Kāhui Ako ki Motueka

 

  On Thursday 28 October, Sarah Trolle (Māpua School kaiako) and Hilary Sinclair (HOD Music and WST at MHS) ran Kāhui Ako (Community of Learning) Art and Music workshops at Māpua School. Teachers from all of our Kāhui Ako kura were invited to attend the voluntary workshops.  We are so lucky to have such talent and expertise to share within our Kāhui Ako. Sarah delivered an art lesson that has recently been requested by the Ministry of Education to be added to their Art Curriculum resource website page!  Here is what Jane, teacher/kaiako from Mahana School had to say after the Art workshop: "Kia Ora Sarah, Ngā mihi nui ki a koe mo tā mahi i tenei ra. Big ups to you for your work today. You are a generous wahine and inspirational too. Thanks, heaps" Anna Brewer had this to say about Hillary’s music workshop. “Hillary shared with us a Ted Talk that explained the importance of the connection between the brain, music and academic success. She also shared with us some awesome p...

  Ngā mihi ki a koutou. Here at Parklands we are continuing to use the Observation Tool to identify areas for growth. These observations will also link into teachers Growth Cycle. We have also instigated co-constructive meetings in our syndicates, where we have had some great reflective thinking that is then used by individual teachers to inform their teaching to the North East therefore creating equity for all our students.

 It's a long video, but well worth it. Get inspired again and remind yourself what the mahi is all about.

 We've had some comms with Sharyn from Motueka RDA recently, all around what they can offer the tamariki in our Kāhui Ako. If you want to have a further look into what they do, here are a few recommendations: https://www.facebook.com/MotuekaRDA/ https://www.rda.org.nz/about-us/rda-groups/motueka email Sharyn -  info@motuekarda.nz Trusting your first few days back have been wonderful. Ngā mihi nui.

  At MSS this term we are narrowing our school focus towards a need that we identified from Impact Coaching. We noticed that our lessons recorded for IC were not as strong in the area of feedforward as in other areas. This was further supported by the responses from the student voice section - we noticed that students struggled to voice their next learning steps. From here a collective goal was reached with the help of Louise from Cognition: We will be taking the following steps to help work towards achieving our goal: PD and resources available around FF and FB (we feel these are key strategies in supporting students to recognise and voice their next learning steps). Collecting student voice from teacher’s lessons (from 3 selected focus students). Sharing the voices with the staff to discuss in teams. Unpack our findings and how these link to AREA. Looking at the WHY of the voice results and the HOW we can help our students. Collaborating strategies to aid our students achieve thi...

 Kura across our Kāhui Ako are preparing to undertake mahi around the kaupapa of co-construction meetings. The purpose of these hui is to: Maintain a collective focus on student learning and achievement where data is used to reflect on the effectiveness of teaching, to discuss individuals’ rates of progress, and to benchmark and make decisions about the next learning steps. Our 14 schools are now working towards setting up protocols and procedures for these meetings, starting in Week 4. More information and support can be found in this document here Your AST team is willing, able and keen to support your learning in this area. Please do get in touch if this is required in your context.

 This term has seen our Kāhui Ako continuing to work towards sustainability as North East Schools. A big part of this mahi was working towards Staff Only Day on the 4th of June.  The day itself involved sharing, collaboration and being challenged. Anton Blank offered insights into racism and challenged us to consider our biases and work towards mindfulness of these. A short video of him speaking further on this is below: Anton speaks on Backbenches Our next big bit of mahi are PLGs going forward, we continue to seek feedback and thoughts about how to make this a best fit for all teachers.

Power sharing opportunities are provided for learners to learn with and from each other across learning areas. Students particularly enjoy Enviro Time, where learning tasks enable students to bring their own understandings, viewpoints, and questions. Learning is reciprocal: knowledge is co-created. 

 At Upper Moutere School, part of creating a family-like context involves providing a range of leadership opportunities across the school. This includes, tuakana-teina time, student-led fitness, senior leadership programme, house leader activities, and many leadership opportunities within all classrooms. This is a valued part of the culture of the school and students actively seek out opportunities to lead. 

  Excellent turn out and mahi today at the Christine Braid Structured Literacy workshop. Thanks to all attendees, TBCS for hosting and Christine for her time and wisdom.

We are looking at creating and supporting a cohesive transition/pathway between our junior and senior syndicates. This is continuing to be developed by using whole school curriculum planning with an overarching concept, for example, the whole school is following an odd and even year long term overview of our mathematics DMIC programme and are involved in developing a school wide spelling programme. We are using a key word or phrase each term that the whole school follows, eg: Term 2 this year is the word 'Stories'. This will encompass Book Week, Myths and Legends, personal stories, community stories, whanau stories and a possible Marae visit for the students. Another example of our continued work for cohesion within the whole of Riwaka School is our WAKA values, which are now embedded within all we do. This sits within our PB4L behaviour plan. As a school staff, we are looking at the shared responsibility for the learning, emotional and social growth of all our students within ...

 There are days when even a rainstorm can't detract from the specialness of a place.  Recently, a group staff from schools within the Motueka Kahui Ako experienced a wonderful trip to the Riwaka Resurgence and had the privilege to be guided by Barney Thomas , Pou Tairangahau/DOC employee  and Whaea Tania.  This trip was to learn some of the stories and to kōrero about the importance of Resurgence to iwi and how it has be used both in the past and how it should be used now and in the future.  Barney and Tania both provided context and guidance about the pou that greet visitors as well as talking us through both the tikanga and the kaupapa of Resurgence.  The rain had just made it all the more special.

At Brooklyn school, our focus for 2021 is "Tūhura - Discover". Alongside our students, staff have started a journey to 'discover' our Brooklyn roots, what makes us who we are here at Brooklyn School.  We are proud to be learning alongside our tamariki as we explore our Brooklyn whakapapa, beginning this year with our Maunga.  We have been able to weave this idea through our 2021 topics, starting with visual art, local stories, kaupapa ki Motueka and NZ native plants and animals, with the support of local groups, e.g. Friends of Flora, Tasman Bay Guardians and Abel Tasman Birdsong Trust.  We are excited to see where this journey of discovery takes us! We would like to thank our AST's, Struan McKenzie and Vicki McKerrow, who made time to come to our recent staff hui to present the 2021 kaupapa of our Kāhui Ako to our staff.  As we continue on our journey through the RbL Profile, we are excited to be able to weave the next steps in 'Relationships Fir...

  At Parklands we are linking our new appraisal system to Impact Coaching conversations.  Therefore we can identify any areas that staff can reflect on and use for goals in Teaching as Inquiry.  We've got an expectation that as of Term 2, staff will be using Impact Coaches once a term. The Impact coaches will then follow up and support teachers to reach their goals. As a whole staff, we are focusing on embedding the student interview questions  from the RBL profile Part 2 into our practise as clarification around learning - students will be able to identify their learning and goals and be able to confidently reply to these questions. 

 Māpua School was the host for our WST meeting on the the of March. The agenda for the day was as follows: Signpost for the coming weeks - calendar and BLOG posts After school sessions - what are our needs? Co-construction meetings - post its + discussion + protocols We discussed what was coming up from our Calendar for Sustainability. This included some discussion around next steps for PLG groups and TOD. The after school sessions raised some interesting ideas around Impact Coaching, the parts of the RbL profile that still need a boost; and how we need to grow capacity and capability in co-construction meetings. We watched 10 minutes of a recent Motueka KA co-construction meeting. This led to discussions and wonderings around where to next. All of this information helps the AST team to plan for the coming weeks.

 The ASTs have been pondering recently about how the RbL profile sits alongside, and not apart from, other PD opportunities that schools' receive. This is where we see WSTs and trained Impact Coaches being the champions of the profile and making explicit links with what is being presented. An example of this is TBCS and our PB4L journey. At the tier one training and subsequent staff meetings, we could see clear links between PB4L documentation, and the RbL profile. This document in particular has clear links to both parts 1 and 2. For example: Has clear links to Part 1.1 having high expectations of learners and that they are encouraged as they succeed. Has clear links with Part 2.5, using Power Sharing strategies with learners. So, what can you do in your context to continue to champion the RbL profile?

  This meeting took place on the 25th of February at TBCS. Louise was clear with us all that she didn't want to be working with us this time next year. This means that we will need to develop and maintain sustainable models of practice that allow for NE teachers to be operating in NE schools. A big part of this sustainability is co-construction meetings. This is where teachers bring along AREA data to a meeting in order to be coached by a group of teachers. The aim is to come away with a goal that addresses a disparity in the learning environment of the teacher. We watched two videos showing two seperate approaches, then had a crack at it ourselves. It was challenging to focus questions down to those that will make the teacher reflect deeply on their practice; as well as knowing when to interject if the discussion was heading off topic. We will continue to practise this method in future meetings, towards taking it into our own school context.

  Feedback from the voice collection from students at Mapua School in 2020 was analysed by the staff in Term 4, 2020. It came to light that the main area which will make learning more beneficial for students revolves around relationships. They thought that relationships between students, and relationships between students and teachers was very important. This falls squarely in line with the relationships based learning approach we have been undertaking through our Community of Learning (Kahui Ako) with our associate schools.   Last year the staff brainstormed how we could improve relationships through the school and the wider community. This was revisited at our Teacher Only Day and we have made some changes as a result: We have set up buddy classes, so that teachers can buddy up and children from across different levels can meet the younger/older students and share their learning. This will be changed each term, so that a wide variety of levels and students can build positive...