Author Visits

“Inspiring young readers, writers and illustrators”

It was an exciting week in the Greenvale Primary School library. We had four different authors/illustrators visit all our different year levels. Thank you to Debbie Packham, our Library Manager, for organising these visits and for the following information and photos.

Foundation – Mark Carthew

On Friday 21 May our Foundation students were absorbed by our Writer / Musician, Mark Carthew. Mark read two of his books, “The Thing that goes Ping” and “The Moose is Loose”. He played his guitar, and the students danced to several of his original songs. There was a focus on looking hard at the pictures, and interpreting and exploring them to encourage in depth understanding of the stories.

Years 1 & 2 – Adam Wallace

The Year 1 & 2 students were entertained by an energetic Adam Wallace. The students began by being involved in an interactive story making session where Adam started the story with an everyday activity and asked the students to verbally add to the story by alternating between a bad thing happening and a good thing happening. The students had a wonderful time thinking very creatively about this verbal story. It was then time to do some cartoon drawings and explaining how to get emotions into their drawings.

Years 3 & 4 – Andrew Plant

Andrew Plant read his new book “Jump” with his puppet, “Stumpy”. Andrew then took an everyday scenario where a child was with their parent driving to a sporting event. They were on a country road with barbed wire fences, and a paddock with cows and a bull, and another paddock full of alpacas. The car breaks down 5 km from the sporting event and they need to be there in 20 minutes … what happens next? How do they get to the sporting event using only what Andrew has talked about? There were lots of suggestions with the most popular one being that they rode the bull to the sporting event. Students then created a rough cartoon panel of one part of the story that they saw strongly in their mind.

Years 5 & 6 – Sarah Howell

Sarah Howell is a Graphic Novelist, Artist and a self-publisher of Zines. Sarah then organised an activity to help students get started when writing a story. Students suggested subjects which alternated between subjects they liked and subjects they disliked. The process was repeated with an activity and an object. A dice was rolled to decide what the story was about. Students were free to choose their own three ideas from the ones that were selected and do their own drawings, or they could follow along with Sarah.

School Review - Validation Day

This year we are undertaking a School Review to evaluate our achievements over the last four years of our Strategic Plan. As part of the Review process, we will also determine our focus for improving student outcomes for the next four years resulting in a new Strategic Plan.

Last week, our School Review panel met for our Validation Day. Our external School reviewer, Graham Broadbent, led the day. Present also was our Senior Education Improvement Leader (Jonathan Lowe), one of our two external Challenge Partners (Peter Katsikapis – Principal of Aitken Creek PS), our School Council President (Lyla Badawy) and five of our staff – Gabby Tigafua, Meredith Clegg, Brett McGinniskin, Linda Doig and myself. Our other Challenge Partner (Anita Calore – NWVR ) will join us at our next meeting.

On the day we looked at our school performance against the Goals and Targets of our Strategic Plan and identified the enablers and barriers. Our key improvement areas over the last four years have been Literacy, Numeracy, Student Voice and Curiosity. The panel members then visited classrooms and made observations to bring back to the panel.

Student focus groups comprising of groups of 8-10 students from our JSC, Years 1/2, Years 3/4 and Years 5/6 were also formed to engage in discussions with panel members about their learning.

Overall, it was a very insightful and affirming day. We have 3 more days connected to the Review – two Field Days this week and a final panel day later this term.

Food for Thought

Angelika Ireland

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