Principal Report
Brianna & Ian
We hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday break. We look forward to everyone returning in Term 3 ready for lots of learning.
Holiday breaks are great to refresh ready to attend school everyday. Attendance at school is vital to enable learning to grow. Being late to school also effects the children's learning.
$25,000 Grant
This Term we applied for a Grant of up to $25,000 in a program called "Engaging with Indian Communities". We are very lucky to have been given the full $25,000. Part of this money will be used to build our Kitchen Garden. The other part of this grant will be used to employ an Indian artist to work with families to design and construct a large art work for the garden.
On July 18th we are having an Information Night to meet the artist and talk about the process for the artwork. The artwork will be based on stories from India. We want children, parents and grandparents to come long and share stories.
Date: Thursday 18th July
Time: 6:30pm
Dinner Supplied (Vegetarian Cuisine)
For catering requirements please book through Try Booking to let us know that you will be joining us: https://www.trybooking.com/BDQZN
Student Interviews Thursday 27th June
Student led conferences will be held this Thursday 27th June. Children are really looking forward to sharing their learning with you.
Interview times can be booked via compass, if you need any assistance with this please call our administration staff on 8560 6079.
Students will be dismissed at 1:00pm on Thursday 27th June
Interviews will start at 1:30pm.
Term 2 End Details
On 28th June Term 2 Finishes. Children will be dismissed from school at 2:00pm.
Breakfast Program - seeking help from Grandparents
We are wanting to start a breakfast program next term. We are asking for Grandparents to help support the program by coming to school weekly to assist with preparing breakfast. Please call 8560 6079 if you are able to help us out.
Brianna's Trip to China
Earlier in the term I was fortunate to be invited to China to visit many schools and create relationships with the schools and commence Sister School relationships.
I visited many schools in Shanghai, Yiwu and Nanjing. It was great to see so many different schools and how they operate. When arriving at each school I was treated with a lot of respect. I was presented with flowers and gifts. I was given tours of the schools and saw the special program that they ran. All the schools that were visited had won awards in their districts for the amazing work that they do. Technology and Performing Arts were major programs in these schools as well as English Classes.
I was fortunate to meet the students who will be visiting in August from Yiwu. They are all excited to be coming. I presented to the Education Minter of the region about our school and the Sister School relationship we would have with this school.
In Nanjing, I visited the school that families will visit in October. The staff and students are all very excited about our families visiting.
It was amazing to see so many schools that were hundreds of years old with over 1000 primary students. The history of their culture is everywhere within the school and it made me think about how at Dohertys Creek we too are on our journey representing all the different cultures at our school.
As you walk through our school, you will see all the gifts that were given to us from these amazing schools. Come in to our Administration Building (Wirrigirri) to see these beautiful gifts!
Curriculum Day Staff Learning
On Friday was our combined curriculum day with many schools throughout Wyndham.
The day started with a smoking ceremony to cleanse us and get us ready for a day of learning and sharing.
We then were fortunate to hear our keynote speaker Misty Adoniou. Misty is an international expert in teaching writing and has a tenure at the University of Canberra.
She walked us through the history of writing and its importance to people everywhere. She then discussed the ongoing decline of the results of Writing in NAPLAN.
She posed the question, “What if we stopped teaching writing as a series of small isolated skills, and remembered the purpose of writing – to engage the hearts and minds of readers.”
A very inspiring talk with a lot of direction we will move through in the coming years.
In the afternoon, staff were able to participate in workshops presented by different schools on their practices in their schools. This was a great opportunity for everyone to hear and learn from each other as well as creating many network contacts.
