Term 3 Week 10 @MatuaNgaru Spotlight

Tena kotou katoa!

Week 10 has arrived so quickly! We've had a very busy term and accomplished a lot and this week was no exception.  We have been working diligently to prepare for the arrival of our new Learning Coaches in Week 1 of Term 4!


Communicative....


Diana and Wendy are continuing to conduct whanau enrolment interviews. Our extended whanau continues to grow with seven new families having interviews this week. We're thrilled that we are meeting more and more of our future learners.

Wendy also visited Kereru Kindergarten this past Thursday to meet with more prospective families and tell about how we're going to be an amazing place for their children to attend.

Diana, Kirstin and Wendy all continued their Te Reo course at the AUT Northern Campus. They are coming up on the end of their course and have become very confident in their Te Reo and continue to practice and reinforce what they've learned every day with both Amanda and Michael.

This Wednesday also saw an EBoT meeting, which Diana attended and reported our progress to.



Creative....

We had another visit from Mandy, our uniform provider. She came with some great uniform prototypes. They are starting to look really amazing, and are getting close to being completed. This has been a long process and it's fantastic to see something close to the finished product.

The blue colour on the uniforms is not going to be the final colour. We have had a very special "Matua Blue" mixed just for our school which the final uniforms will showcase. You can see a similar blue in the polar fleece, which also feels very soft.

With the new learning coaches coming so soon, Amanda, Diana,  Kirstin, Michael and Wendy have been busy planning the first couple of weeks of Term 4 so that we will all get a chance to become a team. We will be focussing on being Communicative so that we can "go from ME to WE." It's looking like a very fun-filled week filled with lots of new learning. 



Collaborative...


Kirstin and Michael spent the bulk of the week working together to develop a badging system for our Induction. The two have been feeding off of each others' ideas and have come up with some innovative solutions to practical problems that have come up in the course of their design. Together, they are very close to completing this mammoth task so that our Learning Coaches (and SLT!) have a engaging and motivating way to both learn what they need to in order to work at MNS but also to grow as an educator in a way that is personalised.

The team also joined in with Huapai District School for their weekly Friday morning tea. We value our partnership with them and wanted to show support for what they've done for us by providing them morning tea.

Diana also met with John Petrie, principal of Huapai District School, to discuss communicating with the families that have a choice between our two schools.

Curious

This Friday also saw Amanda, Diana, Kirstin Megan, Michael and Wendy take a visit of the new site. The progress from our last visit has been massive. Both our admin block and Arohanui now have walls in place and we can get a clear picture of the layout of both areas. The Kāinga are looking incredible and we can start to see what each space will look like. All in all it was a very uplifting visit and makes this whole journey seem more real, now that our space is nearing completion. Here are some photos of the visit:

What's Coming Up?

• Mauri Stone Ceremony
• ERO Visit
• More Whanau interviews
• Learning Coaches Start Day 1 Term 4 

Term 3 Week 8 @MatuaNgaru Spotlight

Tena kotou katoa!

It has been yet another busy week for the Matua Ngaru team with lots of discussion, planning, exploring and new learning taking place. It's hard to believe that we are only a few weeks away from the end of Term 3, our opening date of 7 February 2019 is getting closer and closer and our school buildings are beginning to look more like the concept drawings we shared with you all at our community consultation meetings.


Communicative....


This week, we have continued to meet with families for pre-enrolment interviews, and it has been fabulous getting to know each of our future learners, their parents and even some of their grandparents. If you have been watching the counter on the first page of our school website, you will have noticed that the number of pre-enrolled foundation learners is beginning to grow.

Tuesday afternoon and early evening saw Diana at the Auckland Primary Principals' Association Beginning Teacher expo. Diana spent the afternoon meeting with soon to graduate teacher trainees and sharing with them what makes Matua Ngaru School special.

As you all know, this last week was Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori (Māori Language Week) and the team have been practising our school waiata (song) every day, as well as beginning and ending our meetings each day with non-religious karakia (blessings). Wendy, Kirstin and Diana have also been busy practising our dialogue for our AUT assessment next week, where we have to hold a conversation about how we are feeling, where we are from, share a little bit about our parents, our children and/or pets and ask and answer a couple of questions about everyday classroom objects.  This has been a really big learning curve for the 3 of us and we have definitely spent time in the learning pit as we make mistakes and try and try again. 


Earlier in the week we shared the following video on our Facebook page, and it is definitely a message worth sharing again. This video made something very clear to us as a school that will nurture and grow Kiwi kids representing an array of cultures. Janelle Riki-Waaka from Core Education shares her clear, powerful and absolute 'why' for honouring Te Reo and Tikanga Maori in our schools in Aotearoa.   This is powerful. This is our responsibility. 

Giving mana to Tiriti o Waitangi in our schools from EDtalks on Vimeo.

If you would like to start exploring a bit of Te Reo (language) and Tikanga (way of doing things) with your family, then this beautiful website called Pepeha has just been released. On this site you are guided through building and creating your own pepeha (personal introduction) and it helps you with learning some basic phrases and pronunciation along the way. You can even download a copy of your pepeha once you have finished.

Creative.... 

We were very excited on Monday afternoon, when Mandy from Argyle (our uniform provider) arrived with our colour dipped fabric sample for final approval. The shade of blue we will be using for our uniform is a new colour, and at this stage there are no other schools in New Zealand with this particular shade. Because of this, the company has named the new colour Matua Blue, which we think is pretty awesome! We also got to look at some of the initial prototypes for our polo and fleece - they are looking very smart.

Wendy and Heike attended their second evening session exploring Reggio Emilia on Wednesday where they had the opportunity to think creatively about how children are connected to their environment as they play and explore the world around them.

Collaborative...


Diana, Wendy and Kirstin started timetabling the various tasks and events that will take place next term, this will help us with planning and organising the term ahead.

On Thursday, Diana met with the company who are working on the signage for our school buildings.

Wendy and Kirstin have continued to meet with various resource providers, and on Friday, Wendy had an opportunity to meet  with representatives from Auckland Transport to discuss what is involved in our becoming a Travelwise school.

Curious...

On Monday morning, Diana, Kirstin, Wendy and Michael visited Morgan McKeen and her class at Parnell District School. Morgan is using Microsoft tools and software with her Year 5/6 class in innovative ways, and we were keen to learn more about what she is doing and see the tools and pedagogy in action.

We are sure you are all curious to find out who our Learning Coaches (teachers) will be. We are delighted to welcome Amy Robertshaw, Anoushka Carnie, Kate Davison, Kelly Gaston and Yasmin Mohamed to the Matua Ngaru Team. 

What's Coming Up?

• More family interviews
• New schools' PLG meet up
• Kirstin and Wendy attending Maker Space PD
• Learning Coach meet up

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.

Term 3, Week 5 Spotlight @MatuaNgaru

Tena kotou katua!

The site is looking very busy with lots of progress being made.

    

 

He waka eke noa - we are in this together!  One of our school whakatauki optitimises our Week 5 which embodied teamwork has left us with a feeling of accomplishment and a sense of anticipation for what has yet to come. Here are the highlights.

Diana and Wendy began to discuss the Mutukaroa program (originally developed at Sylvia Park School) which aims to accelerate learning in the early years while fostering fully engaged whanau who are assessment literate.  A great conversation emerged as they pondered what this might look like and/or morph into for our school.   As a result, we are looking forward to delving deeper into how we might use Learning Maps in association with our Linc-Ed Ubiquitous Learning Portfolios. Coupling these with assessment workshops for our parents to ensure that everyone is on the same page regarding our language of learning, assessment tools/practices and how we can accelerate progress while increasing engagement in learning is our ultimate goal.  Wendy represented our SLT on Wednesday and attended a 'just in time' WAPA (West Auckland Principal's Association) meeting to learn about potential approaches for streamlining communication about learners across schools.  There are some exciting prospects on the horizon.  We also had our Establishment Board of Trustees meeting on Wednesday.  It was fantastic for Di to be able to share our progress in alignment with the Project Action Plan.  Di has also drafted our Maori Consultation Plan for 2018-2019 which she will share with the Board at the next meeting.


It was wonderful to have Michael Davidson, one of our Lead Learning Coaches in for the day on Monday.  We were able to look at some creative ways to use the strengths of our leadership team and we spent time refining our role descriptions to gain clarity on our portfolios of responsibility.  We are able to use Michael as a coach for the team as he is a Google Certified Innovator and a Google Certified Trainer.  Exploration and ideation is also underway to digitise aspects of our induction process for our appointed learning coaches in Term 4.  Kirstin and Micheal will be leading this piece of work.

Wendy lead the team in a discussion around our future focused library aspirations.  This began with challenging our current name selection 'Whare Pukapuka'.  Since we want our library to act as an inspirational space for our community, as well as our learners, we decided to call it 'Whare Hapori' to signal this.  Wendy is working on an Action Plan to set up our amazing space.

Di was able to meet with the folks from Horton's Signs and CPB Con to discuss the branding and signing of our school.  We are very excited that each of our kāianga will have a lovely external sign of the animal design, Arohanui Special School and Matua Ngaru School will have some beautiful directional signage around the site and on the building, including our logos and the waka design (designed by Graham Tipene) and the safety glass will be a repeated pattern of our four learning values in Te Reo Maori, English and the 1/4 design from the logo.  In addition, there will be some vinyl overlays of our learning model and the kāinga animals in the tari area.  We were also proud to share the interactive map that Kirstin created of our kura.

Our 'mahitahi' efforts this week have seen progress made with our resourcing as Wendy and Kirstin make our lists as they meet with possible providers to discuss our foundation year needs.  Di has been networking with some educational leaders to support our induction and we are looking forward to having Andrew Cowie and Sue Smith come to work with our team around Digital Citizenship, Restorative Practices and Culturally Responsive Approaches.  This amazing duo come from Upper Harbour Primary- one of our favourite Auckland schools to visit. 

          

Kirstin is also liaising with Luke Sumich from OJC to coordinate some PL around the Hermman Brain Dominance Instrument and Whole Brain Thinking as part of our induction to aid our team in developing a greater understanding for how we can fully leverage our own preferences, while taking advantage of the preferences of each other to optimise our collaborative approach and increase our performance as individuals and collectively. 

Our first six fact sheets around the terminology often used when describing Innovative Learning Environments or as we like to call them 'Flexible Learning Spaces' are now complete.  These fact sheets explain our interpretation of each term with links to some research & articles.  It is our hope to add to the series, selecting terms that are potentially confusing, misleading or that we want to ensure are clear to our community.  The first 6 topics are: Self Directed Learning, Innovative Practice, Learning Through Play, Inclusive Learning, Collaborative Learning and Collaborative Practice.

This week, Kirstin and Wendy were able to spend a morning observing the collaborative practice in the Huapai District School Innovative Learning Environments.  They were inspired by the strategies and approaches that were observed and described by the educators and learners.  We feel so fortunate to have such a wonderful school hosting us.  It is our aspiration, together with John and his team, to work in partnership to serve our community.

For our weekly PLG we read the EdBookNZ 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 editions (accessible here).  These digital books were the brainchild of Sonja Vanschaijik from Newmarket Primary School.  AND we listened to the Point of Learning podcast featuring Sonja as well, all about how teachers need to be visible in their practice.  Both of these have left Kirstin, Wendy and Di with a number of wonderings and exciting ideas.  Watch this space!

What's coming up?

• Future Ready - Microsoft Event
• Whanau Interviews begin
• Arohanui Special School site visit
• Operations Meeting with Spotless
• Minecraft training
• Te Reo @ AUT - Exam #1

Making Connections with our iwi and HPPS

Lots to highlight in this post:

Iwi Consultation:

We have been so fortunate to have such high quality support and engagement from the local iwi Ngati Whatua O Kaipara.  It began with the gifting of our school name, alignment with our school vision and continues with support in aligning the cultural narrative to our school approach including our logo, branding and learning hub names.  Tracy Davis and Te Rongopai Morehu have been hugely instrumental and generous with their time and knowledge.  Tracy also connected us with Graeme Tipene who is a talented designer who worked with us to develop our logo, which will also begcome the framework for our learning model.  Te Rongopai and her colleague Dawn Piper have also gifted us PL time this term working with our SLT to ensure we are honouring the history of the local area, including appropriate tikanga in our process development and in selecting our whakatauki for our kainga (learning hubs).  They have also gifted us the names and stories of four animal with significance to the iwi to use symbolically for our kainga.  We'd also like to thank both Dawn and Te Rongopai for translating our mihi and planning ahead with us for Term 4 PL (we have applied for MOE PLD Funding to heighten our Te Reo and Tikanga knowledge- fingers crossed).

See all of our work in our Cultural Narrative document.

Growing our Team
I have been working with Alan Curtis to develop our process for recruiting our Office Administrator who will start in Term 3.  We have had a lot of interest and applications and interview our shorlist of candidates on Friday.

First Time Principal Support

My FTP support continues as well with meeting with Brian Gower who has provided me with essential advice and support with connecting at the MOE level.  Highlights from our March Hui included Appraisal with Dr Wendy Moore, Julien Le Sueur- Getting to Know Your Ministry, Carmel Riordon- Financial Mgmt and Patrick Ikiua from the NZSTA on Governance tips.

Here are my notes from the useful FTP Huis as well.


Immersion in our Current Context
Opportunities abound here at HPPS to learn from and with the team.  Kirstin and I joined in on a TOD session led by Daniel and Lisa that both inducted, grounded and guided their team into their approach to conceptual curriculum design.  So much goodness to borrow from their approach.  We also had an in depth tour of HPPS with Lisa who provided highlights of their leadership and learning journey as they have grown from 50 to 500 since opening.  She talked about how they are working to infuse more play based learning approaches to enhance their learner centred, dispositional approach to T&L.  There was also talk aout how they are focusing on HOW devices are being used in the school to maximise the impact of device use, while increasing exposure to and use of other media for learning.  We were also gifted some time with Kristyn, one of the DPS, who delved deeply with us into their coaching approach- including some very useful advice and some questions we can use to frame our MATEs (Mutually Agreed Team Expectations) which we will develop for the SLT in Term 2.  Kristyn is an absolute think tank and we will be hounding her for more insights along the way!