From the Assistant Principal
Welcome Deb
You may have noticed a new face greeting you at Reception! We are so happy to have Deb Wright join our beautiful campus as receptionist. You may still see Prue visit, however her time will be spent at the secondary campus supporting the IB administration.
If you haven't met Deb yet, feel free to pop in for a hello and a chat!
Welcome Sophia
Another new face you will see around Arlington is Sophia. Sophia is providing classroom support for teachers and children in the Lighthouse, Lofties, Sunroom and Peppercorns. She comes to us with a wealth of knowledge and is working one-on-one and with small groups of children in class. She is also running the Photography elective on a Friday. Welcome Sophia!
Welcome Marina
Marina is working here at Arlington as a French Assistant and was a student at Preshil for two months in both Years 8 and 9. She arrived on 6 July and will be leaving for Madrid on 25 August where she will live for four years, studying for a Bachelor of International Relations. Bonne chance Marina!
Term 3 Joy
A lovely welcome to all of our families! Term 3 has started with a lot of excitement and we look forward to Science Week, our Preps celebrating their 100 days and some lovely Preshil traditions including Anthology, Doo Dah, Spring Dinner and preparing for Valedictory.
If you have passed by the 'Fishbowl' recently you will have noticed that it has evolved into a creative maker space where all good things happen! The 3D printer had a test run with its first group of students and the green screen has played host to some impressive film-making.
Open Mornings for Kindergarten, Primary School and Year 7
Last week we had our Year 7 2020 tour at the Secondary School. Thank you to those Arlington families who attended, it's always lovely to see familiar faces in the crowd.
Our Kindergarten and Primary School open morning will be held on Friday 2 August from 9.30am. It is a treat to share the wonderfulness of our School with the community, and the new students who have joined us this term have all settled in beautifully.
The 10s & 11s have already begun the relationship with the Secondary School through their Science program with Victor Toufas and they have met their Year 12 buddies as they prepare for Valedictory.
If you are interested to know more about the Secondary School or know of families who are interested in the Kindergarten or Primary School, please contact me or make a time to meet.
MYP Information Night
INVITATION
International Baccalaureate
Middle Years Programme (MYP)
Thursday 1 August 7pm in the Blackhall Library
You are invited to come and find out how the MYP will enable your child to progress seamlessly to the IB Diploma Programme and beyond to the career choices and tertiary opportunities the IB offers.
Meet Dan Symons, Head of Campus and John Collins, MYP Coordinator and take the opportunity to ask all the questions you may have as to why the IB programmes at Preshil offer the best contemporary education available for secondary schooling.
We do hope to see you there.
Parent Reps
Parent reps are an important part of the Arlington community and we are so lucky to have such a warm group of parents who have done a great job welcoming our new families.
TheEarn and Learn initiative last term was driven by one of our parent reps and we have recently placed our order for a class set of magnifying glasses for Bush School, art and craft materials for the classrooms and some sports equipment. A big thank you to everyone who collected their stickers! We look forward to our delivery.
Aftercare at Kelly Club
Our school day finishes at 3.30 and at 3.45 children who have not been collected will be signed into Aftercare.
If you would like to book your child in to Aftercare, simply call 9384 2204 or email preshil@kellycluboshc.com.au.
Arriving Late? Leaving Early?
Late arrival and early departure registers are located at Arlington Reception. Any students arriving after 9am or needing to leave prior to 3.30pm must be signed in/out by parents or caregivers.
Reporting Student Achievement
At Preshil we inform families of student progress in a number of ways. We provide written reports twice a year and parent/teacher interviews. If you have any questions or concerns surrounding your child please contact the class teacher.
This term we will be having a child-led conference for the Primary School on
Tuesday 3 and Thursday 5 September 4.00-7.00pm
This is a celebration of your child's learning. Further details will be sent in the coming weeks. You will be able to make a time through Compass.
The Kindergarten will be running their parent interviews on
Tuesday 3 September
3.00pm-6.00pm and
Thursday 5 September 2.00pm-5.00pm
If you are unable to log into Compass or have forgotten your login details please contact me or Deb in Reception.
PYP and the Art of Choosing
As we prepare for our verification visit in a couple of weeks, we have had a number of thought-provoking and robust staff meetings where we look at how the framework of the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme (PYP) can support the strong philosophy of Preshil. On our agenda recently was a discussion surrounding 'choosing'. An extract from May 2008 is as relevant today as it was then.
The Importance of Choice
Preshil News Diary Issue #5 - May 2, 2008
A core aspect of Preshil education, which runs through all grades, is the exercise of choice. It is through the exercise of choice that the child develops an understanding of his or her learning style, likes and dislikes, personal strengths and weaknesses, and personal identity. It is through the exercise of choice that exploration can take place, experiments made, new ground covered and mistakes assessed and corrected. It is through the exercise of choice that the child becomes an engaged and active learner.
Choosing is built into the Arlington curriculum. From very early years, within carefully chosen limits, Preshil children are given choices. These choices expand as the child develops. These are not superficial choices, the teacher is not paying lip service to choice, nor is it “open slather”: these choices are carefully selected and crafted by the teacher to engage the child at the level of his or her development. These choices are offered out of a deep respect for the child.
Gradually, through the exercise of choice, the child will begin to take charge of his or her own learning. The goal of the teacher is to move the learner from dependence on extrinsic motivation to a position of an independent learner, who is intrinsically motivated. Finally the child will move into metacognition: the learner understands himself or herself as a learner and can take personal control and responsibility for his or her own learning. Thus the person who knows himself or herself and who understands the power of exercising choice can move from a superficial understanding to a deeper or profound understanding.
This is not just academic understanding but involves the whole person. It is
“also about the skill of the wood-turner, the compassion of the nurse, the empathy and understanding of the counsellor, the skill of the athlete - in fact anything that makes us distinctive human beings.”
It involves the art of living. Extrinsic motivation is a weak force that leads to compliance and dependence on the teacher. Once the teacher is removed the learner is likely to give up. The learner has not yet learned to think for himself and is unlikely to reflect on the information that he or she has gathered and, therefore, it has no personal meaning for him or her. The intrinsic learner who has learned to think and act for himself or herself, becomes creative, develops personal wisdom and learns to make moral judgements.
It is essential that we teach children to think and allow them to develop their own images and their own thoughts. We must help children to believe that they do have a choice and they can choose their future. They may foresee a future that is different from the present and from the past and that they can work together to affect change.
In the developed world, progressive education, in the 1980s, came to be regarded as passe. The debate was taken over by those who were concerned with standards, with levels of achievement, with training and certification. Education was commodified and made subject to market forces. Schools became competing supermarkets through which the student wheeled his or her trolley to the check out desk, emerging with more or less tradeable skills on the jobs market and possibly a high enough ENTER score to pass into a larger and more exalted supermarket. The function of education for individual fulfillment has been lost in the education debate. And yet the students of today are society in the making. They are the creators of 'tomorrow'.
In reading the report of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century, produced by UNESCO, and entitled Learning: the Treasure Within, it is clear that many of the developing countries do not have such a utilitarian view of education but see education as the way forward to the creation of a better world. In this report Karen Singh writes,
“We live in a shrinking world in which the malign heritage of conflict and competition will have to make way for a new culture of convergence and co-operation, and the alarming gap between the developed and the developing world will have to be bridged if the rich promise of the next millennium is not to evaporate in the conflict and chaos that is already overtaking many parts of the world. This is the basic challenge to education in the twenty-first century.”
One of the goals of Preshil is to educate students to meet this challenge.
Natalie Jensen
Assistant Principal K-12