Happy New Year, we hope that you had plenty of opportunity to enjoy this amazing summer and that you have been able to create many beautiful and long lasting memories with your family and loved ones.
With spirit, passion and determination, we have returned to our project of turning "Ubiquitous Learning on a Wave of Change" into reality.
Communicative....Diana and Wendy have continued to conduct whanau enrolment interviews. Our school community keeps growing and we are thrilled getting to know our future learners so well through the interview process. Information shared in the interview really helped all educators to picture our learners, their interest and passions and we are feeling well prepared to support them from Day 1. #notlongtogo.
Only a few more sleeps to our official opening, so we are getting learner ready in all aspects. We are so looking forward to it! So, many of us were taking part in planning, organising and communicating this event.
During our induction morning we debated our evolving Kahui Values (PB4L) Matrix as well as some lesson plan templates, drafts and ideas. We have deliberately chosen our 4 C's (communicative, creative, collaborative and curious) as our PB4L values despite recognising that these are not the first values that come to mind when addressing behaviour. Having said that, these values are learning values, indeed, and after all we are addressing Positive Behaviour for Learning. Now, we are having a fabulous struggle creating a matrix that serves as a tool for explicit social coaching as well as explaining learning dispositions and is cognitively portable. So, watch this space.
Creative....
Continuing building our school culture all of us spent part of an induction morning on recapping and reiterating a cognitively portable model of our vision statement, learning value why's, purpose of learning and learning is statements.
We collaboratively designed our code of conduct and our dress code.
As mentioned earlier, one of our top priorities for the week was to turn our office look alike learning spaces into clearly identifiable learning zones that primary school aged children find attractive, appealing and thought provoking. During term 4, we have repeatedly cogitated about implementing the environment as the third teacher. Ideally, the environment communicates desired and acceptable manner, our values that are celebrated in this space and the invitation to wonder, to investigate and to inquire. Now, we are making this reality.
Many of the attractive resources that Wendy and Kirstin ordered had arrived and they needed to be assembled, assorted and arranged in the learning space. Further, we were majorly impressed when Anoushka showed off her interior design and decorating skills. She sparked off a healthy competition between the teams. The Kāinga are beginning to look incredible and we are interested to see the learners interacting with the space when they come for their first visit next week. Michael and Kirstin set up the Steam & Art spaces and then gave all of us a tour so we know how to use them.
Collaborative...
On Friday, we put our collaborative skills to the test by participating in Whare Hapori Action Day. Amazing Wendy, Kate and Kelly, our Whare Hapori team, had organised all the resources needed to get our library books ready for the shelf. So, the team created a production line implementing the following actions cataloging books, preparing books for the shelf and labeling all donated books to recognise the gifting person. Then the final act was to sort the books in the shelves and display them so our learners will be attracted and motivated to use these for their ubiquitous learning. Many thanks go to Sandi Falconbridge the National Library Adviser to our school for her brilliant support. Also, thank you to the volunteers who participated in the Whare Hapori working bee. We really appreciate your support. Even one of our learners wearing his new uniform came to support us in this important undertaking.
Our Travelwise lead educator Yasmin met with Senior Constable Bryan Ward Q.S.M (who some of you will know from "Brian and Bobby") to organise and discuss some learning experiences about road safety early in term 1. Naturally, the safety of our learners is paramount and education for safety is essential. We are glad to have these connections.
Yasmin and Kelly also met with Russell French from Travelwise Auckland Transport to discuss Road Safety and Travelwise activities. We are proactively thinking about how we can make the drop off and pick up arrangements safe for all our learners, their siblings and their parents, in short for our school community. Having many learners and their whānau walk to school is beneficial for many reasons and it contributes to keeping the roads around the school safe. Walking to school also allows parents to teach their children being a pedestrian on our roads. We are a Travelwise School!
Curious
Team Wheke coaches and our two deputy principals Wendy and Kirstin went to a very worthwhile, informative and descriptive Primary Phonics workshop facilitated by Yolanda Soryl. We have been deliberating about what Phonics programme we are going to implement in our school. After consulting many sources we decided for Yolanda Soryl and for a start her workshop did not disappoint at all.
Yolanda is an excellent facilitator in making sure that we have not wasted a minute of our time. She does share her strategies of making phonics a practical, effective and enjoyable part of a literacy programme in a very absorbable style. We left this workshop with many readily implementable strategies, which we will need to integrate into and weave through our timetable.
Coming up
- Official opening
- Open days
- More work on Kāinga websites, LincEd
- Hauora wellbeing workshop with Graham Watts
