Jacana School for Autism Newsletter

Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Daniel Moloney

Assistant Principal

Hi there, everyone!

 

Welcome back everybody for a busy, yet short Term 2. Classroom teams are already working hard re-establishing their routines and showing their skills right across the curriculum. We are excited to have implemented new systems in distributing your child's reports 

 

Semester 1 PLSPs Follow Up

Late in Term 1, as part of our new process, your child's Personalised Learning Support Plan (PLSP) was uploaded to the XUNO platform/Family App rather than sent by email. Families were sent an email invitation to set up a password to access the platform and download their child's PLSP.

If any families are unable to do so, please call us by phone and our admin staff  will assist you to do so.

 

Term 2 SSGs

As Corinne has mentioned, our Term 2 SSGs will be running in Week 4-6 (May 16th - June June 2nd). Parent letters will be distributed by your child's teacher in Week 3. From there, you can begin to negotiate a meeting time for Term 2 SSGs.

We encourage you to continue to develop a shared understanding of your child's PLSP goals with their teacher. A joined partnership is the best way to plan for those incremental improvements to take place along their learning journey.

 

JSA Website Upgrade

It is with pleasure that we engage our original web designer, Andrew Carlisle from ACBC to oversee our school website upgrade over the next term. Apart from revitalising the overall format, we will be formulating a suite of new photography reflective of our diverse curriculum programs and processes. We will be developing mechanisms to switch our website display between English and several other languages, which will better represent and address the communication needs of our JSA community.

 

Mathematics Assessments

As part of our AIP focus, we endeavour to establish teaching and learning in mathematics that is continually well informed with a range of evidence. 

 

Recently, the Numeracy Curriculum Team audited our teachers' current assessment practices and use of resources to facilitate existing mathematics programs. The team have agreed to implement 'Essential Assessment' as a NEW school-wide numeracy assessment tool that can be delivered online or by hand. For the majority of our students learning at Levels C-8, the data generated from these assessments can be analysed to identify gaps in your child's knowledge, and to then inform future teaching. This data can be collated from a schoolwide viewpoint informing our students' abilities across the board. In having this data, the team can then review and strategise subsequent professional learning, resourcing necessary to then impact student outcomes.

 

JSA Curriculum Teams

At JSA, we have 5 Curriculum Teams that work collaboratively to formulate teaching and learning across the following areas:

  • Personal and Social Capabilities (lead by Sara Parsons)
  • Secondary Curriculum (lead by Miranda Ingram)
  • Humanities and Science (lead by Loren Cendlewski) 
  • Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden (lead by Ashley Stace)
  • Numeracy (lead by Shannon Thompson)

Of our 5 curriculum leaders, Sara, Loren and Ashley have been appointed as our 2022 'aspirant leaders' who have demonstrated clear leadership potential and a genuine desire to expand their skills and opportunity to contribute further to the school process. In saying so, they should be applauded.

 

In Week 10, each team shared their plans and continued work to take place in Term 2 at our termly 'Share the Work' session. Briefly, so that you can understand, our additional curriculum focuses include:

  • Personal and Social Capabilities Unit: Help Seeking and Cyber Safety
  • Secondary Focuses: Career Planning, Living Skills, Travel Education and VCAL soon to be Victorian Pathways Certificate (VPC) in 2023
  • Humanities/Science Unit: Gravity and Motion
  • Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Unit: Tools we use in the garden
  • Numeracy Focuses: Development of Number and Algebra Teacher Guide

This year, I would like to keep families more aware of our ongoing multi-disciplinary curriculum areas and specialist areas in case you might like to discuss these with your child. You might spot a photo or two on Seesaw so with this information, all should make more sense.