We began our 2024 learning journey this year with a staff challenge to meet at the top of Mt Wellington / Maungarei. The reason, to help all our staff (old and new) to strengthen their connections to the whenua our kura stands on, and set them up for success as we step into our first Inquiry focus of the year, 'Our Whenua'.
Following on from this I lead a PLD session to show how we could find the story behind our local area through a close look at the street names. This was adapted from a previous challenge set by Richard Johnston in 2022, and the learning from a toolkit run by Scott Mansell from Tamaki College. What I appreciated from this was the buy in from the staff and suggestions of ways we could adapt was was originally planned as a Year 7/8 lesson to every year group. We definitely do learn best when we learn from each other!