collaborative Practices work with Amy
• Whanau Focus Group - Te Reo and Tikanga Wednesday 21 November
• and....we hope to see you at the:

Community Consultation Evening - Nov 22, 2019

Come meet the Crew at Matua Ngaru - 
A get together for 2019 New Entrants on Nov 29, 2019

Term 4 - Week 2 Spotlight @MatuaNgaru

Tena koutou katoa!

Week 2, a four day week after we all got treated to a sunny and relaxing long weekend with last Monday being Labour Day. Great that we had that time to catch our breath as well as letting the amazement and magic sink in of the terrific journey that lies ahead of us. We returned on Tuesday with anticipation to continue our #ubiquitouslearning on a wave of change.

Communicative....

More time was dedicated towards unpacking our school vision and values by deliberating about the implication and significance of these. What do these mean to us and what principles and practices will we incorporate in our learning space? The level of engagement, the thoughtful questions and the quality of the responses were an encouraging sign that all of us are owning the stake we have in this. Time is always sparse, still we must ensure that we get this right.

Wednesday we engaged with our Mana Whenua. We greeted Te Rongopai, Dawn and Te Kahui-iti Morehu by singing our school waiata “Ko Matua Ngaru Te Tira Waka” and they responded by singing the waiata “Te Aroha”. Te Kahui-iti Morehu shared her knowledge and gifted us insight into her historic recollection. We learnt about the whakapapa of the school location and the wider area by listening to interesting anecdotes told in a charismatic style. What an absolute privilege it is for us to work with these wonderful wāhine - members of the Ngati Whatua iwi.

We are looking forward to connecting with our Whanau Focus Group on Wednesday afternoon and consult with them as we cultivate their ideas of how they envision Mataua Ngaru School connecting with the community. Wendy and Di have continued to engage with and meet our wonderful learners as part of our enrolment procedures.  Our whanau interviews have been a wonderful face to face way to begin a strong home-school partnership and we now have 50 learners officially pre-enrolled!

Creative....

The team has kept the momentum of engaging into the innovative Digital Induction Badging programme which has been so brilliantly designed by Kirstin and Michael. What a great podium for our Learning Coaches to exhibit and share their professional learning as well as to cooperate and collaborate. Gauging the wide variety of talent as well as the eagerness the team brings along to engage in self directed learning, reflecting and connecting the learning from week 1, the learning coaches collaboratively created mind maps that really display the vast amount of information and learning and perhaps more importantly, how all the concepts are interlinked with each other.  

Add caption

Again, the team engaged in Tinker Time exploring and playing with a variety of e tools creating outcomes that will surely find their use in our learning space.Wendy organised this week’s team building challenge #dreamteam by tasking us to create an original advertisement for two or our upcoming community events. However, the project scope expanded and we will complete this task next week.

Mark Osbourne joined us for a “Ponder” conversation discussing and playing around with ideas what our Makerspace could look like, what resources we want to engage with and what learning will happen in it. Kirstin and Wendy were busy taking notes for the resource wish list. Obviously, this will all depend on the learners we are going to have in our school, though it was brilliant to have this expert input and someone to challenge our thinking!

Collaborative...

Further co-constructing and conceptualising our behaviour management approach was a major focus throughout this week. Jenny Barker from MoE helped us to dig deeper into understanding restorative practice and the PB4L framework. Through voting we decided that we are going to be a PB4L School. Sue Smith and Andrew Cowie shared with us the Upper Harbour School way of implementing restorative practice, cultural responsiveness and digital citizenship. Some valuable thinking prompts sparked productive conversation within the team such as being aware of making assumptions, digging deeper and understanding culture beyond ethnicity as well as going beyond greetings and food when making cultural connections.

Luke Sumich presented the Hermann's Whole Brain Model and revealed our profiles. While there may be pros and cons about this framework, the leadership team thinks it will be practical to recognise the unique way each of us processes information and then, use this information to accommodate the way we communicate accordingly. Amazingly, our team has a reasonable spread across all four quadrants, but there is a tendency towards yellow, the experimental and innovative quadrant. Innovative ideas are beneficial when involved in founding a new school and shifting the paradigm, however, we need to make sure we hold ourselves accountable on this ubiquitous learning journey. For that reason, the blue, green and red quadrants are equally important. In particular, fruitful will be implementing the common language that this thinking tool offers which we will engage in throughout the coming weeks.

Michael also engaged us in a presentation about designing rituals and routines to foster a culture of innovation.  We are looking forward to our next steps with this.Diana, Kirstin and Wendy worked with the Establishment Board of Trustees to begin the process of ideating towards our 2019 Strategic Plan. They began by unpacking the NZSTA Strategic Planning document and the brainstormed ideas for goals around what we want for our learners, interrogating these along the way.  The Strategic Leadership Team will continue to evolve these ideas into a draft plan to be shared with our stakeholders for feedback. Diana also attended a workshop run by the Ministry of Education, facilitated by Rebecca Cook, on school finance.  Dianne Cook from our board attended with her.In addition, gauging the talent and strengths our learning coaches bring along, Michael engaged us in a strengthsfinder session. This information will support us in delegating & co-constructing responsibilities and forming project teams as well as getting all involved in the planning of #ubiquitouslearning.

Curious

An important part of our induction programme will be visiting schools and see innovative practice implemented. On Tuesday the team visited Hobsonville Point Primary School. Before inquisitively wandering throughout the school, Daniel Birch, the foundation principal, shared his experience and reflections about 5 years of Hobsonville Point Primary School. While it is difficult to pinpoint the most valuable piece of information, being prepared to unlearn and relearn as well as ruthlessly engaging in critical reflection is definitely ranking very high. Whenever we engaged with the HPPS children, we were impressed with their ability to articulate their learning and the process they were involved in. Kate, who was the lucky recipient of our free conference registration, shared her key takeaways and insights from this year’s ULearn conference 2018.

 

To finish, we wonder if you are all curious to learn more about our school?  We have a fantastic Community Consultation Evening planned for November 22 at 7pm in the hall at Huapai District School.  We will share our progress, seek feedback and have many of our partners present such as SKIDs, Jellybeans Music, Argyles, Office Max, Dorothy Butler and more.  We hope that you will join us!

Coming up:

• Whanau focus group - Community Connections on Wednensday

• Minecraft Training

• Visit to Stonefields

• Resource Procurement

• Our Emerging Curriculum

• A visit to Hobsonville Point Secondary School

• Designing our digital korowai

• Strategic Planning for 2019

Term 3 Week 6 Spotlight @MatuaNgaru

We were excited to receive our banner flags this week as this has allowed us to become more visible at Huapai District School and has communicated to people and families meeting with us how to find us straight away. Thank you to Kirstin for researching and organising the flags, they look great!

 Di and Wendy have met with 8 families this week as part of family enrolment interviews. We have enjoyed learning about our learners, their families and establishing positive relationships with our school community. What talented and diverse learners Matua Ngaru is going to have with a fabulous group of interested and involved whānau to support and enrich our programmes and approaches!

Di and Amanda met with Spotless, who are our Property Management Company, they found out some useful things about our school buildings and how things will run once we open in February 2019.

Kirstin, Diana and Wendy are practicing daily, opening and closing Karakia, our Matua Ngaru waiata and a creative, scripted kōrerorero (conversation) which is our next Te Reo assessment in two weeks time and will be conducted in front of the rest of the class!

Diana, Kirstin and Michael were curious to find out more about minecraft and how the minecraft programme could enhance our learning and teaching at MNS. Crispin Lockwood led them trough some of the applications and features of the minecraft programme. The team are excited to find out more about the potential of this creative programme.

Michael and Kirstin have been ideating around options and ideas for using digital badging to induct our Learning Coaches in Term 4. We are all eager to see, hear and participate in their creative ideas around this project and achieve our badges in Term 4!

Wendy  had a wonderful time this week connecting with local kindy's and Early Childhood Centres in our community. At our Community Consultation night, 12 different ECE providers were identified as centres our newist Matua Ngaru learners will come from, so it is very important that we collaborate with ECE's and share knowledge and information so our tamariki get the best possible start at MNS. Wendy has been approached to be available for a Q & A session at Kereru Kindy, Huapai for prospective families. Emily the Head Teacher and Wendy have the planning for this underway.

Kirstin, Diana, Amanda and Wendy had the privilege this week of connecting with our colleagues and education partners at Arohanui Special School. We were made to feel very welcome and were lucky enough to visit two offsite Arohanui classrooms. One was at Te Atatu Intermediate and the other at Hobsonville Point Secondary School. It was fascinating learning to see a little of what these dedicated, passionate professionals do for a morning. We look forward to our continued close association and the opening of an Arohanui Classroom Unit and Outreach Centre at Matua Ngaru.

Diana, Kirstin and Wendy have been collaborating on our curriculum design and assessment approaches. We are enjoying the robust discussions and the opportunities to dive into research to back up our beliefs. This week we have focused on finding and making links between the New Zealand Curriculum and Te Whāriki - the Early Childhood Curriculum, both world class documents.

Wendy had an opportunity to further collaborate with Maggie Reid from Flanshaw Primary around how they use learning maps. Learning maps at Flanshaw are an integral part of what they do to report to family and whānau and maintain learner and whānau engagement, something Wendy and Di are exploring to become part of the Matua Ngaru approach.

Diana, Kirstin and Wendy all sat their first written Te Reo exam, as part of their ongoing AUT course on Conversational Maori, on Wednesday and are very curious to find out their results.

Kirstin and Diana attended a new product launch for Microsoft called Surface Go, they were curious about how the Surface Go could be used educationally.



Michael and Kirstin were able to visit the Flexible Learning Space at Huapai District School. They enjoy the visit in particular seeing how others have approached teaching and learning in a Flexible Learning Space.
Kirstin has met with a possible swimming programme provider, we are all curious to see the possible programme they could provide for our learners in the warmer months.

Our Senior Leadership Team PLG this week focused on John Hattie's latest article,WHAT WORKS BEST IN EDUCATION:THE POLITICS OF COLLABORATIVE EXPERTISE 2015. The article explored the idea of shifting to a collaborative expertise environment and had useful strategies to achieve this, as collaborative expertise is the best way to overcome within school variability and ensure our learners gain at least a year of learning for a years' input.