It has been a busy two weeks since the last newsletter. We have had classes on excursions, teachers undertaking professional development, parent teacher interviews and NAPLAN for our year 3 and 5 students.
Firstly, I would like to congratulate the year 3's and 5's for their resilience, perseverance and attitude to have a go during the NAPLAN assessments. For our year 3’s, this was completely new to them, and all students worked to answer questions to the best of their ability. For the year 5’s, this was the second time that most students have undertaken this assessment, and they too worked hard to do their best. Thank you all for your efforts.
On Tuesday night, staff (teachers and SSOs) worked with Ella Romeo, an Occupational Therapist from the Department for Education on understanding student behaviour and self-regulation. This workshop is number two in a series of four and focused on purposeful breaks.
Parent-teacher discussions were held last week, with many families taking the opportunity to meet with their child’s teacher to discuss their learning and achievements. As a school leader, I was very privileged to hear snippets of conversation from families as they left the school, discussing the many positives they heard with their child. Thank you for making a time to speak with the teachers.
Earlier this week, I worked with six of our year 5/6 students to begin looking at the Department for Education Strategy for Public Education. Together, we joined an online student forum with our Chief Executive, Professor Martin Westwell, and around 750 other students from around the state. We discussed the strategy, and the 4 big ideas or levers for impact: Wellbeing; Equity and Excellence; Learner Agency and Effective Learners. We also discussed that learning happens everywhere – not just in school. There are some images below, and as we finished up, the students have shared with me their thoughts about the session.
Noah: I liked how we got to talk and ear from kids in different schools.
Kate: A good experience, and it would be good for other people to give it a go. It was good that we got to do the forum in Julie’s office.
Purcell: I liked how they made activities to make it fun and get us thinking and talking.
Hiro: A good chance to communicate and share ideas. People in other classes in other schools in South Australia.
Asreet: I liked everything; it was fun.
Shanmukh: We did this as a group and worked together to solve problems.
We have a short week next week, with our Term 1 Pupil Free Day being held on Thursday, leading into the Easter long weekend. I hope that you all get to enjoy some down time with your families, and I look forward to hearing about the long weekend adventures when we return. I am headed away camping with my family and am looking forward to some sunshine!
