The Link

From the Principal

Introducing 'The Link'

We are proud to present our new look newsletter and hope that you find it easy to read on your phone, tablet, or other device.  'The Link' is another tool to communicate effectively between school and home.  These 'links' ultimately strengthen our sense of community and contribute to positive student learning outcomes.  We welcome your feedback on the new look!

Teaching and Learning

Last week (Tuesday 15th March) our school leadership team met with our Senior Education Improvement Leader (SEIL), Stan Szuty. This was an important way to validate the great work we have undertaken in the first half of the term. The current ‘buzz’ term within our education system is being ‘adaptable and agile’. We have been fortunate as a school to be accepted into agile leadership program led by Dr Simon Breakspear. This work will fundamentally focus on how we can make our SIT team to be most effective with our strategic planning and implementation of our school’s Annual Implementation Plan (AIP). We have been involved in a couple of sessions with Simon and are already using processes and protocols as a means to plan, implement, monitor and evaluate our work. Our core priorities this year in our AIP is Numeracy and Wellbeing. We have established a Numeracy, Literacy and Wellbeing Priority team to ensure the key improvement strategies and targets from our AIP are met.

This year the state government has again allocated a considerable amount of funding to schools so additional support can be provided to students whose academic growth was impacted upon during the COVID lockdown periods last year. Mrs Susan Anderson will continue to lead our Tutor Learning Initiative this year. Her focus will be to lead small group Literacy intervention across the school. Since the beginning of the school year, they have done a considerable amount of work to identify students and establish a whole school framework. Our learning tutors have just completed their first 5 week tutoring block. This first block was a Literacy focus, working with our low achievement and growth students. Mrs Jo Smith will be leading our whole Numeracy Intervention program. She will also be doing small group interventions with targeted from across the school. Our tutors are working very closely with our grade level teams and engaging with parents to inform of the work they are doing. The students identified for this initiative are not necessarily low achieving students. There is a very strong focus on students who have achieved low growth in specific learning areas.

Tier 2 Disability Inclusion Funding is another considerable amount funding we have received. Currently we have a Network Inclusion in our school one day a week. Adrian Burrage is working with our wellbeing team and will be working with our school inclusion leader (Sharna Dean-Wright) on the development of Individual Education Plans (IEPs) and establishing a school wide behaviour program for targeted students. We also have a speech therapist employed one per week. Fiona Biss has been completing screening assessments on our Foundation and Grade 1 students. This work will be highly important in providing support for teachers to make the necessary adaptions to their classroom.

 

Curriculum Day

Last Friday (18th March) our staff were involved in the first day of the Berry St Educational Model training. We have committed to undertake a 4 day training program, which will be completed over a two year period. The Berry St Educational Model is a highly evidence based approach to support students in the classroom who have trauma based backgrounds. This professional learning is very timely, based on the fact that we all have lived quite a traumatic context over the last two years. The key components that were of focus on our first training day were:

  1. Establishing daily morning circle times to welcome students.
  2. Establishing clear routines that create a calm and safe learning environment
  3. Strategies that re-regulate students
  4. Mindfulness strategies

This was a highly practical day and was very well received by all our staff. Our next curriculum day (Day 2) will be on Monday 11th July.

Colour Run

The Colour Run was another massive success. Thanks must go to the PFC for their organising of this event. It was great to have spectators back in attendance. All the money raised for this event will go towards funding our take home reader libraries across the school.  Head to our PFC section further in The Link to see and hear of some fun from the day!