Changes to Kākano

I started teaching in the kākano hub at a very interesting time of the year. I came in at the start of term 2 to pick up the new entrant roll growth children. At the same time the our team moved into our new building. My first day in the hub was the first day for everyone in our team. Our team has approximately 100 children and 5 teachers. We have now been in our new space for a term and a half. I have learn so many new things being in this new space and as a team we have worked together and are continuously tweaking our hub to ensure it runs smoothly. 

A major focus in our hub is learning through play, this is heavily incorporated into the running of our program and the way we structure our day. In addition to our learning through play we also have 'provocations' set up around the room when the students are not working in their instructional groups. Here the children have free choice to pick an activity to do i.e. "Can you order these numbers from 1-20", "Can you match the blend with the picture?".

Working in this new space has been amazing and it has been fantastic to see how well the children have adapted to the space and the new routines. We have changed many things in the hub since the start of term 2 such as simple routines i.e. sandwich snack, to bigger changes such as how we run our literacy sessions. Each teacher has the opportunity to run their instructional groups how they want to and can tailor them to meet the students needs. For example, I have a lot of the new entrant children in my groups. I do lots of short lessons with them interspersed with play. 

Working with four other teachers works really well in the hub and has been amazing to me as a beginning teacher. We can always talk to each other and get ideas for our groups and find new ways to do things as you are constantly looking at the way others do things. 

Over the past term and a half the major things I have taken out of this experience is:

• not being afraid to change things and try new things. 
• the importance of communication between colleagues to establish the best learning environment. 
• having clear and set routines in the hub i.e. when tidying up, time frames to ensure the hub is running efficiently. 

We are still changing aspects of our hub and tweaking our learning environment. Looking back we have already come a long way and our hub is continually getting better.