From the Principal, Diana Ellis
News..
We are well into the term and quickly heading towards the end of the term. Our students are engaged in a range of well planned learning activities including assessments. Your children might regularly come home and say they had done another test or assessment. Teaching these days revolves around regular analysis of data and tailoring teaching based on the current performance of students. Comprehensive planning aims to extend all students no matter what level they are at. It might appear all students are doing the same task, however teachers plan to ensure there are extra supports in place for students who are below the expected level and extension work is provided to extend students who are performing above level. Student learning plans are in place for students who are 12 months below or 12 months above the expected level and these plans are shared with parents so that parents can engage in learning at home with targeted strategies. Teachers at WPS plan together in teams each week and also have 2-3 meetings after school each week where student data is heavily scrutinised and precision planning is the result.
Parent communication with staff
At WPS we aim to have regular, respectful, open lines of communication between parents and staff in relation to student wellbeing and learning. At the moment however, our teachers are getting high levels of emails and quite often out of hours. Many of the emails have been quite pointed and often only communicate the perception of their child.
In all cases, if your child comes home and says they are unhappy or something has happened, please take the time to talk to them and ask them for the complete story – what they were responsible for and what someone else was responsible for. It is very rare that something is just one sided or it just happened without some background.
I highly recommend you go in and have a face to face discussion with the class teacher. Remember that if you send an email at night we generally won’t respond out of hours and we cannot solve it in the middle of the night. Emails can be misconstrued or often come across as quite pointed if someone is anxious about their child.
Our best recommendation is to pop in and see our staff, ring and leave a voice message during the day so our staff member can ring you back or email between 8.00 and 5.30 when our staff are at school.
At all times we ask that you treat our staff with respect. We all have the right to be treated respectfully.
Assembly
This week there is no assembly.
Long weekend
Just a reminder that this weekend is a long weekend and there is no school on Monday.
Help!!!
Our School Council annual general meeting is on Monday March 16. We still need a minimum of 3 more parents to join the team of 15. Without some more parents, we simply don’t have parent voice, which is such a crucial part of school improvement.
I am sure there are many of you that could manage to attend 8 meetings. Each meeting is about an hour to an hour and a half and you get to work with other people who are passionate about our school and working towards continuous improvement.
If you are interested, please grab a nomination form at the office.
The staff on School Council this year are myself, Victoria Graham, Jad Geer, Ann Ireland, Susan Machell and Jenni Rossi.
School Council is not responsible for Fundraising, that is the role of Parents and Friends.