Term 4 Student-Free Days
Valkstone Primary will be having two student-free days in Term 4. I look forward to sharing our learnings with you in upcoming newsletters, after these days.
(Angela Dawson - Principal)
Teacher Professional Practice Day - Monday 6th November (day before Cup Day)
Professional Practice days provide teachers with release from their scheduled duties (all duties which would have been otherwise scheduled, including teaching) to focus on the improved delivery of high quality teaching and learning. The Department of Education has recommended schools hold one professional practice day on the same day for all staff.
Teachers are required on-site at school all day on this day - they are not able to work from home.
The work undertaken on these days will be consistent with departmental and school priorities and selected from the following areas:
- planning
- preparation
- assessment of student learning
- collaboration
- curriculum development
Teacher Professional Learning Day - Monday December 4th
Each year school councils may schedule up to 5 student-free days (when student instruction does not occur) for professional development, school planning and administration, curriculum development and student assessment and reporting.
Based on goals from within Valkstone's 4 year Strategic Plan, we have secured a Literacy Consultant Narissa Leung, who will be working with us on developing a consistent school-wide approach to teaching and learning in Writing. Riss is passionate about helping to make sure that every child gets access to the highest quality literacy instruction because she believes that literacy opens doors.
We will be focusing on developing our understanding of 6+1 Writing Traits, in particular:
- Learning the qualities of good writing - going beyond the basics of each of the 6+1 traits. We will slow down and learn about one trait at a time.
- Learning how to use mentor texts to teach writing - we will learn how rich mentor texts are pulled apart to be used with students. We will learn how to reuse the same text for different teaching points.
- Learning how to identify the strengths and weaknesses in student writing - we will build our knowledge of all the things that you can look for and give feedback on in student writing.
Our learning will also go beyond the key qualities and show them to us in Australian mentor texts and Australian students' writing.