Brainwave Seminar

I was lucky enough to attend a Seminar by the Brainwave Trust on Normal Brain Development in Infants and how to Grow Great Brains ...
The Big Idea was that consistency, responsiveness and loving care grows children's brains.
Although I knew that the human brain does a huge amount of growing and connecting up in the first 3 years I was astounded to learn that an adult brain weighs 1400g, at the age of 1 a child's brain is already 1 kg and at 3 a child's brain weighs 1200g. Great food for thought in terms of those early years and the importance of opportunities     

I was particularly interested in the power of play and the ability of the brain to make connections through repetition and that play to a child is work - great to keep thinking about how this applies to the development of a Reception Class.

The other big ideas that resonated were around 'attachment' and that it is the 'umbrella' under which all other development occurs.

Along with that the discussion around resilience ...Children are born adaptable but not resilient - we all too often talk about children’s resilience but they are not born resilient.

Ngā mihi ki nga kaiako o Pt England Kindy for hosting us, a great night of thinking and learning.

Confessions of a childhood Stutterer

I was privileged today to hear Judge Andrew Becroft speak and emphasise the need for us to ensure that we listen to the voices of our tamariki. Of course we think we do that in classrooms but are we truly actively listening and engaging with our kids? Are we really hearing or are we waiting to hear the response that we have intended to illicit from them?

He emphasised the  need to ensure that we have kids who can participate and communicate, so that no child is left behind.

"Are we getting it right?" Being child-centred and hearing children’s voices.

He went on to say "First we must help them find that voice then we must add it to what we are doing."

So how can we add children's voice to what we are doing? How can and do we gather voices/views/perspectives of the kids.

Perhaps from a schooling perspective there are more questions than answers but what a great challenge to think about how we can better work to capture our kids voices and really listen and include them as drivers of change and development.

It's been a long time ...

Confidence - we so frequently as teachers and school leaders ask kids and our staff to step out of their comfort zone and I must admit I am reluctant to do so! I was challenged around this today after a discussion focussing sharing via our blog and I reflected on how frequently I have written and failed to post ...so time to turn this draft into a published post!

So back to my own Inquiry ...todays Inquiry discussion was focussed around the monitoring phase of Inquiry.  The teacher as the focus ...what have you changed in your teaching? How are we monitoring Inquiries?? Lots of good questions were raised and I reflected that whilst I had done a huge amount of thinking and wondering which direction my Inquiry should take, and at the same time have continued to monitor and watch the development of other Inquiries throughout the school, I had not settled on an 'Action Plan for my own!

It seems to me that the Mentoring Model applied throughout the DMIC PD has been applied as an effective way of working collaboratively to share and shift pedagogy.

So what's the Problem??  Our DMIC Mentor will come and go, so we need to have a way of continuing to build on this throughout the school.

So my plan is to investigate 'What  the Mentoring Model looks like in action' and then how can we apply it throughout the school so that we can sustain and continue to share  the good practise that comes not only  from DMIC but whether we could apply this model more widely?

Next steps - make time to observe the DMIC Mentoring to see what I can glean from that model of working. Read more on the actual Mentoring side of this model and find out where else it has been used and to what effect.


Ko te tamaiti, te putake o te kaupapa
The child, the heart of the matter ...