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 9 @MatuaNgaru Spotlight

Tēnā kotou katoa!

Week 9 has been another busy week full of new learning, networking and getting stuff done. We are all so excited that our Learning Coaches are soon to be on board with us full time!


Communicative....


The Monday morning Admin meeting was a little different this week. Amanda, Michael, Diana, Kirstin and Wendy all completed activities reflecting on our journey so far. We shared what we love about our job, we then filled each others compliment buckets with lots of warm, genuine fuzzies, we ended the reflection exercise by being courageous and sharing our frustrations and pressure points, a great Team Building exercise!

Bright and early on Wednesday morning, Diana, Kirstin and Wendy headed off to AUT Northern Campus to attend our Te Reo course. We were experiencing mixed feelings as this was our first session after our mid semester break and we needed to perform our second oral assessment (Mahi Korero 2) in front of our classmates. We had been practicing consistently, even in Melbourne! The good news is we all passed and we received the results back from the Mid-Semester Test (Mātaitanga), again we all passed, Kirstin with full marks! Ka pai Kirstin!

Whanau (family) enrollment interviews have continued this week with Diana and Wendy, it is a real privilege getting to know our prospective learners and their families and we now have another 7 families pre-enrolled.

On Friday afternoon Diana met with Michael Hand from Torque-IP to discuss, plan and update our digital infrastructure.





Creative....

Friday morning saw Kirstin and Wendy heading off to Learning Network in West Auckland to attend a Makerspace Workshop led by Mark Osbourne. We found out about a little of the history of the Makerspace movement and how in our time of shrink wrapped technology people don't know how to fix things, the Makerspace philosophy is about building and making things not always about the technology. This is the link to Mark's presentation http://bit.ly/2RKHdak

We got to spend most of the session using and exploring the materials in Mark's Makerspace suitcase such as littlebits, polymorph plastic, conductive tape and thresd, Edison and Mbot robots, makey makeys, scratch cards, a bridge making challenge with string and popsicle sticks, and Wendy's favourite the 3D printer!

Wendy was fascinated by watching the 3D printer create a business card sized bicycle with panniers in a flat pack style. The components are then popped from the card and a miniature 3D bike is constructed, very cool!


For Friday afternoon Diana, Kirstin, Amanda, Michael and Wendy got creative with the itinerary for our first full team meet and greet. We started off the afternoon with a presentation from Otako Kaufusi who works at Microsoft.

Otako showed us the wonders of the Surface Pro and Surface Go and some of the practical applications of the interactive pen, the inking tool and touch screen features. This was to help the team decide on their TELA device so we can have it all ready for them at the beginning of Term 4. After some refreshments we moved onto a presentation from Diana about building the Dream Team. Diana also set us a challenge of  matching a Te Reo word or phrase to someone in the team based on their Bio or what we had learned that afternoon, we weren't allowed to go home until the challenge was solved!

A game of Human Bingo followed which gave us the chance to mix and mingle and find out a little more about each other. It was a great networking, connecting and relationship building afternoon!




Collaborative...


Kirstin and Michael on Monday were continuing to work on the Digi-badging induction programme for our Learning Coaches in Term 4. We are very excited about this innovative way to induct our new staff.
Thursday saw Diana, Kirstin and Wendy travelling across Auckland out to Flat Bush to take part in the New School's PLD at Ormiston Junior College. The day was hosted by the Te Uho o Te Nikau team of Mel, Bev and Leanne, who all did a great job of keeping us fed and on track.
The DPs of the four new schools had as their guest speaker Viv Mallabar who is the foundation DP at Ormiston Junior College. Viv generously shared her knowledge and experiences from OJC's establishment and foundation years. Viv emphasised the importance of turning values and vision to principles and practices and using this as a foundation of turning "I believe" into "We believe", developing a common language and group norms is the key to successful collaboration. Viv also talked about some of the challenges that can occur such as rapid roll growth, staff turnover and the rapid induction of new staff. A very thought provoking session.

The Principals of the four new schools had Luke Sumich, the foundation principal of OJC as their guest speaker, Luke was very informative and strategic as he took the principals through his start up journey at OJC. Luke was also the foundation principal for another new school so had a wealth of knowledge and expertise to impart.
This was the last scheduled PLG for the four new schools and we have all found the learning, sharing and networking from these PLG's invaluable as we all work towards our common goal of opening our schools in February 2019.

Curious

As part of the New Schools meet up and PLG, Diana, Kirstin and Wendy met up with the others Wednesday evening for a meal at Daikoku Restaurant in Botany Downs Shopping Centre. 

This was an informal occasion where we were all curious to hear about each others' journeys since the last time we had met. We were also curious to see what the Daikoku dining experience was about and we certainly weren't disappointed with a display of BBQ tool tossing, flaming hot plates and sparking onion ring volcanoes! 

A fantastic evening with fabulous company.

What's coming up?

• Whanau (family) Enrollment Interviews
• EBoT Meeting
• Parent Q & A session at Kereru Kindy
• MNS site visit

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