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 4 @MatuaNgaru Spotlight

Tena kotou katoa!

Week four has come and gone and it was certainly a fantastic week of learning and designing.  Here are some of our highlights.

Monday and Tuesday this week saw Kirstin meeting with the Deputy Principals of both Kaipara College and Massey High School to familiarise herself with both schools and what they have to offer; to explore opportunities for reciprocal partnerships and to  discuss the process involved in transitioning our future Year 8 learners on to secondary school.

On Tuesday morning, Diana and Amanda attended training with Leading Edge, a company who provides financial services including support and professional development - this week the focus was on Xero.

During the week, the team also met with more before & after school care providers and we will be making a decision soon as to which provider we will be using at Matua Ngaru School. We also spent some time finalising the Staff Handbook (soon to have a fantastic and creative name!?) which we have been working on. This A-Z of Matua Ngaru document will support our learning coaches as part of their induction programme in Term 4.  It will also be an ongoing reference source in the future and will change and evolve over time as required.

A big focus for Wendy this week has been the development of our school 'library' (what will we call this magical space?) including: systems we will use, resources, learning opportunities the library will provide, etc.  On Monday she met with Esther Casey, the librarian at Sylvia Park School to look at the innovative ways in which their school library was meeting the needs of learners. Esther was deliberate at providing us with provocations around the nature of 'libraries' and challenged us to not call it 'Whare Pukapuka' as a future focused 'library' should be so much more than a book repository!  Then, on Friday, she met with Sandi from the National Library of New Zealand. Sandi was able to share lots of ideas and suggestions for developing our library, as well as making us aware of professional development opportunities and networks available to us.

Wendy was also lucky enough to have the opportunity to attend the matinee performance of Huapai District School's production of Aladdin. She was absolutely blown away by the talented performances of the young cast.

We have also be beavering away at creating some "fact sheets" around some of the terminology that is often associated with MLEs, ILEs, FLSs... whatever you want to call them.  Our topics include:  Collaborative Practice, Innovative Practice, Collaborative Learning, Play Based Learning and Inclusive Learning.  We look forward to sharing these in the near future.

This week our team read Core Education's 2018 10 Trends document selected by Kirstin and "Making Connections" (Dahlberg, 2004) a reading Wendy and Heike were given after their REANZ evening for our mostly weekly PLG (Professional Learning Group). Both readings gave us a lot to discuss and think about as we continue to explore and design the Matua Ngaru curriculum particularly around what is influencing future focused education in the 5 categories:   Technology- the cloud and blockchain, Structural- Kahui Ako and Virtual Learning, Process- collaboration and data science, Economic- automation and STEM and Cultural- AI and learner agency.  We are challenged in our thinking around designing a relational space that prioritises the making of connections through the senses and process of making/creating.  How do we avoid the constraints of the dreaded timetable?!
On Wednesday, Diana drove through the wind and rain to Taupo to attend the APPA Conference.  It was a wonderful opportunity to connect with other educational leaders and to be inspired.  A time to fill the learning tank!  Martin Sneddon, who's a bit of a Kiwi legend, enthralled us with his tale of leading the design of the 2011 Rugby World Cup here in New Zealand.  The ingredients for success include: a compelling story, developing strong relationships (he'll take EQ or IQ anyday!) and coherent decision making. 

Debbie Mayo-Smith provided us with a plethora of tips for learning to exploit technology to save us valuable time (presentation here). 

Roger Moses shared his learning from leading with us and reminded us to focus on the urgent,  get the right people on the bus and THEN decide where to go, that there is no harm in hoping for the best as long as you are prepared for the worst, be a servant leader, be available, open the door of opportunity and equip your team to be able to walk through them, don't accept every new idea as truth, practice the power of praise and identify your young guns and give them the ammunition they need to succeed.  What a man! 

The highlight of the conference for me was the few hours we were able to spend with Joan Baker who challenged us to focus on what she calls 'killer questions'.  Some examples include: How do we enable (not disable) change in our schools?  How are we making things better for our people/organisation?  How can I expand my impact?  How does our work have meaning for us? What values did I use to make decisions today?  What's currently harder than it should be? What must we preserve? Give up?  Are we proving or improving?  What am I learning?unlearning? and my personal favourite "why would anyone want to be led by me/us?" If people are afraid of blame not failure, what can I do to make our place safe to take risks?  There is certainly a lot to think on and put into place.

Amanda spent Thursday at a conference for Office Administrators. She was able to attend a variety of different workshops relating to different aspects of the administrator role and hone in on the different skills and understandings needed in each area. She said it was a fantastic day and has come back full of ideas and new learning that she can't wait to put into practice.

As Matua Ngaru will not have a swimming pool, Kirstin has been making contact with different swimming lesson providers in order to explore options for our aquatics programme. We will be able to provide more details later on once we have looked at what is on offer and determined which will best meet the needs of our learners and community.

Looking Ahead to What is Coming Up:

• Michael Davidson is joining us on Mondays for the rest of the term
• Meetings with reps from different educational resource providers
• Te Reo Session 6
• eBoT Meeting
• Decision around after school care providers
• Continuing work on curriculum development