Numurkah Primary School

From the Principal's desk 

Great to see all the students with their fancy hair and smiles last week for the school photos. It was also a busy week with the School Dental van, checking all the children's teeth. The children handled it very well and learning continued uninterrupted. I have also received some excellent reports from our community about the great sportsmanship displayed by our year 5s and 6s in the Winter Sports program.

 

Recently we have received our finalised School Review report. Over the next few newsletters, I will share parts of the report with the community. The first section of the report looks at what are the highlights identified by students, parents, and teachers.

 

Highlight 1: Wellbeing Team and Intervention

The panel found that the first highlight was:

  • The school had invested resources into the strategic development and staffing of the Wellbeing team, and students and teachers explained that issues were dealt with promptly, and there were “high levels of trust” that issues would be solved.
  • The communication between the school and parents was also enhanced, and there were more community connections to support students; this included speech therapy and other intervention services.
  • The Panel found evidence that supported the school’s positive promotion of school-wide wellbeing strategies which created the conditions of a calm, orderly and productive working environment. Teachers contributed to this by referring students to the wellbeing team as needed and received information back so they too could continue to support the students effectively.
  • Additionally, members of the wellbeing team worked with the local secondary school to ensure the transition of students from Numurkah Primary School was effective. The Panel considered the students were supported in their learning, both within the school and beyond.

HIghlight 2: Establishment of a school-wide reading culture

The Panel found that a second school highlight was:

  • the promotion of reading across the school so that students in all years were engaged in reading.
  • Investments in the school’s library, class libraries, and the take-home reading books were made so the books were more appropriate, up to date, and relevant to the students. There was also more range of text types on offer including both fiction and non-fiction texts. This was enhanced further with the school’s use of an online book library which enabled students to access books at home or in school.
  • The establishment of the Readers Workshop approach to teaching was supporting students to be more actively involved in their reading and parents commented that their child’s reading motivation had increased.

Regards

Debbie Oliver

Principal