Principals' Report
Principal Team Report
FISO School Conference – ‘Making Connections’ - 11 June 2019
Over the past 3 years, Koonung Secondary College has been involved with an exciting and collegial FISO (Framework for Improving Student Outcomes) Learning Community along with 3 other schools: Camberwell HS, East Doncaster SC and John Monash Science School.
Under the State Education Improvement strategy our FISO group has been working to improve literacy outcomes in the 4 schools which constitute our group. We have all been part of the Literacy for Learning program and completed the modules. We have each developed a Literacy framework and are working in an improvement cycle to plan, monitor and review our progress towards our goal of improving literacy outcomes with a focus on writing, including benchmarking and moderation of joint tasks in English and Science.
We felt that it was important for staff to come together and share, reflect and celebrate what has been achieved, and to provide opportunities to plan what comes next in the improvement cycle. This was a very ambitious event, and typifies the goals and purpose implicit in the FISO groups. As such, the day was attended by Departmental and Regional representatives and the outcomes of the day will be reported as a case study to DET. We are fortunate to have received some financial support from the Department for this event as they recognise the significant work that has been done by the teachers in each of the schools and the relationships that are being built across schools. This really is the basis of a Community of Practice.
The title of the day was “Making Connections”, which refers to both how literacy expert Misty Adoniou’s strategies fit into our classroom practice, plus the valuable connections that teachers were able to make with staff from three other schools.
Misty Adoniou, a renowned Literacy educator, led three whole school sessions which took us on a journey of discovery through the English language and how we as teachers can assist our students in decoding key vocabulary through morphemic and semantic word roots. Misty stressed her contention that we are all the ‘keepers of the language of our discipline’, and provided powerful evidence-based strategies which were targeted to different subjects and their own very specific vocabulary. What shone through was her passion for teaching literacy, both to students and educators alike, and her firm belief that language and literacy are both exciting and empowering.
In addition, to reflect and utilise our expertise in this area and to highlight and share the excellent literacy teaching that is already taking place, a number of teachers from all four schools, from a variety of subject backgrounds, held short seminars, which were attended in breakout sessions in the afternoon. We would like to thank the following staff from Koonung who each presented in one of the breakout sessions in the afternoon: Marilyn Faithfull, Amy McLellan, Kirby Sens, Glenda Hanslow, Allira Howe, Sharyn Paspa and Megan Carnie.
Also, Middle School student leaders from the four schools (including Su-Su Leeding, Keiko Rice, Chloe Pedler and Max Dooley from Koonung) played a very significant role (on their student-free day, which we appreciate greatly!) on the day in the following ways:
- Welcoming attendees and guiding them to the registrations desks
- Registration desk (supporting school staff), handing out badges and any other appropriate materials
- Ushering and guiding teachers to sessions
- Acknowledgement of country and introductory welcome to participants and introduction of the guest speaker Misty Adoniou
- Introducing other sessions and speakers
- Thanking speakers after sessions and making a small presentation
- Filming parts of the day, interviewing teachers about their impressions and what they’ve learnt
- Production of a short video of the day, which was shown at the close of the conference.
We are extremely excited to continue working collegially on our literacy priorities in such a strong FISO Community of Practice, with the goal of improving student outcomes in a systematic and cooperative manner, across our region.
Mary Eade
Assistant Principal
Capital works program
As reported in our last newsletter, Koonung Secondary College has been allocated $6,050,000 in the 2019-20 State Budget as part of the government’s capital works program. This program is at the forefront of the Education State reforms, which are providing students and teachers across Victoria with 21st century learning facilities.
A number of steps are involved in developing and implementing the program in the next 68 weeks. They include the following:
-Planning phase 1: educational direction, functionality analysis, educational specification and appoint architect
-Planning phase 2: master plan of spatial location and priority projects
-Design and tender
-Schematic design
-Design development
-Tender documentation and review
-Tendering and evaluation
-Appointment of builder
-Start up on site / sod turn
We welcome your input into what types of learning spaces would best support the future direction of our College, so please email any ideas or suggestions you have to us at: koonung.sc@edumail.vic.gov.au
Stace Kerr
Business Manager