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 3 @MatuaNgaru Spotlight

Tena koutou katoa
We are now a third of the way through the term and feel settled into Room 6, at Huapai District School. John and the team at Huapai have made us all feel welcome and it is great being in the same community as our school, Matua Ngaru.

Communicative
Diana, Kirstin and Wendy have been meeting with After Hours School Care providers this week. Having a quality before and after school care programme was something our prospective families clearly communicated they wanted at our Community Consultation night. We have chosen to meet with 3 providers who provide the same services at other local schools. We will make a decision in the next week or two.

On Wednesday this week Diana, Kirstin and Wendy all took part in their first Te Reo oral assessment at AUT (Mahi-Korero 1). The good news is, of course, we all passed with flying colours! Our weekly attendance at the Te Reo course is part of our commitment to interweaving Te Reo and Tikanga through everything we do at Matua Ngaru in acknowledgement and celebration of New Zealand's bi-cultural partnership and heritage.

Wednesday afternoon saw Diana and Wendy meeting with Mandy from Argyle , our uniform providers, to finalise uniform design and colour. Mandy will return to us in the next few weeks with a final colour and design.

Some of you will be aware that Amanda, our office administrator extraordinaire, has been contacting families who have filled in the pre-enrolment form to arrange a family enrolment meeting time and to inform them of the next steps in the process for formal enrolment. We have been working hard on developing  the family interview questionnaire and creating a transition to school programme. We want to learn as much as we can about our tamariki, their passions, interests, needs and strengths before we teach them. It is all about building relationships and knowing our learners, the family interviews are an important  first step!

Collaborative
On Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons Kirstin returned to Oteha Valley School to participate in two staff meetings to update her First Aid Certificate. Wendy updated hers at the beginning of Term 2. Amanda also recently completed her full first aid certificate, we are feeling well covered and supported should a medical event occur!

As a result of our collaborative meetings with our community around our school uniform a preferred colour poll was put on Facebook and the results are in! Steel Blue was the clear winner and as mentioned previously we have met with Mandy from Argyle and are ready to move into the next stage of developing the Matua Ngaru School uniform.

Curious
On a wet and wild Wednesday evening Heike and Wendy attended a REANZ (Reggio Emilia Aotearoa New Zealand) Conversation evening. They were both very curious to find out more about the Reggio Emilia philosophy. The evening was about considering the agentic force of things and the material environment on learning . We discussed the term Intra active, which refers to the generative and interdependent relationship between living organisms and the material environment such as everyday objects, spaces and places. The discussion was underpinned by the book written by Hillevi Lenz Taguchi, called Going beyond theory/practice divide in early childhood. Introducing an intra-active pedagogy. The big take away of the evening was it's promotion of having a flexible and open mindset, while being in the moment and thinking ahead to what might emerge, whilst in the moment. Letting the child lead rather than the educator. Heike and Wendy attend a follow evening early in September which will focus on how things and the material environment may be affecting the learner's actions and meaning making

Our last scheduled meeting for the week was to meet with Michael and Heike to update them on what has been happening, to continue to ideate around curriculum and daily design and connect with them about how their term is going in their respective educator roles.

Creative
Kirstin has been working hard to transpose our school song from audio to written notation so we can create an instrumental track to accompany our singing. Diana, Amanda and Wendy have been doing their best to learn the words and practise the melody. This song has been gifted to us from a member of our eBoT and the local iwi, Te Rongopai Morehu.

Term 3, Week 2 @MatuaNgaru Spotlight

#UbiquitousLearning

We can't believe how fast the year is going!  It has been another jam packed week of making, doing and ubiquitous learning for the team.



On Tuesday, the wonderful Mandy Bishop from Argyle joined us for 2 afternoon uniform discussions with our community.  It was great to meet some our of our tamariki and their mums (plus one dad!).  Here are the highlights Kirstin has already shared on our Facebook page:

The key points raised by families included:

• A preference for a bright colour, but one that is still dark enough to hide marks and stains
• A colour that differs from those of our neighbouring schools
• A future option of a jacket that could be worn either as well as, or instead of a polar fleece
• The preferred fabric choice was cotton backed polyester

To begin with we will be offering a polo shirt, a fleece and a sunhat. Bottoms, shoes, etc are your choice. We also shared that staff will encourage the children to wear their uniforms with pride, however, they will not be enforcing uniform.  We are looking at adding a PE uniform at some point, however, we'd like the learners to design this, so are not including one at this stage.  From our discussions on Tuesday, we have narrowed the colour choices down to two possibilities. A poll has been posted on Facebook for you to select your preferred colour option out of 'Steel Blue' and 'Turquoise Blue' and with 89 votes- steel blue has the lead! 

Amanda, Wendy and Di also spent some time with LincEd in a Google Hangout learning more about how to capitalise on the affordances of using the our online enrolment form.  This was valuable and timely learning for us as we begin to make contact with our whanau next week to schedule family interviews.


Wendy has been refining our Enrolment processes this week- updating our Enrolment Information booklet and ensuring all of our processes are connected and clear for our whanau.  Kirstin, Wendy and Di also attended their third three hour Te Reo lesson at AUT on Wednesday morning.  We are learning a lot about how to introduce ourselves, our families and ask about others.  The opportunities to practice having conversations with our classmates has been useful and we are having our first 'mahi korero' next next.  I'm glad our kaiako has the motto "Na mai te hapai" ~ we welcome mistakes! We were also delighted to dine with the wonderful teams from Ararira Springs who were visiting schools in Auckland, along with our mates from Te Uho O Te Nikau on Wednesday evening.  Claire Howison, Mel Bland and Di had time to have an informative first time principals chat where they shared our progress to date.  


Our team spent some time this week designing our induction for whanau.  We are also in the process of collating our learning around the research and hype about Innovative Learning Environments...Modern Learning Environments... Flexible Learning Spaces... into some Fact Sheets that will help connect our interpretation to the research and hopefully provide some clarity around our vision for what teaching and learning will look like @MatuaNgaru.  
Watch this space....


Amanda and Di were graced with some time with the amazing Kerry from Leading Edge who is facilitating our learning as we set up and refine our processes around finance.  Both are thrilled to be learning with such an expert!  Di had the privilege of spending Thursday at a Professional Learning workshop by Evaluation Associates about Appraisal.  Dr Wendy Moore took the room of curious educative leaders on a learning roller coaster!  It was absolutely fantastic to have time to ideate with other principals and consolidate some embryonic ideas around our appraisal process.  Appraisal is about learning and achievement of learners and teachers and requires: open to learning conversations, evaluative capacity, responsibility and performance management with the ultimate focus on 'what we are trying to do as a school'.  Our areas of priority for designing our appraisal processes are: coherence, alignment with both the strategic direction of the School and key documentation (eg.NEGs/NAGs, NZC, Ka Hikitia, PEP and BES), keeping the Code & Standards from the Education Council and Tataiako at the heart, ensuring it is evidence based, grows capacity and is robust. An appraisal conversation, in our view, is about an educator sharing their story about their growth. Di is very interested in exploring teacher led appraisal and including educator 'passion projects' so the focus is on the teacher (read Learning Coach!) as a learner and not on compliance.

Perhaps this week we were most curious about our prospective Learning Coaches as we visited our applicants in their schools.  We are so grateful to their gracious principals for enabling us to do so and we really enjoyed seeing their schools.  Our candidates all presented to us on "As part of a collaborative team, how might you include our 4 Cs- curious, collaborative, creative and communicative, in learning design?" and we were blown away by the quality and creativity that unfolded before our eyes.  This made our choice very difficult as all were excellent candidates.  Designing the #dreamteam is our ultimate goal and we look forward to announcing soon.

#WaveofChange - Coming Up...

• An Evening of Reggio
• Uniform decisions with Mandy
• Announcing our newest additions to the #dreamteam
• More Te Reo on Wednesday
• Arranging a visit for our team @Arohanui Special School - our @MatuaNgaru flatmates!