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 1 Spotlight @MatuaNgaru

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.

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!

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.

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!

What's Coming Up in Week 2.... Whanau interviews Tour of Hobsonville Point Primary School for our LCs EBoT meeting on Wednesday Tikanga Maori Professional Learning with Te Rongopai Morehu and Dawn Piper Workshops with: Jenny Barker - Restorative Practice through a PB4L lens Luke Sumich - HBDI, getting to know ourselves and our team Andrew Cowie - Digital Literacies, a future focus Sue Smith - Culturally Responsive Practices with an inquiry mindset A Maker Focused chat with Mark Osbourne Work on our 2019 Strategic Plan and so much more!  See you next week.

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 7 - @MatuaNgaru Spotlight

Tena kotou katua! Greetings everyone!

Week 7 was a wonderful week.  The @MatuaNgaru team have been engaging in a lot of ideating around curriculum design and induction for our growing team in Term 4.  Here are the highlights.

Communicative....Whakaaro
On Monday, Amanda, Di, Wendy, Kirstin and Michael participated in administration professional learning with Linc-Ed to develop our understanding of the potential and usability of our Learning Management System.  We are enthusiastic about how this tool will amplify our home-school partnership, demystify the ongoing assessment as learning processes in our school and foster collaboration in learning between our tamariki (children) and kaiako (educators).  There is also Linc-Ed app which will enable ubiquitous access to each child's learning pathway.  We are planning for all learners in our community to use Linc-Ed to house their ubiquitous learning portfolio which will serve as a launchpad for making the learning visible to parents, educators and of course our learners.

Creative....Auaha
Wendy and Kirstin continue to meet with providers of teaching and learning resources to heighten our collective knowledge of what is available, what is most relevant for our learning approach as educators and most importantly, what our kids will connect with most to enable ubiquitous learning pathways.  We are employing a 'less is more' philosophy to procurement to ensure we are collating and purchasing the most appropriate learning resources for our foundation year and stretching our finances to get the best we can offer.  We challenge ourselves with 'habit versus requirement' to ensure we procure what we actually need and provide our learners with the most useful, intuitive, innovative and engaging resources.

Collaborative... Mahi tahi  AND Curious... Māhirahira
Our SLT is very grateful to our Board of Trustees for providing us with the opportunity to visit some remarkable schools in Melbourne, Australia.  Heike and Michael were able to join Kirstin, Wendy and Di on visits to some of the most wonderful, warm and hospitable schools.  Click on the school names to see a slideshow of our visits.

• Mont Albert

Jason Walker and his team were so welcoming and warm.  They took us on a personalised tour to show and explain their pedagogical approaches and the learning journey they are on as a leadership team.  We were blown away by their heritage building and clever use of spaces.  Our key takeaways were: deliberate use of Maths Mindsets for problem solving in mixed ability groups including con-constructed shared language across the school, a thriving Book Club that is based on learner selected books, their Challenge Based Learning inquiry model, exceptional use of graphic organisers by and with learners and their 'tracking my thinking' notebooks that are used for reflection/just in time learning for the kids and for assessment as learning plus feedback mechanism by the educators.  They provided us with the most wonderful lunch and we really appreciated their hospitality and open to learning conversations.  Learn more on their website.

• Camberwell High School

Jill Laughlin is an amazing educational leader (and business manager!).  Her school is a large one that has undergone some extraordinary developments over the last decade.  Their CHS Learning Model which is largely influenced by the Hermann's Brain Dominance Indicator and facilitation with Dr Julia Atkin is outstanding and at the core of their learning work providing their 'why' for deliberate learning space design as they remodel and build new learning environments.  The school reports to parents on the dispositions as well as the curriculum areas.  The school has revamped their approach to teaching and learning and created curriculum team to deprivatize practice and promote collaborative pedagogical approaches.  Learning driven projects like the 'Connexhibition' and 'Melbourne Empathy Project' have developed a strong sense of  ownership and external perspectives. The CHS Learning Model has evolved into their graduate profile and involved parents, learners and the educators.   Other highlights included their amazing design technology and arts curriculum, co-construction of writing progressions with the primary school and the creation of 'home' spaces for each year level to call their own.  Learn more on their website.

• Preshil School

Marilin Smith leads the wholistic learning approach at Preshil School.  She generously invited us for a cup of coffee and delicious biscuit in the welcoming front room of the original building where if we closed our eyes we could envisage this first cohort of 5 learners with 'Mug' - the founder of Preshil - Margaret Lyttle.  A place that exhibits all of the amazing components of the Reggio Emelia philosophy and where the environment is clearly the third teacher here!  The school is situated on a historical site designed by Kevin Bourland, working with kids in rambling gardens that were once the home of Margaret Lyttle and where she first began the school. All rooms ‘deliberately promote experimentation and imagination, deliberately provoking the five senses. The Preshil teachers engage in shared imaginary role play, and explicit teaching, to deepen the children’s learning around concepts, both social/emotional and scientific. Our key takeaways include their flexible, learner centric approach grounded in strong relationships, daily provision of uninterrupted play (including child built structures, sand/water play, animal care and loose parts), infusion of music (both the teaching of and playing of during learning time), democratizing the learning space, the embracing of technologies discriminately (is it collaborative? is it creative?) and of course the invitational environment. We wanted to stay and play all day! Preshil is a private school that offers a place where playing, making believe, acting, experimenting, tinkering, improvising, provide the pathways to new connections, generative mistakes, unintentioned outcomes and life changing inventions. Our visit was too short. Learn more on their website.

• Brunswick East

Dr Janet Di Pilla is an extraordinary woman, thought leader and advocate for children.  We were so inspired by her vision for learning at Brunswick East Primary School.  With an exceptionally diverse learning community the approach to teaching and learning is differentiated with the child at the core.  While their New Entrants are in a separate learning space, the Year 1-3s and Year 4-6s worked in vertical groups of 60 learners with 3 educators who work collaboratively to ensure that the focus is on the learning process, not the product.  The outdoor learning environment provides  the backyard opportunities to play and explore that many of the 'city kids' are not exposed to at home and she employs a 'garden teacher' who works with all the kids once a week.  This is deliberate and infused into everyday play and learning.  She works hard to provide 'cuiosita time' where the teams design learning together for over 3 hours per week, clearly valuing this.  The learning environments were varied, from a converted staff room in the original building to a sleek new buildings of flexible learning spaces. The backwards by design approach to teaching and learning empowers their vision and the deliberate 'deconstruction' of the library into 'mini libraries' in every hub has lead to more reading. They have a notion that any place can be a learning space and Dr Janet demands that all educators know all the learners in their hub. A focus on growing literate, numerate and curious learners involves a curriculum that teaches philosophy, ethics and empathy so they learn to think deeply and quite abstractly. The learning is personalised as the learners are given a fertile question and then encouraged to explore in their own direction, taking time to define what words mean. The learning was visible, dripping off the walls in inviting spaces that were clearly being used by learners and educators alike. Learn more about this world class school here.

• Silverton

As a school amidst a large scale renovation we were grateful that the team at Silverton could host us. Big thanks to Samantha and Karen.  We were provided with a pre-brief of their approach to collaborative practice in their large flexible learning spaces and the school wide pedagogy.  The naming of the learning spaces in each hub are learner created each year, as are the norms.  These were visible everywhere and clearly owned by the learners.  A full range of teaching styles were observed from deliberate acts of teaching with both smaller and larger groups, 1:1 coaching/conferencing, learner lead workshops, parallel teaching and highly engaged self directed learning at all year levels.  Their school culture was visible and was interactively displayed on the walls, as was their learning model for Discovery Time.  Their 'Reality Groups' are a recent addition to enhance the Discovery Time and often involve members from the community.  Their goal for these are that they be authentic, involve student choice, student led, involve additional Specialist teachers, volunteers and parents helpers (depending on the activity) and are aimed to develop skills based on student interests.  A range of staff were engaged in the teaching of ability groups for reading and maths and weekly maths investigations were a clear strength demonstrating their rich task, no worksheet philosophy. A high staff turnover has required a close reimagining of their induction and coaching processes and their response is the Silverton Passport which guides those new to the school in the 'why' of their pedagogy.   Learn more about this thriving school here.

• Woodleigh

Woodleigh Munimbah was an inspirational delight.  The campus is magnificent and the learning spaces were intelligently designed, well used spaces with amazing indoor/outdoor flow. The learning was displayed in a manner that managed to reflect the learning clearly, be interactive and contribute to the design of the spaces without blocking the natural light.  Another school where we observed the environment acting as the is 3rd educator with 'deinstitutionalized' spaces. A school for adventurous minds where learning is a shared experience. Goal setting uses SMART protocols and everyday has deliberate play and opportunities for just in time learning.  They believe that when a child asks a question they don't give the answer, just a question back. The school values outdoor learning with all children spending one day a week, rain or shine, at the local creek - they use 'puddle suits' when needed and also participate in the Stephanie Alexander kitchen garden program. They are a 'Mindful School'→ which involves community, curriculum, environment and practices and they teach the habits of mind. The teachers educated in outdoor learning ( how to teach outdoors) and they do a lot of shared professional development to talk about what they're doing -allowing teachers to explore and bring back. They do classroom and peer observations, work as teams, and keep each other accountable. The educators use pre-mapped WALTs but personalised and bring in multiple areas of the Victorian curriculum. They use the Round Square program and resilience projects and encourage 'narrative' projects to tap into educator strengths. Each new learner contributes a stick to their nest paying homage to the indigenous culture. Learn more about this school on their website.

• St John's Footscray

A highlight for us was the visit to St John's Footscray with their wonderful principal Gemma Goodyear.  So much of their approach resonated with our design for learning and approach to facilitating the NZC.  Gemma was honest, articulate and very generous with her sharing of time, ideas and resources.  So what did we love about this school? A learner driven inquiry with 4 options for entry: make / act/ do/ know, the relaunching of students wonderings from day before → “remember yesterday you said….”, the use of provocation for younger years and spark for older year groups, the different inquiry design models used and deliberately taught (scientific inquiry, arts & design process & problem solving process & field study &  research question), the community garden, the way they 'group by age & teach by stage', the absolute visible learning and learning progressions on the walls, the focused use of a guardian group “Promoting safety, well-being and inclusion of all children.”, the third teacher environment to enable children for self directed learning, projects that enter through the story to create authenticity, their curriculum mapping tool, valuing teachers as designers and empowering the educators to 'set their own agenda', visible thinking routines, the relentless focus on stretching learning, a backwards by design approach that uses learning progressions proactively and retrospectively and using the children's own language to challenge the narrative. What is not to love? There are certainly lucky teachers and kids at this school! Read more about this innovative school here. 

Di also took the team on an Escape Room challenge where we had to solve a series of clues to 'break out' of the rooms.  This was a fantastic opportunity to practice working collaboratively towards a common goal.  The room had a 1 in 5 success rate and we escaped after 27 minutes.  Our #DreamTeam definitely had to put our 4 C learning values into action! 
We also enjoyed a quick visit to the Queen Victoria Markets, Botanical Gardens and St Kilda Beach before we flew home.  While we had time travelling across Melbourne in the car to debrief about our school visits we had invaluable opportunities to discuss, ideate and re-imagine our key takeaways from these wonderful schools.  We are so enthusiastic to put the many moving pieces together in our #waveofchange jigsaw of #ubiquitouslearning!

What's coming up:

• A visit to Parnell District School to learn and observe the affordances of Office 365 with a particular focus on Teams, OneNote and collaborative learning
• A uniforms meeting - we get to see our unique colour on our polo shirt fabric with Mandy from Argyle
• We're growing - pre-enroling 8 more learners, bringing our official pre-enrolled number to 16!
• Financial manual creation with Leading Edge
• APPA Beginning Teacher's Expo
• Meeting with Norton's Signs to finalise our internal and external branding
• Collaboration with our Before and After School Care provider
• Wendy meets with Travelwise 
• Wendy and Heike engage in the second part of the professional learning series 'Reggio Conversation' coordinated by REANZ