Sharon's Visit

I was delighted to have my friend Sharon from Hamilton come and stay for a few days. Not only is she a good friend (so we had a lot of talking to do) but she is also a children's book author. On Friday she spent the day at Amesbury School. She spoke to all the students and took a group of 15 students for a writing session.  They were thrilled to work with her and afterwards made comments such as "I'm a better writer than I thought I was" and "I can write confidently now and not be afraid to put my ideas out there and know I can do it".

Here are some related links:
Sharon at Amesbury School
Sharon Holt (on the Book Council website)
Te Reo Singalong website - these books are just great for using Te Reo Maori with young children in a fun way.

About Time for Another Post

Oops, another month has disappeared and my blog is looking a bit neglected.  Work is busy, busy, busy. One of the teachers I work with went to a meeting at Parliament today to talk about a submission made by Amesbury School to a select committee inquiry into 21st century learning environments and digital literacy. One question they asked was how many hours a week she worked. I wonder if they were surprised when she told them the facts - daytime, evening, weekends - and certainly not just 9am to 3pm. I wish I could work 9 to 3 and enjoy 12 weeks holiday a year!

The school library is also busy and it's great to see the children coming and going during the day.  Most of them can issue and return books independently using our RFID scanning system and we now have a dozen netbooks, some iPads, iPods, Android tablets and eReaders.  Some of the children still need adult help of course. One five year old approached me the other day and asked how to spell her last name. "Why do you need to know that?" I asked. Her reply was, "My parents have secrets and I want to use Google to find out their secrets". Priceless!

Art Unveiling at Amesbury

A magnificent piece of art was unveiled during a ceremony at school today.  The art work was commissioned by the building consortium and gifted to Amesbury School. The work, by artist and sculptor Jeff Thomson, is made of corrugated iron. The outline shape is New Zealand but it is made of many small parts in the shape of meccano pieces printed with illustrations of flora and fauna of New Zealand.  It was interesting to talk to Jeff afterwards about how he creates his works. The printing, similar to screen printing, is done onto flat pieces of metal that are then corrugated and assembled.  It was a lengthy process to make the individual 'meccano' pieces but only took two days to assemble the whole 'country'.

 Now I know why Jeff came to the library yesterday to request a map of New Zealand.  They were attaching the art to the wall and needed to make sure that the islands were positioned correctly. 

Detailed view of the pieces. The corrugation and overlapping give the work a wonderful 3-D look. 

Part of the ceremony included the boys performing the haka for the first time. 

They were fantastic - loud and enthusiastic. 

Powerless At Amesbury

Our 21st century school which is so reliant on technology was powerless for most of today. It was a dull morning anyway with low cloud hanging over the hills but I thought it strange that the reception area was so dark when I entered the school. When I flicked on the light switch in the library and nothing happened I realised there was a power cut. The school was strangely quiet until the children arrived at 8:30. There was no background hum of computers and other machines. The coffee machine stood idle and a couple of coffee addicted staff members drove to Johnsonville to bring hot drinks back for everyone. The power was off in most of Churton Park and while I was supervising road patrol I helped a neighbour lift her garage door so she could get her car out of the garage.

There was a quick re-plan for the start of the school day, which ended up being a complete re-plan as apart from a brief return of the electricity mid-morning we were without power until 2pm. So it was back to pencils, paper and books for the day. The iPads, iPods, interactive whiteboards and touchscreens were abandoned as good old fashioned handwriting and drawing on paper was used. No books could be issued from the library although I set up a fun treasure hunt type of activity so the seniors could practice some library skills.

The biggest challenge of the day was going to the toilet. The staff toilets were pitch black, you couldn't even see your hand in front of your face. At least I already knew where the toilet roll and hand basin were as the only way to find anything was by groping around in the dark.

Staff Toilet

Shelves At Last

The library shelves have finally arrived! Well, most of them have. After a six week wait the shelves arrived at school this morning and installation began - only to discover that several of them were missing! Fortunately the installer hadn't sent the original incorrectly painted shelves back to the manufacturer yet. They are sitting in his shed so he was able to retrieve some and they will be installed temporarily until that problem is sorted. At least the non-fiction books will have something to sit on other than the floor. The mobile picture book shelf isn't quite right either and nor is the proportion of sloping display shelves to flat shelves. Ahhhh! Who knew that shelves could be quite so complicated? One good thing is that the kids are excited to see shelves in the library. We almost appreciate a few pieces of wood more than iPads and touchscreen computers at the moment.

The Library at Lunchtime

I walked into the library at lunchtime and found that even without shelves children were making full use of it. Kids were reading, drawing pictures, using netbooks, browsing the temporary shelf and issuing books to each other. None of these photos are posed - it's exactly as they have decided to do their thing now that the library is open for them at lunchtimes.

Amesbury School is Open!

Yesterday the construction workers left and today the children arrived. Amesbury School, the first new state school in the capital city for 25 years, is open for instruction. There was a formal welcome to students and their families (the official opening of the school will be on May 8th) and the remainder of the day was spent on fun activities for the children and staff to get to know each other and their new surroundings.

Foundation students, Amesbury School, February 1st 2012

First activity in the libary - making bookmarks.

The BMS

Today we received instructions about the BMS. I wondered what the man was referring to but apparently it is the Building Management System. Basically we learnt about how the security, access, heating, lighting and ventilation systems work. A lot of it is technical and technological, with computer systems operating it. For example, in some rooms there are motion sensors and the lights come on automatically for a set period of time. There are also air sensors and some of the windows open automatically to let fresh air in. At six pm some of the external doors lock automatically. But is seems that the library is the one space that is not automated - it still requires a human to lock doors, open windows and turn the lights on and off!

Furniture at Amesbury School

The learning suites have a variety of furniture from some quite traditional tables and chairs to funky beanbags and even 'wobbly' stools for children who find it hard to sit still.

Creating a Brand New Library - Part Three

We made good progress in the library today. The internet connection was reliable and we've now got a couple of hundred books catalogued. The volunteers have been busy taping and covering books and we've got so many volunteers they are almost working faster than we can provide tasks for them to do. We had a major tidy up in the library this afternoon as the children who start at Amesbury School next week came to visit with their families this evening.

There were a variety of activities set up for the children to do. A lot of them enjoyed drawing their faces and writing their names on the windows. There is much more glass than wall space in the school so the children will be able to write and draw on the glass. We have special pens that write on glass like a marker pen but wipe off as a powdery substance.

No one who visited the classrooms asked where the desks and chairs are. Actually we don't have classrooms. The learning areas are two large 'hubs' each with multiple 'suites'. The suites are open areas that flow into each other. Large sliding glass doors can close parts of suites off from each other but we don't think the doors will be used much. The furniture consists of tables, stools and chairs in a variety of styles and types. It's a bit hard to describe some of the more unusual styles so I'll take some photos of furniture soon. The intention is that the children will choose to work at or on the furniture that suits them best and that they will move around the space rather than have an allocated desk or table. The library is the most central room in the school which is great as it will be an integral part of the school.

A couple of older children and several adults commented that they wished they could go to primary school all over again and I heard a boy say "this school has everything". One Year 6 girl said she wants to do Year 6 twice to get more time at Amesbury. It was reassuring to get positive feedback from the parents and children, particularly as the furniture and physical set up of the learning spaces is quite different from a traditional school.

The library is very much a 'work in progress' but it also received a positive reaction from the visitors. A couple of girls are already enthusiastic about becoming student librarians. We had a table full of books available for parents to buy and donate to the school and we sold over $300 worth.

Foreground: books for sale. Background: catalogued books temporarily on the display shelves.

Creating a Brand New Library - Part One

Imagine being let loose in a children's bookshop to buy enough books to fill the fiction section of a library! Eight of us visited the Kilburnie Children's Bookshop to stock the shelves of the Amesbury School library with novels.

There is a slight problem however - plenty of books but no shelves. The shelves were supposed to be assembled last Tuesday but the manufacturers made a mistake with the finish on them (it was supposed to be a wash over pine to maintain the wood appearance but they were painted instead and they look ugly and metallic). The company admitted it made a mistake and now the shelves have to be remade. So at the moment I have a library with hundreds of lovely books - all in boxes. On the positive side there are some other exciting things in the library including fluoro orange bean bags and a Very Hungry Caterpillar!

Emergency Preparedness at Amesbury School

We had a school Emergency Preparedness session that was very useful and is clearly taken very seriously in Wellington. Even before the Christchurch earthquakes it sounds as though Wellington was taking emergency preparedness seriously. The organisation that Amesbury School is undertaking makes some schools seem woefully underprepared for emergencies. We will even be having fullscale practices where the parents come and collect the students as if it were an emergency situation to check that we have workable procedures for releasing students. There will be drills that include 'shelter inside' (e.g lockdown, chemical spill) or 'evacuate' (e.g. fire, earthquake) and drills in classtime and at break time. Arrangements are also being made to evacuate off-site to a nearby community centre if need be. Fortunately Amesbury is not in the tsunami zone so we don't have to worry about that. I did learn that if you're at Te Papa and there is a tsunami warning you should stay there - it's built to withstand tsunamis apparently. All Wellington schools have been rechecked for earthquake soundness and Newtown School has had most of its classrooms condemned. There are a whole bunch of relocatable classrooms being used there. Amesbury has been built with a high level of earthquake soundness so I feel quite safe there.

Image of Te Papa from Through the Humours Blog