Teaching & Learning

Remote Learning – What has changed?

This remote learning period you won’t see too many differences to the way in which learning activities are delivered. Feedback from our first period of remote learning indicated that Compass and Webex provided a consistent approach to communicating between school and home. 

A couple of differences you will notice include: 

Staged Approach

As we enter this period of remote learning with greater knowledge and skills that are required to work in this way, the staged approach will be slightly different to that experienced in Term 2.

Below is an outline of what you can expect as we work through each stage of implementation:

Stage 1: Preparation and Planning: 

• Develop agreed understandings of online learning platforms. 

• Develop agreed school processes for online learning. 

• Ensure all staff and students have access to appropriate technology. 

• Develop the student’s understanding and capability to learn remotely. 

• Set up a tech support system. 

Stage 2: Introducing and Implementing: 

• Lesson plans will be simple and clear. 

• Online learning will be limited to online platforms that the students are familiar with. 

• Tasks will be short and manageable. 

• Regular feedback will be provided to students. 

• Regular communication to parents.

Stage 3: Embedding and Excelling: 

• Consolidating effective video conferencing strategies. 

• Additional supporting resources/ sites are introduced. 

• Introduction of collaborative learning/ project tasks.

    Expanding opportunities to involve students in explicit teaching sessions. 

• Feedback and Assessment included as part of the learning plan. 

• Communication to parents will continue. 

Lesson Plans:

The learning activities are now found by clicking on the classes in the student’s schedule. The first class on the schedule is from the classroom teacher and the second class is from the specialist teachers. By clicking on the class, the lesson plan for the day will be revealed. 

Learning Tasks:

Where a student is required to submit work, it will be clearly indicated in the lesson plan (above). Students will then be able to click on their Learning Task tab and choose the appropriate learning task where work can be uploaded. This work will be sent to the appropriate teacher for feedback. 

Feedback:

Our reflection of the first period of remote learning indicated a need for greater clarity as to which activities require submissions to be made and how feedback will be provided. Therefore, during remote learning 2.0, each activity within a lesson plan will have it clearly stated as to whether a submission is due and how feedback will be offered. Given that we have opted for a heavily weighted video conferencing approach, verbal feedback will form the majority of the feedback provided to the students. 

Below are two examples of what it could look like on the lesson plans. 

Specialist Classes

The way in which students engage with their specialist teachers has been changed slightly. Every week, each class will have a scheduled check-in time with a specialist teacher. This time will be the same each week and will be clearly stated on the daily lesson plan. On the day students meet with a specialist teacher, the classroom work will be reduced to allow for them to engage with the specialist tasks. Having said this, the specialist tasks can be completed at any time during the week. 

The timetable below indicates specialist check-in times. 

Victorian Premiers' Reading Challenge

We have quite a few students to add to the honour board for the 2020 Victorian Premiers’ Reading Challenge. With an extended finish date and all students involved in remote and flexible learning, what better time is there than now to get on with finishing those books and registering them on the VPRC website.

It is always interesting to see the different books students are reading, let’s see what our featured students have been up to:

Mia R 

Tarni G 

Elara C

Mason R

Maddison J 

Hamish B

As a reminder you can join the challenge by following the steps below.

Your teacher will give you a Challenge username and password. Keep them in a safe place.

If you lose or forget your Challenge password, ask your Challenge coordinator or class teacher to generate a new one for you.

1.    Go to the Challenge application.

2.    Select the School/Student button.

3.    Select the VPRC login option.

4.    Enter your username and password.

5.    Select Login.

100 Days of School – 100 Days of Fun – A very unique first 100 days.

Last Friday our Preps got to celebrate 100 days of being at school. 

Students dressed up as if they were 100 years old and had lots of fun activities such as creating a crown, glasses, drawing 100, counting 100 items, dancing and also writing about what they would do with $100. 

The day was exciting and a huge achievement for all of our Prep students here at Buninyong Primary School.

One Hundred Day Poem

We've come to school for 100 days,

 The time has just flown by.

 Five months, two seasons and we're halfway done,

 When another surprise does arrive.

 It's the 100th day of school today.

 Let's start the day with a grin.

 For tomorrow will be 101,

 So let the celebration begin.