assistant principal's message

dear families

On Wednesday, I had the good fortune of joining the Junior and Specialist team’s planning meetings. A huge thank you to all families who have been giving us feedback as to how you’re finding the remote learning curriculum. As I’m sure it is no surprise to anyone that at our meeting, we discussed this and continued refining both to the amount of content and how it is being delivered to both you and your children.

During the meetings the teachers shared some of the challenges and benefits of online learning. Some benefits included:

• Some children talking more when videoed with their family than they normally do at school
• Some children thriving using technology such as Seesaw
• Teachers having an opportunity to give very specific feedback to children on their work, including being able to record a message
• Teachers really enjoying videos send from the children

Some of the challenges included missing the children and not having them in front of the teachers so that they can tweak the learning as frequently happens in the classroom. I think it is this point that has contributed to too much work being sent home. As teachers we constantly make adjustments to what we are presenting based on student feedback. This can include their questions, body language and progress. So as Hannah said on Monday, we are all learning and are definitely in the “learning pit” and it is your feedback that helps us to make the necessary changes hopefully making remote learning less stressful and more successful for all!

To achieve this, all teams are committed to reducing the quantity of work and are aiming at simplifying the instructions. As I mentioned last week, we want us all to be gentle on each other. There is simply so much learning that is and can happen during this time of physical distancing, and we want this overwhelmingly to be positive. By being gentle on ourselves we’ll be able to celebrate all children’s learning, not just their academic growth, but their fascination with their garden, their pleasure at cooking dinner for us, the fun in kitchen chemistry, whatever direction the learning takes place. It is all valuable!

Last week, in the “Remote Learning Survival Guide” Hannah mentioned reinforcement and the Behaviour Response pathway.

Let me start with reinforcement. If you listened to a foundation classroom, you’ll hear comments like, “Oh my goodness, I can’t believe you did that! That work is incredible, look at how you…. Thank you…you are using whole body listening. Look at the way…is helping to clean the room.” It is non-stop. Trust me this continues on through the years, it just might look and sound a bit different! Besides verbal reinforcement, we regularly use reinforcement systems which work towards either a class goal, e.g. Friday afternoon game, or an individual goal, e.g. a 10 minute game with a friend, reading your favourite book, some mindful colouring in – something that strongly motivates the child and that they’ve had a say in selecting. This is the key here, it must motivate the child so that they are excited to be working towards achieving this. In a family it could be a game of Cluedo, a favourite video to watch, time on the ipad (if they’ve not already had enough!), cooking a favourite cake, going on a bike ride. Where possible, I encourage time with the child, not time away from…saying that, at the moment everyone may need some solidary time. Once again it is up to you and your family to decide on the reinforcement…remembering, it needs to be motivating! Experts say to be effective we need a ratio of 4 positives to 1 negative comment. Now that’s a challenge for us all. Think about how many positive comments you make a day!

I know that all families would have seen the Behaviour Response Pathway before as children bring it home with their classroom agreement. I thought I’d take this time to talk you through it to see if you’d like to develop something similar at home. I know that your children could certainly help with this task and can explain the school pathway with you.

This is a tool created to provide all children with a clear and consistent pathway of how unhelpful behaviours will be managed. For those of you, who like us follow a Restorative Justice approach, it is when we do to a child. For more reading on Restorative Parenting, please read the attached document by Kristy Elliott.

She worked with our community last year. Looking at the pathway attach note that the proactive strategies, stated at the top of the document are those used constantly to reduce the need to follow the pathway. While in the classroom we generally stay in the ‘Low Level” or yellow space, there are times however when children continue to impact on the learning or safety of others, then we follow the pathway, and where necessary set consequences.

So can you use this at home? My answer is yes, however it has to reflect your home situation and your beliefs and values. For instance, in my home, my children grew up knowing that they absolutely weren’t allowed to physically hurt one another, our family expectation was…In our family, we are gentle and kind to one another. What do you think your families expectations are? If you have another adult at home, it may be very worthwhile to discuss that and come up with 2 or 3 family expectations or rules for this remote learning time. Some examples could include:

• In our family when we see someone doing work or learning, we leave them alone.
• In our family when someone is speaking to you, we listen and then explain how we are feeling.
• In our family, we know that sometimes we all make mistakes and we say sorry and try not to make the same mistake again.

For each of these rules, there will be 2 or 3 actions, how we can work towards achieving this, e.g.

In our family when we see someone doing work or learning, we leave them alone…

Actions:

• We wait for the person to finish their phone call, typing their sentence and they look at us.
• We set a timer before we start working so we know how much longer we need to wait.
• We look at the timetable to know what else we can go on with.
• We go to our activity box / table and do something else that we like doing, we might read a book.

Once these behaviours are established through practice; we know that the child is both capable and independent enough to do the task; and we celebrate them being doing the right thing (as much as humanly possible) then it may be time to follow the agreed pathway. Again, this needs to be developed with your children and you need to decide what a low, medium and severe level behaviours are. For instance:

In our family when we see someone doing work or learning, we leave them alone…

• Low level Behaviour: Continuing to play noisily when someone else is working:

“I need you to be quieter so that I can work or I’ll need to take that away from you and you won’t have it back until tomorrow.”

• Medium Level Behaviour: Continuing to play noisily when someone else is working:

“I’ve asked you before to be quieter so I can work, I now need you to give me that. I’ll give it back to you tomorrow, now select something else…or we won’t be able to do…(something that the child is looking forward to doing.)”

• Severe Level Behaviour: Continuing to play noisily when someone else is working:

“I’ve now asked you 3 times to be quieter so I can work and you’ve not. Now we can’t do…that you were looking forward to doing.” This is where reinforcement is POWERFUL!!!

Next week Deb Robins is going to launch the Wellbeing Blog. This will contain many of the links and activities that I refer to in my newsletters as well as many others. Deb will send out a set of remote learning visuals which I think you’ll find very helpful, providing further support when creating the learning environment and a daily schedule as I mentioned last week.

It has been great to see so many of you communicating with either your child’s classroom teacher or with myself. Please remember that we all need clear information at this time. Feel free to email me on white.wendy.p@edumail.vic.gov.au. From a personal perspective, I am fully aware of and worried about co