Teaching and Learning
Meet and Greet Parent-Teacher Interviews
Our Meet and Greet parent teacher interviews are happening tomorrow, Wednesday, February 21st from 1:30-6pm (students will be dismissed at 1pm).
The booking function in Compass has now closed, so please contact teachers directly via email or phone if you wish to make a booking but missed the cut-off. A reminder that all classroom and specialist teachers are available during these sessions.
The Meet and Greet sessions are an integral part of transitioning into a new school year and are a chance for teachers to meet with parents/carers and students to share information, chat about how the year has started and make sure the teacher has the information they need to meet the needs of students. It is also a great opportunity to build a common understanding of the expectations of learning at Buninyong PS.
Thank you to the many parents and carers who have made a booking, we appreciate your interest and support.
Spelling
At the beginning of the school year, all of our Year 3-6 teachers and educational support staff who work in the 3-6 classrooms completed professional learning in the area of spelling. This professional learning was facilitated by Claire Scott who is an educational consultant and instructional coach who specialises in explicit direct instruction. Claire worked with staff to build staff understanding and knowledge in the instruction of the Spelling Mastery spelling program.
Spelling Mastery is a research-proven program that uses the evidence-based direct instruction method to enable teachers to deliver highly interactive, structured lessons that help students learn dependable spelling skills.
This week students in Years 4-6 and some Year 3 students commenced their participation in this method of instruction for spelling.
Last year all of our Prep-Year 2 teachers participated in extensive professional learning in the training of the Sounds-Write Program. Sounds-Write is an evidence-based highly structured, synthetic, linguistic phonics program utilising a highly successful approach to the teaching of reading and spelling.
This year the implementation of sounds-Write continues in all Prep-2 classrooms as well as some Year 3 classrooms. Any staff new to the P-2 classrooms are currently participating in their training which will continue over the next four weeks.
Later this term we will offer a parent information session related to the explicit teaching of phonics and some of the work happening in literacy- keep an eye on the newsletter and Compass for further details soon.
Homework and Home Reading
It was a great start to homework and home reading last week and terrific to see so many students taking pride in their homework completion and entries in their home reading diaries.
Thank you to the many parents and carers who supported, assisted and encouraged on the homefront to ensure that homework and home reading was completed to such a high standard and rate- we appreciate all your efforts.
The homework coming home at the end of this week is from our specialist teachers, as is our routine for week 5 every term.
A reminder to parents and carers to please speak with your child’s classroom teacher at any stage throughout the year should you have any questions or concerns regarding homework.