Kia ora tatou
Welcome to the first edition of our WAPA LCN newsletter. We plan to keep you updated as we continue our learning journey as a cluster of four schools.
The WAPA 2020 Learning Change Network is a sub group of the larger WAPA 2020 Network. Over the past eighteen months, our cluster of four schools has worked collaboratively to identify three change priorities that we believe will have the greatest impact on raising student achievement. The priorities, learner agency, learning environments and building relationships were arrived at through the analysis of achievement data and the collection of student, teacher and parent voice in order to check assumptions. While each school has identified different achievement challenges, it is believed that through inquiry into each of the change priorities relevant to individual school contexts, barriers to learning can be identified and addressed.
Ngā mihi nui 
Michael Malins, Konini School
Sarah Hynds, Konini School
Stephen Lethbridge, Taupaki School
Mary Fursdon, Taupaki School
JJ Purton-Jones, Taupaki School
Keith Tetzlaff, Henderson Primary
Cherie Taylor-Patel, Flanshaw Road Primary
Maggie Reid, Flanshaw Road Primary
Chris McLean, Community Engagement Coordinator
LEARNER AGENCY:
Deliberate acts of learning involve initiative, self regulation and application of new learning to a new context.
Konini School
At Konini we believe in the reciprocal nature of teaching and learning - we are all teachers and all learners. To become agents of our own learning we must first be equipped with the tools, skills and competencies that enable us to learn how to learn. At Konini, a scaffolded inquiry approach is employed to achieve this, that sees the application of learning across contexts.
An assessment for learning ethos ensures that students understand what they are learning, how they know when they are successful and can articulate what the next learning steps are. Further to this, Konini puts 'faces on the data' by identifying priority learners and creating learning maps that enable an in-depth knowledge of learners to be developed. These maps are then used to co-construct learning pathways in order to ensure that deliberate acts of learning are undertaken. Follow this link to view learning mapping in action http://youtu.be/_IcrPGvpE7U.
The establishment of a Kotahi class at new entrant level provides consistency on school entry, ensuring a smooth transition from the early childhood realm with classroom environments designed around differentiated student learning styles unique to each context. To support this, the Building Blocks for Literacy programme is delivered upon school entry. It is based on areas of identified developmental needs and provides the foundation upon which the assessment for learning ethos is developed alongside individual learning pathways.
Flanshaw Road
Flanshaw Road is an “Assessment for Learning” school, focused on ensuring our students a) know and understand themselves as learners and b) know how learning works, because of the on-going dialogue they have been part of since they were five. During Term 1 teachers have begun work on specific teaching inquiries that involve Maori or Pacific Island students, their families and a range of innovative strategies to accelerate learning in a specific curriculum area.
Threaded through this, has been a whole-school focus on Cultural Competencies – specifically how effective we are at a personal and macro level at demonstrating ‘Ako’ – learning with, from and through others, ‘Whanaungatanga’ – creating effective relationships (with students and whanau), ‘Tangata Whenuatanga’ – developing students’ positive identity, valuing and incorporating language and culture within our school context – knowing the student in a deeper way, ‘Manaakitanga’ – developing respectful partnerships in learning and ‘Wananga’ – engaging in rich dialogue to co-construct meaning.
Through a range of staff meetings, team meetings and individual conversations, teachers have been asked to think about themselves and their practice in a different way, to think harder about how to personalise learning to make it work for their target students and to identify what they don’t know and need to know more about to be culturally responsive. Inquiry into teaching / leadership practice, capturing the process with different types of evidence, from students, teachers and parents is the 2014 learning challenge for us all.
We have enjoyed presentations of mihis and pepehas teachers have created to share on-line. Our Maori and Pacific Island staff members have become our support team and “go to experts”, as have our students, who raised the bar for us this week when several of them presented their pepeha, fluently in two or more languages, to us.
‘Learning the learner’ is one goal. To see all the people in our school as learners is the key to building capacity, through improvement in practice - and innovation, so learning works for every student. One of our Year 4 students said “A great learner can sometimes teach a teacher things they didn’t know and how a great learner becomes one is they ask questions.”
Taupaki: The journey
We have been dabbling with Individual Learning Programmes with various levels of uptake throughout the school. ILPs involve students being aware of their next steps and planning their learning around the workshops that are offered. It is accountable and carefully structured to give students the agency they need to take control of their own leanring. The two students below are giving an honest reflection of what they think.
The ILP consists of three different components. First comes the teacher planning. Next is a timetable of the weekly workshops made on google docs. This is put up on the classroom wall and made available on the class page on KnowledgeNet. Here is an example: http://goo.gl/kwImX9
Students are then given their own timetable for the week. They start by filling in the slots with their required workshops and choosing optional workshops based on their needs. Students then complete the rest of the timetable by looking at their 'must do's' first and then their 'options'.
Accelerating Literacy Learning at Henderson Primary School
As part of our involvement in the Accelerated Literacy Learning (ALL) project this year all teachers have identified a target group of 'well below' and 'below' students in writing who require acceleration. Teachers are using Timperley's model of inquiry on which to structure their inquiry into their teaching practice to identify what they need to do differently to make acceleration for the learners a reality.
Student agency is one of the central elements within this process. The learners can form accurate understandings of their levels of achievement and when engaged in the learning process attitudes towards learning are raised.
An initial stage of the process is 'scanning' or finding out what is happening for the learner from their perspective and those of their families. Teachers used one-on-one conferencing and discussions with the parents to get to know the learner . Valuable information about students backgrounds, culture, interests, learning needs and, importantly, their expectations was gathered.
BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS:
Collaboration and co-construction are essential to engage, motivate and inspire learners. Everyone is a learner.
The Importance of Feedback- Working together at Taupaki
Feedback is a vital part of the learning journey. Engaged parents give feedback in an online environment (e-portfolios) and work with the teacher to support students' next learning steps.
Konini
The much anticipated arrival of Te Pou at Konini School represented the culmination of two years of building relationships with iwi. The journey began with Ngatai Whatua before relationships with Kawerau o Maki were nurtured. Te Pou stands proudly at the school's entrance as the kaitiaki of the school community. This collaboration between school and iwi is the beginning of a journey that paves the way to developing strong learning relationships between school, whānau and community that will enrich the learning and inspire the learners. This lateral approach to learning sees a move from home school partnership to a more authentic collaborative approach, extending beyond the home and into the wider community.
Flanshaw Road
A key strand in the Learning Change Network ideology is the focus on building relationships at all levels, but in particular, with parents, who traditionally have been the under-utilised and perhaps under-valued partner in the learning triangle. In Term 1, Flanshaw Road School began the Mutukaroa Initiative, which has influenced the work being done with our Learning Change Network target groups of students.
We have released a senior leader three days a week to meet with parents of 5 year olds, once they have had their five week meeting with their teachers, to specifically talk through the assessment information they discussed with the teacher. The teacher and parent clarify any aspects of assessment the parent is not sure of and then they discuss different resources that the parents can use at home to support the beginning stages of reading, writing and / or mathematics. The parents are given the games / resources to take away so, from the beginning of their involvement at school, their capacity as a learning partner is being developed.
This teacher will then meet the parents again when the student is 5 ½, 6 and 7. Meetings are usually about 45 minutes long and can be at school, at the parent’s work, at home – wherever suits. We see this initiative as one that complements other ways parents at our school get information about their children’s progress – three-way meetings, student-led conferences, facebook group pages, face to face conversations, texts and the like. The goal is to ensure all our Junior School students make great progress in the first two years. It will be interesting to see how this first group of students track because, of the New Entrant students who have come into our school this year, 40% qualify for ESOL funding.
One of the immediate ways the project has influenced the LCN target groups is around the resources that are made and sent home. We now have teachers across the school identifying very specifically what concepts or key tasks they want target students to practice more, creating games or resources to match, then sending them home for students to use with their parents or care-givers. As we get better organized, I can see this becoming a feature of all our intervention programmes. Right now, we don’t have enough laminators for the volume of resources we are creating!!
Building Home/School Partnerships at Henderson Primary
Building home/school relationships that enhance a child’s chances for success in school and significantly improves their achievement has been an area that we have been working to strengthen.
When parents/whānau and teachers work well together, everyone benefits. Parents and teachers can provide each other with unique insight and different perspectives about the same child, culminating in a more complete understanding of that child, their abilities, strengths, and challenges. While the teacher knows much more about the curriculum and the school culture, the parent knows more about their child's personality, tendencies, and family life. A successful parent-teacher partnership also shows a child that an entire team of adults is on their side. We play an important role helping parents to learn about what happens at school, to make sure together we create a positive, open atmosphere that will support what goes on in the classroom, will instill a love and desire to learn and create the highest possible shared expectations for learning.
The school has three initiatives underway to strengthen partnerships with parents.
Firstly, our Home/School partnership meetings provide parents/whānau with an opportunity to meet together twice a term to share knowledge, information and create an environment for meaningful partnership and dialogue about learning and celebrate our achievements together.
Secondly, we invite parents to participate in the wonderful Reading Together programme that helps involve families to raise the reading achievement of our children. Reading Together is a series of workshops that teach parents specific and constructive ways to help support their children's reading at home. The programme enables teachers and parents to support children’s reading more effectively than either teachers or parents can accomplish on their own.
Thirdly, as part of the Accelerated Literacy Learning (ALL) inquiries, all teachers are making contact with the parents of their target group students. At the beginning of the project teachers contacted parents personally, or through phone calls and letters. Teachers have really made an effort to sustain this contact, taking the opportunities to talk to parents when they drop off or pick up children. During this time teachers have been able to show the parents what the children are doing in the classroom, provide them with helpful resources, provide them with strategies to support children at home and in some cases model these to the parents. Children are encouraged to read their work to parents.
LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS:
Safe, stimulating, flexible, collaborative modern learning environments cater for all learners to achieve success.
Konini - catering for diverse learning styles
Term 2 2014 saw the opening of four new modern learning environments at Konini School. Equipped with flexible furniture and learning spaces, the MLE's are able to cater for diverse learning styles. In addition, each learning space has the latest in technology - ultra short throw mimio data projectors, Apple TV, pods of iPads and chrome books. Use of these managed devices is underpinned by a blended e-learning philosophy and assessment for learning pedagogy. This blended approach to the use of assistive technology supports enhancement and engagement and is part of all learning environments school wide.
Taupaki MLE
A challenge for most schools is developing optimal learning spaces from existing classroom space. For Taupaki this involved a slight increase in our floor plan footprint, which then had to be approved by the MLE panel so that we could access the appropriate funds. We had some very old prefabs which required modernisation. A designated teacher group had decided a few years ago to refurbish the toilet areas and make these into teacher spaces. By taking teachers’ desks and gear out of the classrooms more space was created for flexible learning. Two classes chose to also move their wet areas out of the main learning space (see below) to give more indoor area.
But where did the toilets go? A purpose built ‘superloo’ was installed, with good ventilation and easy view into the hand washing areas.
We now have flexible learning spaces that give students choice about how they will work. There is not a lot of flash furniture, rather existing furniture moved around to create collaborative areas. Modern learning is messy, it is motivating and it involves student choice.
Flanshaw - places for parents
As part of the Learning Change Network project and the Mutukaroa Project we have needed to create different learning spaces in our school to accommodate the parent learning dimension of our 2014 work. To this end we have created two new spaces in our school. The first of these is the Mutukaroa space in our Hutu Room. This is where our Community Learning Support coordinator (Nicola) meets with parents. She has tried to make the space comfortable, toddler friendly and ‘fit for purpose’. The new furniture is nicer than what is in the Principal’s office, so I am sure the parents feel valued.
The second space we have just blessed this week is our new ‘Whanui iwi’ room. This is a ‘parent hub’ space that we hope will be used by a range of different parent groups in time to come. There are tea and coffee facilities and the furniture has been designed to be used for a range of different purposes. Already a team of parents has been organised to have a ‘resource making session’ – and a group of Maori parents have booked the space for a hui to discuss the design of the pou that has been commissioned for our school. We hope to make this a space that parents ‘own’ and that a range of community service organisations could use, such as the Public Health Nurse.
Students too, have been making decisions about our learning space. The 2013 Playground Design Team saw the first two elements of their plan installed at the end of 2013. This week the 2014 Playground Design Team, in consultation with our Year 5 and 6 students chose the next five elements they wanted to see installed in our school grounds. Their next steps are to work with the principal and property manager to decide exactly where the new swings, outdoor fitness equipment and spinners will go. This team are also working with our local council, to pick outdoor fitness equipment to install along Henderson Creek. “Student agency” is a happening thing at Flanshaw.
Henderson Primary School - Learning Partnerships
After a staff discussion focused on how we can provide students with contexts for learning that are real and personal for them, one staff member took this back to the students. Landis presented the class with the challenge of identifying how they might contribute to some major projects we would like to see happening around the school.
The children decided to focus their inquiry on how to improve the limited parking and access to the school for parents as the project they were most interested in. They self selected the groups they wanted to work with on their investigations and set to work. Their learning environment expanded out of the classroom to include the whole school site and the roads surrounding the school. The property manager was called upon to discuss the various possibilities, limitations and aspects that needed consideration. The children began their inital drawings of what their solutions would look like.
It soon became apparent to the children that 'expert' assistance would be required. The decision was made to contact the School of Architecture at Auckland University who have graciously offered to provide two students to come and assist the class with their project.
The project has some time to go before it is completed, but the teacher and students have already experienced a learning situation that has grown out of the confines of the classroom to encompass a much more expansive landscape.
What's coming up ...
Regional Meeting – 12 June – at Blockhouse Bay Intermediate
LCN My Portfolio Training - 23 June – 11.00 am to 1.00 pm at Flanshaw Road Library
LCN Visits in Term 2 – 26 June at Flanshaw – Time: 9.30 am to 12.30 am – Talk to students, parents and staff, meet from 11.00 to 12.30.
Term 3 Meeting: Henderson Primary – Monday 4 August – 1.30 am
Term 4 Meeting: LCN final meeting 10 November – 1.30 pm at Konini