Term 4 - Week 8 @MatuaNgaru Spotlight

Tēnā koutou katoa! A Wild Week 8 .it was...

We have had a wonderful week together. Curriculum, teaching in the Huapai District School Flexible Learning Spaces and our amazing collaborative retreat with Te Uho o te Nikau Primary School were the highlights. It has been an affirming week as well and we met with 5 more families. We are growing bigger ever week!

We are anxiously awaiting moving in to our new school next week. Handover is expected on Tuesday. We are also looking forward to hosting our next Whanau Focus Group next Saturday, December 15 from 2-3pm - details to come via Facebook and email for enrolled families.

Communicative...

On Monday and Wednesday we worked on developing our curriculum. It is shaping up beautifully and we are designing a model to make it visible and cognitively portable. Diana met with the Establishment Board of Trustees for lunch on Wednesday to celebrate our epic establishment year. We also made a decision to move our official opening to the 30th of January as this is the first day of school for James Le Marquand, his team and their learners from Arohanui Special School. We will begin the day with an official welcoming from our mana whenua partners and follow that with our first of two Open Days for our learners. The Open Day will enable our tamariki and their whanau to spend some time in their spaces and hang out with our awesome team of educators. More details will come via Facebook and email.

Collaborative...

On Tuesday, our team worked in the flexible learning spaces at Huapai District School and made a lot of wonderful noticings and even connected with a few of our future learners. The highlight of this week was of course the amazing retreat at Vaughn Park in Long Bay. Our team reveled in the opportunity to connect with and collaborate with the team of ten from Te Uho o te Nikau. We began the retreat with a collaborative scavenger hunt and some speed dating to get everyone talking.

Then Mel Bland, Principal of Te Uho o te Nikau Primary School and our very own Di swapped teams to share our journey to date. Other activities included a Smackdown of innovative pedagogies, a World Cafe on collaborative practices, a session on Play Based Learning with Heike (aka Play Guru), Bonnie and Eva, some Tinker Time facilitated by Michael and Kate and an Appy Hour of wonderful digital technologies. There was also time for some fun and games including a Riff Off (a singing competition) and the epic Quiz Night hosted by Wendy and Kirstin. We are looking forward to connecting with the wonderful Te Nikau again in the new year when we get to visit each other's kura.

Curious...

Wendy and Amanda began training with AccessIt which is the software that we will use in Whare Hapori- our future focused library. They are in the process of stamping all of the books that we have procured to date and eagerly await the scanner and bar codes to begin accessioning our initial collection. We have also had one of our wonderful parents begin to collect some previously loved books from families in the area for our collection- we wonder what great reads there will be?! We also did some work with Jenny and Del from the Ministry of Education again on our approach to PB4L. We are thinking of calling it our 'Kahui Character' program as it will involve identifying and teaching our expectations for learning in our school with a system to support all learners to reach these. We will use a tuakana-teina approach in our weekly Kahui Character time where our tamariki are places in one of our four school wide vertical groups named after our learning values - Curious, Collaborative, Creative and Communicative to learn, practice and apply these expectations. We will also revisit them as needed within our hapu (aka: guardian or home group). We are looking forward to further developments of this when they return next Monday.

Creative....

Michael got our creative juices flowing with a session on designing rituals to build our school culture. Four very special ideas are germinating.

There is also some exciting work being lead by our team of learning coaches with our interactive turangawaewae map and their projects (supported by Wendy and Kirstin):

• Hauora at Matua Ngaru- Heike, Nush & Yasmin
• Travelwise - Yasmin & Wendy
• Whare Hapori - Wendy, Kate & Kelly
• Kahui Character - Heike, Wendy
• Te Ao Maori - Amy & Heike
• Enviro - Amy, Nush & Wendy + STEAM- Michael, Kirstin, Kelly & Kate (combining where appropriate)
• Linc-Ed Progressions - Kate and Kirstin
• Digital Ecosystem - Kirstin
• Sports & Clubs - Amy, Nush & Kate
• Digital Citizenship - Yasmin, Kate and Kelly

We continue to connect with our families in our Whanau Interviews and can't wait to lead learning with them in 2019.

What's coming up:

*** relocating to our wonderful school on Tuesday - thank you to Huapai District School!

*** PB4L part 3 with Jenny and Del on Monday

*** Spotless Induction on Thursday

*** Meeting the Arohanui team on Thursday

*** 12 more whanau interviews (and counting!)

*** Whanau Focus Group: Assessment, Strategy, Curriculum and Te Reo & Tikanga Maori

*** ENROL Training on Wednesday

*** AccessIt Training on Monday

*** NZSL with Margaret Patrick on Friday

*** 3 birthday girls: Yasmin, Anoushka & Kirstin

*** end of year xmas BBQ

*** and a whole lot more! eg. Curriculum, Assessment, Projects, Kainga set up

Term 4 - Week 7 @MatuaNgaru Spotlight

Tēnā koutou katoa!

Week 7

What an action-packed week this has been! And, to top it off, we’ve been lucky to have lots of opportunities to work on site at our school and get a feel for the spaces. As with any kind of learning, the 4C’s have been ubiquitously woven through our week which was full of collaboration, communication, curiosity and creativity!

Communicative...

On Monday, we started off the day by sharing our ‘Blind date with a Book’ professional reading summaries. We got to present our summaries and hear a snippet about how each of these books would help us extend our practice.

Some examples of the books were “Teach like a Pirate” - Dave Burgess, “Play like a Pirate” - Quinn Rollins, “The sacred urge to play” - Pennie Brownlee with Kimberley Crisp and “Mindset” - Dr Carol S. Dweck, just to name a few! We then spent the afternoon with Crispin from Microsoft, getting to know our Microsoft Surface Pros and how to maximise their usage. The possibilities are endless!

Collaborative...

On Tuesday, the lovely staff at Huapai District School allowed us to shadow them until Lunchtime, to let us get a feel for the ILE workspace. We were able to pick their brains about what works and what doesn't and how best to move forward and learn from their experiences. We talked about the importance of providing various provocations and the value of play-based learning. We all walked away with tonnes of new ideas and ponderings about how to move forward.

Curious...

Wednesday morning had the entire staff meeting Te Kahui-iti and Te Rongopai from our local iwi, Ngati Whatua, at Maukatia Bay by Muriwai for a Hikoi to understand the history of the land and the journey of the mana whenua. It was an enlightening morning that allowed us to connect with the land. We then drove further North to Helensville or Te Awaroa (The Valley of the Long River) to see the serpentine river from up above.

It is truly an honour to be able to have a strong connection to the land and its history from the moment we open the doors to our new school.

Thursday brought on a very busy but exciting day! First, Jenny and Del from the Ministry of Education came to talk to us about PB4L (Positive Behaviour 4 Learning) and how it will benefit our learner. A wonderful picnic was organised on Thursday afternoon to allow the New Entrant learners from the community to come and meet the Matua Ngaru Crew. Lots of fun and games were organised and we even had a great view of our new school as a backdrop to the event. It was such an exciting time, getting to know some of the community and allowing the learners to break the nerves of starting in a new place with new people. This was followed by a Curiosity Quencher that allowed any families and whānau that are curious about our school, to learn about our kura, ask questions and meet some of the Learning Coaches.

Creative....

Jason from Mindkits kindly joined us for a few hours on Friday and introduced us to the world of Robotics using these nifty little Edison robots. A number of us have used different types of robots in the past but Edison was new to us all. It was a lot of fun and we were able to be creative with the codes we put in to see whether the robots would follow what we were trying to do. So much to learn with these little machines. We used a whole lot of collaboration, communication and curiosity to make them work.

What a great way to end such an amazing week. There are some very exciting times ahead and after this week, it's fair to say the whole community can feel the buzz.