Kāhui Ako ki Orewa

Weekly News Update #27

19 October 2018

Activities in our Kāhui Ako

Our AlliS languages continue to share cultural activities with students of all age groups – here Y9 students are enjoying a genuine Japanese tea ceremony with visitors.

Welcome

We would like to extend a warm welcome to our two new Across School Leaders for our Kāhui Ako team, who will be joining us at meetings this term: Leanne Manning from Orewa College, who has led a team in developing tools for independent learning for the last two years in her role as PLG (professional learning group) leader and in-school Kāhui Ako Leader, and Mark Ralston from Silverdale, who will be bringing a wealth of knowledge regarding te reo nga tikanga Māori to the role. New in school leaders for next year are still to be finalised.

Heads up

Our annual Kāhui Ako Conference is coming up, so make sure you keep Tuesday, January 29th 2019 free to join our whole Kāhui Ako for a day of workshops, fantastic speakers and entertainment.  

We have sent out details for workshop abstracts, which are due in on the 25th October.  Our Kāhui Ako focus is on inquiry and collaboration so we invite you to share your inquiry journey in a workshop. Team up with a colleague and share what has inspired you, what has worked for you, and what you will try next!  

Invitations for teachers to sign up for workshops will be going out next month, with workshops finalized by mid November.  

Rōpū Pāngarau / Maths Focus Group

The Maths focus group has nearly completed working on the progressions framework, with the idea of condensing this into a more accessible framework for us all to be able to refer to when assessing progress in mathematics.

Rōpū te reo nga tikanga Māori

Link to Kupu o te wiki.  This term we will be continuing to develop our common curricular framework which will help to embed te reo nga tikanga Māori into our professional practice.

Rōpū Tuhituhi / Writing Focus Group

With the conference coming up so soon in 2019, the focus for our group will be on finalising our abstracts for our workshops. Once that planning is finalised, we will look at how we can create a sustainable model of moderation for writing across our community. We are also pleased to announce that we have a PD day lined up in November to get interested schools signed up for pilot PaCT classes. More details will follow after our Thursday “in schools leaders” meeting.

Rōpū taunaki / Learning Support Focus Group

Recap: On Thursday 27th September we held a meeting with the Northern Region Presbyterian Support Services regarding how they could support our Kāhui Ako.  Their service includes a range of social services for children, young people, families and whānau, facing challenges in their lives that they are not able to overcome on their own. They are currently reviewing their ‘best practice model’ and are keen to work alongside us by trialing a pilot to assist us in developing our own Learner Support model. More information will be shared soon.

Ngaio pukapuka kōrero / Professional Reading

Using Evidence in the Classroom for Professional Learning is an interesting read on the challenges we face as professionals gathering and interpreting data from our inquiries and using the information to effectively change our practice.   The author notes the difficulties involved in changing from using evidence to judge or reflect student’s abilities and using evidence to guide effective teaching, but highlights the high impact this has on student learning.

Recommended reading

Finnish lessons is a 2013 book by Pasi Sahlberg, about the changes in the Finnish education system. Pasi was the keynote speaker at ULearn 18. Try the short video to see what the book is about  here

Less is more by  Kimberly Hill Campbell

If you know of colleagues who have not yet joined our Orewa Kāhui Ako Community Page  on Google+, please do share this link with them.

NEXT WEEK: