International Baccalaureatte PYP

Dear Saltwater community, 

Two weeks ago, Mrs. Melissa Graham (IB Consultant) visited Saltwater College and conducted our first consultancy visit to deem whether or not our school was reading to submit our application for authorisation.  

Melissa thoroughly enjoyed getting to know our staff members and collecting the individual and group perspectives of our journey. Based on all of the evidence that was shared with her, she was able to clearly develop a picture of who we are at Saltwater and as a result had nothing but positive praise for all invested members at our school. 

As a school and a leadership team, there was praise that was shared for what we have been able to achieve considering that we have basically been operating remotely for two years.

Melissa shared that our staff, students, and local community felt extremely supported across the school in our ability to implement, develop and continue to grow the Primary Years Programme with our ever-growing numbers. There was a huge amount of praise for our success with Schoolbox and the usage of the Transdisciplinary Theme pages and courses. In her words “Schoolbox has been an outstanding success and is absolutely fantastic. It is a platform that encourages teachers and students to share and collaborate as well as acting as a platform that allows the school to disseminate information across the community”.

Melissa met with several members of our community and shared that they feel extremely supported in everything that we are doing at saltwater and feel privileged that their children have such dedicated teachers supporting them in such difficult times. The feedback from our students was that “They love coming to school because they know that the teachers love what they do”. The students also said that they feel supported and appreciated, valued and heard by the teachers.

There was phenomenal praise around the relational trust that has been built when developing our purposeful learning community. Our culture is cohesive and supportive and this is a testament to all members involved in making Saltwater a fantastic establishment.

Moving forward Melissa Graham had the following suggestions for the next steps in our PYP Journey. These will be reflected in our Action Plan which will assist formulating the Annual Implementation Plan moving forward.

Next steps and focus areas:

• Continue the management and support of graduates and new staff joining our school. Consider what our induction process will be for members entering into PYP for the first time.
• Strengthen the relationship between the collaborative planning between classroom teachers and single domain teachers.
• Continue focusing on the whole notion of Transdisciplinary learning. 
• Make sure that teachers are aware of the policies that are in place. Where relevant, how does this look in the classroom. Encouraging staff to be aware of the assessment, engagement and reporting policies.
• Start thinking about the new notion of the program development plans based on the standards and practices.

Thank you, 

Mr Michael Nicolaides