Banksia House

Teaching and Learning

I am so proud of our Community and I am in awe of everything we are achieving as we continue to go from strength to strength.

Our Assistant House Leader (Ally) and Learning Specialist (Geoff) have created a Teaching and Learning Padlet for all staff to use or add to, designed to share ideas on focussing on engagement and connecting with our students. Staff are encouraged to add their ideas about engagement for the benefit of others and for us to take stock of what we are doing, so we don’t ‘snap back’.

We are sharing on Thursdays and in each briefing as people come in, various ways to get classes started, with the House Leadership Team modelling ways such as a waterfall, and this morning playing Scattergories, to get their brains fired up.

Teaching and Learning Padlet

https://padlet.com/grayalexandra/7wk5kpx7d0a6x8fm

Attendance during Remote Learning

Our attendance remains strong and we have seen an increase in the number of students submitting work recently, with many green compass posts and personalised emails sent to students, as well as phone calls home to say well done and to encourage them all to keep up the amazing work!

This week our attendance across the year levels was:

Year 7 – 94% (19 100% of their classes, 14 at 94-95%)

Year 8 – 94% (18 at 100% of their classes 7 in the 90s)

Year 9 – 93% (25 Students at 100%, and 7 in the 90s)

Year 10 – 91% (16 Students at 100% of their classes this week, 9 in the 90s)

Year 11 – 92% (26 Students 100% of all classes this week, 7 in the 90s)

Year 12 – 95% (28 Students 100% of all classes this week)

Keeping the Connection

Stories from our staff keep coming to highlight the wonderful resilience, grit, and perseverance of our students even in the most challenging of times. We particularly enjoyed this wonderful image of the Year 8 students having lunch together as they discussed the nutritional value of food as they explored the subject of Nutrition!

Words of Gratitude

A survey conducted with our students again highlights the wonderful things teachers are doing and how grateful the students are for our support. Some snapshots from the students and words they want to share with their teachers are below.

I would say thank you to my teachers for their hard work and doing their best to show us their knowledge.
The teachers are doing great work in remote learning.
My teachers have tried really hard to not let the lockdown and COVID ruin our studies. They are very supportive and even though I prefer on-site, my teachers make online learning just as educational and fun.
I would like to thank them all, they are supporting me and helping me very well!
Honestly, everything the teachers are doing is great :)
Mr Choung explained everything in math so good that all my stress just faded away
They are all doing good and keep it up.
They already do a good job at explaining and teaching us.

As a House we do puzzles each day. We even had one student in Year 7 yesterday say, ‘this is cool!’. Some of the things we do each morning are ‘would you rather’, brain teasers, word puzzles and we even did a word puzzle in Japanese that took us days to crack – and I still don’t get it! Yesterday we also played the game below which was fun and continued all day.

There is so much more I could share and so many amazing things happening, but I cannot cover it all in one snapshot.

I am so proud to lead and be a part of our Community. I thank sincerely our families, our staff and our students for their hard work and their dedication. Everyone is doing the best that they can and together we are reaching new heights. While some days are harder than others, we continue to learn and support one another.

It is a privilege to be a part of this wonderful community and to continue developing strong partnerships with our community members. Thank you everyone for your persistence and for never giving up. You inspire me every day.

Kelly Krieg and the Banksia House Leadership Team