College News

Welcome to 2024

Transition BBQ 

Welcome to everyone in our 2024 learning environment and in saying that I’m looking forward to Wednesday night’s Transition BBQ at 6pm at Henley Park. All new Foundation students, Year 7 students, all ‘first time’ Edenhope College students and families are invited for our annual Transition BBQ. It’s a great opportunity to rub shoulders with our staff and get a feel (both ways), of how your child has started the year. Details of times are following in the newsletter. Look forward to seeing you there along with our staff members especially the new staff who are transitioning to us in 2024!

Helping Our Kids

This is our first edition of the newsletter for 2024 so I though I’d start it in a simple way of talking about how as a parent we can best help our kids. Listening to their experience of the day gives amazing segway’s into conversations that can enrich their learning. In early years – listening to their reading gives opportunity for them to become comfortable with vocabulary and opportunities for those listening to open up other avenues of imagination, comprehension and of course correcting misinterpretations (they are not mistakes, but learning opportunities). This is the most important skill to help develop and helps them on their lifelong journey of learning. Reading/comprehension is equally important for our older kids as well and although as parents the curriculum might at some point get beyond us, the daily conversation is the best way to be able to intersect and help. As a school we are always trying to intersect and make a difference to our student to help them be more resilient and engaged learners. 

Feedback

Part of our mechanism to help our students improve is listening to feedback from students/parents, our own staff. In the first two weeks we tried a Wellbeing/Engagement program for our primary students from Horsham West Primary School (the senior school engaged in a similar program aimed at older students). It was built around improving student wellbeing and engagement around resilience strategies and our school values. There has been good feedback from students and parents around parts of the program and we have many examples in this newsletter. But feedback pointed out there were also frustrations from the program that students eagerness had been stifled by the 8 day program. As principal I appreciate all feedback and I thank those who provided it so far with constructive thoughts on how to improve the program for our students. Our School Improvement and Leadership teams (along with staff), will reflect on all avenues of feedback and modify this program to give best value to our students moving forward.

Family Advocacy

All families will be receiving a phone call from a staff member who has been allocated to be the first point of contact for the school. This hopefully will make communication to and from school a lot clearer. This staff member will be able to answer your questions and will check in on your child’s wellbeing and how they have settled into the school year. 

Improved Student Data 

A lot of hard work goes into engaging the learning environment. The learning environment is students, families, staff and the community we live in. We will engage more and more with data as we work through the FISO framework (Framework for Improving Student Outcomes). In short, it’s the process for reflection and improvement of curriculum delivery to students. We have been doing it more and more in PLC and will continue that direction. Wellbeing plays a big part in improvement of student data. SWPBS supports that and we will have SWPBS data soon to look at in our PLC meetings. We want everyone’s collaborative feedback when we look at student data, we’re a team. This week I’ve added some student data from the last 3 years. See what trends you notice. Data closest to the top is most recent. The green represents the positive growth.

Mr Trevor McClure

Principal