Scratching the Surface

I think the key message for both of us this week has been accepting the fact that we will be crawling before we walk, before we run, before we sprint, Tetli. I picked up this phrase from Tony Burkin on Tuesday and believe I have used it several times, already. It's a phrase that resonated for me because it reminded me of the importance of the metaphorical foundation we are building in our new school and in our new roles, along with the fact that we need to make our inquiries iterative. 

I enjoyed our discussion this morning! We covered a lot of ground and it gave us both a lot to think about:

• The special nature of our school and the starting dates of our children beginning school is a wonderful reminder that we are about stage not age.
• An  indepth discussion with Sharon about early concepts of print. This affirmed our discussion above when we looked at one lad who showed up requiring a 6 Year net but he has only been at school for 20 weeks. (How can we count weeks on our SMS? I wonder)
• Knowledge vs Strategy in Mathematics and the developmental stages of introducing equipment. The order that equipment is introduced is important. The children that you are working with are working towards imaging and they will need time to make and unmake, bundle and unbundle numbers. This is a pre-requisite to add/sub. This can be followed by money and then the abacus. 
• We then moved into a discussion with Ben about BT induction. It's refreshing to be thinking about this process and starting with a blank page. We used Julia Atkin's BPP circles (Beliefs, Principles and Practices). I liked the way that Ben pointed out that this period of your career is about aligning the knowledge you acquired during your pre-service training with authentic practices at Shotover. We need to be mindful that the latter consistently aligns with our principles and belief. 

My new thinking/ epiphany today was that if we are going to continually walk the talk at SPS, we need to build the learning beliefs into what we as adults do on a daily basis. Initial thinking:

1. Curiosity = questioning, TAI
2. Thinking = reflection, evidence
3. Collaboration - Akonga, this blog, the actual induction 
4. Growth Mindset = thinking outside the box to make this process genuinely authentic and not compliance driven.
5. Joy = celebrating our successes and the wonder of being here. 

So What? Next week, we will complete a final draft of the BPP. Tetli is going to have a play with the Swivel and have a go at capturing some short interactions on video. The purpose of this is to begin defining the way that we "observe, talk and appraise ourselves".