The Golden Vine

From the School Leadership Team

Farewell Service for Pastor Greg 

We will take the opportunity to give thanks for God's blessing of Pastor Greg to our community over the past eight years at a special whole school Chapel Service on Friday 24 November, commencing at 8.50am in the Worship Centre. Pastor Greg is much loved in our community and this will provide a great opportunity for us to pray for the next chapter in his journey as he moves to Queensland with his wife, Connie, and takes up the role at Faith Lutheran College, Redlands, in 2024. 

 

The Chapel Service will be followed by morning tea in our cafe, which will give all of our families to catch up with Greg personally, to give him our thanks and to wish him well for the future. 

 

Strategic Plan and Survey

Our School Board has been working extensively with Peter Bleckly, our external consultant, and our School Leadership Team, to finalise our new School Strategic Plan. 

A reminder that our parent  survey is still open for our families to provide feedback on the draft version of the plan as we seek to refine, approve and launch a final version. 

Please refer to the letter and email sent home last week for the survey link, as well as some helpful information about classes and class placements for 2024, and an update on our new Foundation classroom building project. 

 

Will Wallace

Principal

In the coming weeks, our teachers will be busy writing progress reports. As an IB PYP (Primary Years Primary) school, our learning is transdisciplinary, drawing subjects together into our units of inquiry. Of course, as we have discussed many times, some of our learning doesn’t authentically fit into our units and Programme of Inquiry which is a framework for organising our curriculum. This is especially true for a large portion of the Australian Curriculum in mathematics and English.

 

We continue to report on the Australian Curriculum and have implemented version 9 which was released in 2022. We continue to learn what the changes in the curriculum mean for our student learning and, as with change, this is different across the school and across subjects. While we use Toddle to share student work, self, peer and teacher assessments and information about learning, the progress reports are used to share:

  • the achievement standard in each subject and the key ideas in Christian Studies
  • how children are meeting the achievement standards in the subjects at your child’s year level and learning in Christian Studies
  • comments in English and Mathematics relating to areas of strength and areas of future growth
  • an assessment of how students are developing in their skills to approach learning. This is in the categories of communication, thinking, research, self-management and social skills. 
  • A general comment about your child’s learning, a student comment and comment from leadership.

More information is being released about version 9 of the Australian Curriculum and a recent addition has been information about each of the subjects. I encourage you to visit the Australian Curriculum website at: https://v9.australiancurriculum.edu.au/resources/parent-information#accordion-0361f0474e-item-ac31ec8090

This parent information offers you a deeper understanding of the how the curriculum meets the needs of learners within Australia in each subject and at different year levels. 

 

Please pray for our teachers as they write reports as this is a task that takes time as they try to accurately share their assessment of your children’s learning.

 

Jayne Zadow 

Director of PYP, Teaching and Learning