Principals' Page

Congratulation-Resource Smart- School of the Year Award

We are very excited to share that HEPS won the Resource Smart Curriculum Leadership School of the Year award on Tuesday. Sustainability was established 18 months ago at HEPS and what has been achieved in this short period of time has been incredible. We appreciate the passion and enthusiasm that the children have brought to this newly established specialist area. Our Sustainability program has direct links between the Victorian Curriculum and the Global Sustainable goals developed by the UN. We are delighted that Sustainability has had such a positive impact on all students at HEPS. 

Culture of Thinking at HEPS

As our world changes, teaching too must change to ensure we meet the present needs of students and provide opportunities for the development of learning dispositions that will remain with them into adulthood. Learning in this way does not replace explicit teaching or learning of key skills, but enhances positive dispositions such as curiosity, cooperation, creativity, persistence, reflection, and flexibility. These are critical in being able to effectively function and thrive in secondary school and in all careers. 

As a HEPS staff we are focussing on how we adapt traditional teaching methods to ensure we are meeting current needs. A large part of this work is in developing a culture in which students feel safe to articulate their thinking, ask clarifying questions of each other, are encouraged to explore different strategies within their learning and both give and receive effective feedback. 

Within the Victorian Curriculum this culture is well defined within the Critical and Creative Thinking Capability that overarches all curriculum areas. I have copied the rationale of this curriculum aspect below. 

As a leadership team we need to continually build our practice in leading the school in current and researched practice. Lou, Marcus and I are looking forward to learning at the Project Zero Classroom conference at Harvard in the last week of June. We are excited to be able to bring this learning back to HEPS for the benefit of all of our students.

Responding effectively to environmental, social and economic challenges requires young people to be creative, innovative, enterprising and adaptable, with the motivation, confidence and skills to use critical and creative thinking purposefully. Explicit attention to and application of thinking skills enables students to develop an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the processes they can employ whenever they encounter both the familiar and unfamiliar, to break ineffective habits and build on successful ones, building a capacity to manage their thinking.

Thinking that is productive, purposeful and intentional is at the centre of effective learning and the creation of new knowledge, with the progressive development of knowledge about thinking and the practice of using thinking strategies fostering students’ motivation for, and management of, their own learning.

Critical and creative thinking are strongly linked. Students require explicit support to develop the breadth and depth of their thinking and to take intellectual risks. This attention to thinking helps students to build self-awareness and their capacities for reflection. Developing critical and creative thinking capability is an essential element of developing successful, confident and innovative members of the community.

Aims

Critical and creative thinking capability aims to ensure that students develop:

• understanding of thinking processes and an ability to manage and apply these intentionally
• skills and learning dispositions that support logical, strategic, flexible and adventurous thinking
• confidence in evaluating thinking and thinking processes across a range of familiar and unfamiliar contexts.

Copyright Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority

Semester 1 Reports & MATHS 2.0

The staff at HEPS are currently busy writing Semester 1 reports. These reports provide a great overview of students’ progress based on a number of assessments and classroom observations over the course of Semester 1. Parents can access the reports via Compass on Wednesday 26th June from 4.00 PM. We encourage you to save a digital version of your child's report to access at a later date; this is especially important for our Level 6 students as they transition to high school.

This year we are using the Mathematics Curriculum 2.0 and reporting against the 

achievement standard as a whole, providing a single, aggregated score. As the achievement standards reported on have changed, the first time you receive a report under the Mathematics 2.0 curriculum, it will only show achievement and not progress. For all reports after this, progress will be shown against the single achievement standard. 

Working Bee

Our next working bee will occur on Sunday 16th June from 9.00-12.00 PM. We are encouraging the whole family to attend the working bee and make it a community event. Feel free to help for one hour or stay until the end and enjoy a delicious BBQ.