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Fabulous School with a tidy and organised scandinavian feel to it. The learning spaces are clearly marked and expectations are noticeably displayed which allow for learners to move to the place they need for their task at hand. Dreamboxes (windowsill seating) are available for individual or collaborative work that needs inspiration and day dreaming. QR coding is skillfully implemented and supports learners. The creek on the other side of the fence serves and is being used as a fantastic learning resource.

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Rolleston is the place to go if you want to learn about Emilia Reggio philosophy implemented in practice. Loose parts galore, very exciting to see many thoughtfully placed provocations which lure learners into discovering and tinkering. The third teacher very visible and noticeable. Wonderful to learn how projects can last not just for terms but for years through extending the exploration guided by learners input and interest. Learners voice is captured and the evidence of that you will find in the gorgously written learning stories which do leave a footprint of the discovery path. Also, a place to learn about coherence and consistency as you can observe this schoolwide adapted to the age of the learner. Many great ideas about storage have been taken away as well.

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Bromley was GREAT. We were there on Thursday, between their strike day and Christchurch anniversary day (so it could have been a muck around day) but the kids were on point and awesome to talk to. There were heaps of things that we could steal: The kids were all using twitter to share their learning which was authentic and awesome. They had list of really cool tasks that they were working through, picking the ones that they wanted to do and we saw some amazing photo editing ones (Apple distinguished school - so they were using a lot of apps on the iPads) There was a reggio focus running throughout the school and there were loose parts set up in most of the areas and all of the spaces were relaxing and calm with lots of pot plants and natural materials. Despite the school being in the middle of a rebuild and lots of the classes being in portacoms the school was trying hard to stick to collaborative teaching practices despite the physical limitations and this seemed to be going ok. The school is low decile (3) and had a few good tricks to get parents in - food, performance, art. Initially the staff had spend a lot of time making sure their kids felt emotionally and socially safe and this seemed to have really paid off.

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This school was very interesting. They had some very strong views about what they were doing. One of the driving factors in the design of the school and how it ran was the idea of being "fantastical." Several spaces definitely followed this idea and the children did seem to have a good amount of say in what they did. The oldest children, in particular had 12 options during the week, of which they had to choose 5. There were a lot of outdoor areas and the children had a huge say in what was out there.

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This school is fairly new and has some massive, open spaces. They've done well with the spaces, making them homely and full of learner artwork and lots of invitations to play. There was a good sense of what children needed to do (as we were there at the end of a break) and they were very articulate. Highlights for the children included project time and GROW time, where they had a chance to learn new things from the educators' passions.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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incl. HPPS, Riverhead, Taupaki, Waimauku, Huapai, Christchurch Schools

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South Auckland Middle School - a Villa Education Trust school "

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South Auckland Middle School offers outstanding education for boys and girls in Years 7-10. Small class sizes and zero fees.

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14 11.18 by Kelly
Opened in 2017. Area school with around 850 students from 0-13. Many with difficult backgrounds. Quote " if you are using the new spaces as you have always done it makes life very hard" Learnt to start as you mean to continue, if it is the way you are wanting to do it start at the beginning and set the expectations eg around reporting. Reporting!! Start as you mean to go on. Don’t bow to parent pressure but take feedback from them over time.  Let them get used to the MNS way! Learning narratives over time - no big reports biannually. Regular reporting.

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The school was closed when we visited.  We were able to sneak in for a few pictures of their admin area and of course their absolutely spectacular grounds.  We really liked how the learning spaces all framed the central playing area - made it look and feel like a ‘bowl of fun’ with stairs, playground equipment, mini gardens and landscaped areas.  The site is nothing short of magnificent, with billion dollar views of the mountains and lake.  The building had the office/admin on the top floor and all visitors would need to go through this to access the learning spaces on the lower floors via an elevator or internal stairs.

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A great little Kindy that is very environmental friendly. Aims to have children learn from their environment and look after it. Restorative Practices are used and children know they are valued

Loose parts

Edible vegetable garden that the children can eat and work in.  They make their own compose with the children from food scraps and children know that they can’t eat the strawberries until they are red.  Eat the corn straight of the cob

Have a new room for blocks and building after getting new shelves for storage

Each afternoon the have provocations out for the children to use.

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October 2018 by Kelly
Very much a personalised environment, as the students get older, the tasks become much more flexible and catered to student interests. Eg. architecture/ design focus.Modules and Spins Opportunities in the local environment are capitalized for students benefits. Students pick from a range of options tied to a central theme when choosing which modules and spins they will do. Vision statement and unpacking of it allowed for personalising learning. Creating partnership opportunities to allow for personalised learning

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November 12, 2018 - Yasmin
Although not on their final site, there was a lot to be taken away from this school. The learners were everywhere! Everyone was engaged and there were so many activities happening at the same time. Parents were welcome to come and support the learning and there were many provocations on display for the students. A group of students were building their school on Minecraft! Now there's real time, authentic learning! There was also a French immersion unit which inspired discussion around celebrating all cultures and promoting ethnic background as a source of pride.