Principal's Report
Appreciations
Thank you parents, thank you students and thank you staff. The learning curve has been demanding and growth of understanding has been impressive. I feel that as a school community we are managing as well as can be hoped.
This week
The last few days seem to have taken an age – paradoxically at times, events seem to have happened a moment ago and then I remember it was last week. Is this the effect of uncertain times? And yet so much has been achieved. There has been an exceptional level of student and parent engagement in the learning activities that have been prepared and regularly posted by our teaching teams. I have liaised directly with many staff, especially team leaders, mostly offsite, as they work assiduously creating curriculum to match their team and individual planning. Their goal is to try to curate appropriate learning tasks that are able to be managed with as much independence as is possible. We understand that this is dependent on many factors; student age, instructional reading capacity, interest and motivation, subject skill and perseverance. Your child’s teacher is monitoring student efforts and is communicating to parents and children whenever they become aware that there is a learning, or practical issue to be surmounted. All teachers have been supplied with parent contact details and may seek to ring you directly if they see a need to assist. Please understand these calls are likely to appear with the teacher’s personal phone number blocked. Teachers will also communicate mostly as comments to the child within the class Google Classroom, or to the parent by email. If you as a parent have a query best addressed by leadership, or administration, we encourage to use the school email footscray.west.ps@edumail.vic.gov.au or via Flexibuzz (Contact), and it will be promptly forwarded to the relevant staff member(s).
We are delighted that the vast majority of students are very active in their Google Classrooms. We have realised however in a small number of situations that while the student has been operating online, they have not submitted work. Please ensure that the children are selecting the ‘submit’ button on completion. If only all of life’s challenges were so easily solved!
Patching Family set up for the first school day. Harry was still keen to wear his school uniform.
Pupils of the Week online - Replicating the presentation of Pupils of the Week, such a long lived tradition at FWPS, cannot be the same as presenting them at assembly. Today our first online POTW will be listed and awarded by the classroom teacher through their virtual classrooms. Well done to all our first ever learning from home Pupils of the Week.
Screen time – We are currently requiring a far greater commitment to on line learning. All the teachers are finding the focus (mostly on laptops) is tiring. It is also for the students who are predominantly working on tablets. It is really important that everyone finds time for a break every couple of hours at least. We also recommend that the children try at least one specialist activity daily.
A reminder that the teachers are writing personalised student comments providing individualised feedback, advice and appreciation to particular children and their parents. It is not appropriate to share comments on social media.
Specialist’s Google Classroom – Thanks to a really collaborative effort led by Stratos Tzanoudakis, Lauren Jamieson and John Paterson with the support of all the Specialist team for exploring workable ways for students and parents to engage with Specialist classes during this period of remote and flexible learning from home. After the initial Google Classrooms were created, it soon became apparent that while working really well for individual classroom, the nature and complexity of providing a curriculum stream and feedback mechanism for the Specialist team was flawed.
The following edited notes were created by John and are shared for your understanding and interest.
First Specialist Google Classroom
The initial specialist Google Classroom had several problems, notably that:
- All students, grades and subject areas were in one space
- There was no Google Classroom mechanism for students to submit their work
- Teacher feedback was reactive, in that we needed to monitor all chats on the Stream to see if students had specific questions relating to their weekly work, and/or how they could submit it.
Second Specialist Google Classroom
The new Specialist Google Classroom was set up to address these issues. It was made to allow as its major function for students to have a mechanism to submit their work and communicate with teachers effectively.
What it has fixed is the following:
- Students are now organised into learning levels (there are now specialist classrooms for the 5/6, 3/4, 1/2 and prep cohorts), which allows for clearer communication
- We are utilising the Classwork section, which allows teachers to clearly assign work to all students and gives them a mechanism to submit their work, and have teacher feedback specific to that task
- From a student and parent perspective, this new system works as it should. Communication is possible, and work is clearly set and able to be responded to.
- Teachers that have a better understanding of Google Classroom can support those that require assistance.
- Teachers will then have the responsibility of checking the work and comments submitted in their own classrooms and replying as necessary.
We are pleased to see that well over 500 students are now active on the specialists google classrooms. Let's aim for 100% participation.
Coming Up
ANZAC Day – It will be very strange to commemorate Anzac Day in this remote manner for the first time since the day was first acknowledged in 1919. For over a century the sacrifice of Australians at war and in peace keeping forces, has been commemorated in so many ways. Our School Captains are planning to work with me on creating a short video so that we do not let the day go unacknowledged at Footscray West.
Prep information 2021– Due to the COVID-19 situation we have had to work on new ways to provide transition information for parents of current pre-schoolers. This information is being regularly updated on our school website http://fwps.vic.edu.au/index.php/enrolments/starting-school/
Due to the COVID-19 restrictions we are disappointed that we are unable to run our traditional face to face Prep transition information sessions this term. We are currently developing a video to showcase what our school and prep programs have to offer. This will be available on Friday, 1st May. We will then provide a period where we will seek your questions. At a later stage we will provide an updated presentation responding to your queries. That link will be available on this website.
If you have current queries or concerns please email us directly at