Principal's Report

Today our teachers had a wonderful day of learning with a focus on embedding our whole school literacy approach, cognitive load and fluency when reading. 

What is structured literacy?

A structured literacy approach ensures that every child is carefully supported through each stage of learning to read and write by first building, and then building on, the essential foundations they need to become confident and capable readers and writers.

What is cognitive load?

Learning is understood to be a permanent change to our long-term memory.  The cognitive processes involved in transferring information to our long-term memory give us insights into how to improve memory and make learning more effective. 

Unfortunately, our working memory has a very limited capacity and can become overloaded quickly if there is an excessive amount of external or internal information needing to be processed at the same time. External information may be physical (a teacher moving around the room),visual (images or text on the board), or auditory (the teacher’s voice).  Internal information could be anxiety about something, excitement about an after-school activity, or concern about a friend.

To maximise the effectiveness of the working memory during lessons, it is important for teachers to present new information in small steps and build on prior knowledge whenever possible. Today, teachers explored different ways of reducing cognitive load so that the emphasis is on learning and retaining new information.

What is fluency when reading?

Fluency is dependent upon the ability to decode (read the sounds)  the text (including phonemic awareness, phonics and vocabulary abilities), and fluent readers work with meaningful units such as phrases and clauses as they read. Readers become more fluent when they can quickly and accurately decode the text with ease.

We are looking forward to sharing more information about Structured Literacy and the direction we are taking as a school later this term (Monday 2nd September) at our parent information session. Please see the calendar and flyer for more details.

Bunnings BBQ and fundraising. 

We are excited to have the opportunity to raise some funds at the Bunnings BBQ on Saturday. Thank you to Elisia Nichol and Allesha Gardner for co-ordinating the event and scheduling parent helpers to assist. All our funds raised will go towards our school playground revamp plan. We also have a wonderful raffle coming up and movie day at the Capitol Cinema. Shout out to Michelle Lyons and Emma Charlton and co for all their organisation. What a wonderful way to bring the school and wider community together. 

Parent Opinion Survey

The survey is still open. To date, we have had 10 families respond. Please remember to complete the survey. All families have been invited to provide feedback and it is important we have high response rates for a reliable and valid data set. Your voice is very important to us and this is your opportunity to let us know how we are tracking.  Your link was sent out on Compass, we will send it out again tomorrow (in case you have accidentally deleted it. 

Have a wonderful end to the week – we hope to see you all at the Bunnings BBQ for a snag or 2.