Hi all!
I hope everyone enjoyed a restful Easter. I know we as a staff have rested and are gearing up for a busy last two weeks!
As I have mentioned in a previous newsletter the Department of Education is implementing a new Public Education Strategy in week six. I spent some time at Leaders Day learning more about the strategy and in Week 8 , Steve and I were able to put our heads together and think a bit more about how the strategy applies to our school. The following infographic shows what the strategy looks like. Here is a little bit of information around the work that we are doing in this area.
Wellbeing
We are continuing to support children and their families to engage with school, and a
Wellbeing Plan is being completed to provide focus, increase engagement and a sense of belonging. These areas are in response to results we received from the Wellbeing and Engagement Collection, which is a survey of students.
We have had, and continue to have, several whole school events which provide excitement and interest to the students – you will read about them in this newsletter. The Colour Explosion will be held on the last day, please come along and join in the fun!
The Berry Street team (BSEM team) ran a staff meeting re Domain 2 of the Berry Street philosophy. This is centred around ‘Relationships’ and we talked about Restorative conversations, Golden Statements, and Unconditional positive regard
Finally, everyone’s wellbeing flourishes when they are teaching and learning in a nice environment and so school grounds have been a focus – thank you to everyone who came along to the Working Bee!!
Equity and Excellence
We have had a real focus on literacy in term 1 – collecting reading and spelling data and planning for
Intervention which will start in term 2. Whilst teachers continue focus on spelling and reading they are maintaining momentum with the numeracy work.
Learner Agency
Values are a vehicle to build learner agency at our school. For example, in response to incidents whereby someone may have behaved inappropriately we have conversations centred around values and try to build student ‘discernment and judgement’ around this. Ask your child what their top values are and why – it’s a great conversation to have!
Effective Learners
We have been focusing on increasing the use of digital technology for learning – using technology as a learning tool rather than game based tools, we are increasing the use of voice to text tools and Makers empire 3D design. Classes have also been introduced to using Notebook to access and share their learning.
