We have had a great week throughout Book Week and our Book Week dress-up and parade were a huge success. Both staff and students got into the spirit with many fantastic costumes. From Golem to Where’s Wally, Robin Hood to Anne of Green Gables, the students had a great time showing off their costumes and celebrating our love of books as a school.

Katie and Eliza went all out and I wanted to also acknowledge some of the students for the effort they went to with their amazing costumes. Katie had wanted to get up on the roof to eat her cake but unfortunately, OHS prevailed.

The Book Swap has also been a huge success every lunchtime the room is filled with students selecting their books and taking time to explore the different genres before making their choices.

The term is fast approaching the end but we have many more things to celebrate between now and then. Katie is getting the Fathers Day Breakfast up and ready and you can now purchase your food choices and buy raffle tickets via Compass. Raffle tickets will also be available for sale on the morning. The date is Friday 2nd September and it kicks off from 7:45 am – 8:45 am. Tea and coffee will also be available (it’s the instant kind, so if you are like me you will buy your coffee on the way). Bring your mobile devices for Kahootz trivia.

We also have the Disco before the end of the term and Jaime Young is working hard behind the scenes getting that ready. Tickets for this can also be purchased now via Compass. The Prep – Grade 2 session begins at 5:30 pm on Thursday 8th September and finishes at 6:45 pm. Grade 3 – Grade 6 kicks off at 7 pm until 8:30 pm. Last year was a great success and this year the students are ready to have some fun and show off their dance moves! It is BYO water bottle and a small snack will be provided, so they will need to come having eaten their dinner.

Curriculum Day - Monday 29th August

The non-pupil days that are set aside for the staff are incredibly important as a school. This time is used to engage in targeted professional learning and goes a very long way towards improving our teaching and learning capacity as a school. This coming Monday we will be working towards building upon our Writing instruction by learning about the 6+1 Traits of Writing and how this can be implemented across the school to assist our students to understand what they need to do to create a great piece of writing. The framework and language will be embedded in our classroom and some of the benefits of this will include;

giving teachers and students a common language to talk about writing;
breaking down the complex process of writing into manageable “chunks;”
Establishing consistency from year to year and teacher to teacher;
Providing a solid foundation for revision and editing;
Encouraging writers to become more independent;
Providing a framework to support students’ individual learning goals in Writing.

6+1 Traits are not new but have proven time and time again to improve outcomes in writing. Designed by a group of teachers in Oregon, the USA in 1984, they analysed thousands of pieces of writing to find the commonalities that ran through all the pieces. The first 6 traits evolved from this research with the 7th coming a little later down the track. The Traits are:

Ideas
Organisation (the text structure)
Voice
Work Choice
Sentence Fluency
Conventions
Presentation

The second part of our Curriculum Day will be spent continuing the work with our Schoolwide Positive Behaviour Program and its implementation. We have launched our Behaviour Matrix and begun introducing the language and behaviour expectations in our classrooms and around the school. All staff are a part of this program and are committed to its success.

We will be working on determining what minor and major behaviours look like at WPS and designing a process that all students staff and families know for dealing with minor and major behaviours. As we continue to implement the matrix we will be acknowledging those who display positive behaviours related to our matrix and as we explicitly teach these behaviours we will see that through positive reinforcement we can build on a culture of kindness, respect, resilience and responsibility.

An example of this in action this week was when I overheard Claire asking the students of 2/3D to be on the lookout for opportunities to demonstrate kindness in the playground. She specifically referred to the Matrix and engaged in an authentic dialogue with the students about what's expected when in the playground. They shared their experiences as a class after lunch, with many of them taking up the challenge by inviting students who seemed alone to join them and helping students who were hurt to the sick bay. We celebrate and reinforce these behaviours thereby embedding them in our everyday application in the classroom.

Have a great weekend and we will see all the students back on Tuesday. Don't forget that ourpatch is providing a full day program on Monday and have arranged a musical incursion too.

Take care,

Nieta