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 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 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

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

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