From the Principal & Assistant Principal
MPS CARNIVAL
What a wonderful carnival we had on Saturday! Thousands milled around as the sun came out and everyone enjoyed the rides, food, craft, stalls, farm animals etc. It was a great carnival atmosphere where the whole community (past and present) joined together to enjoy the occasion. We had a most successful day!
Thanks to Cass Williams for her wonderful organisation of the carnival over the past year. Cass has been ably supported by Katie Griffin and a most dedicated and professional organising committee. I thank them wholeheartedly, along with the volunteers who supported us on the day, in preparation and on Sunday for the clean-up. It was certainly a great success, enjoyed by all. Although the exact figures will take some time yet, the profits from the carnival will exceed $50 000. This will fund new furniture for the prep classrooms, and new and replacement resources for our ICT program.
Thanks again to everyone for your participation in our carnival.
CURRICULUM INFORMATION
Thank you to all parents who attended the recent information workshops. Last week we also sent home more specific information about the expectations of your child’s level, and how you can contribute to the home/school partnership that is so vital in your child’s education.
The interests and needs of each and every child are at the centre of everything we do at school, and the support of parents in developing a robust home-school partnership is a vital part of each child’s learning.
PARENT TEACHER DISCUSSIONS
Next week, we will be holding parent teacher interviews, to enable parents to have an individual meeting with their child’s teacher. As many of you will have heard at our workshop evenings, each child’s progress is closely assessed in a range of ways and documented by teachers to ensure teaching matches each child’s needs. If your child’s individual needs are exceptional, an individual learning plan will be developed and discussed at the parent teacher meeting.
The parent teacher discussions will be held on Monday 23 and Tuesday 24 March. Please see separate attachment.
Hard copies will also be sent home today.
INQUIRY LEARNING
An integral part of the Primary Years Program is the use of inquiry learning, which puts the student at the centre of the learning process, and encourages them to question, investigate, discover and delve deeper into topics. One way that we are further facilitating this mode of learning is to use specialist teachers to work in classrooms when a unit of inquiry relates directly to a particular specialist area. For example, during a unit focused on The Arts, it is logical to utilise the expertise of the Art or Music teacher at all times during the day rather than in one session a week, to provide in-depth learning opportunities in this area.
We will be trialling this model in a few units this year, beginning with the Japanese teacher joining the preps for six weeks for their unit on ‘Getting Along’.
Other classes will not have formal Japanese lessons for these weeks, but will have additional classes later in the year to compensate.
SCHOOL REVIEW
We are currently in the final year of our Strategic Plan (2011- 2015) which outlines our improvement targets over a four year period. Each year we reassess our performance and develop specific targets which are documented in our Annual Implementation Plan (AIP). Our 2015 AIP was formally endorsed at last month’s school council meeting. Our main focus areas are to continue our work on improving our outcomes in mathematics, strengthening inquiry learning practices, streamlining our assessment processes to ensure school wide consistency and links to student learning, and further embedding the Primary Years Program (PYP). We are also consolidating our successful focus from last year regarding improving reading comprehension.
As this year is the final year of our strategic plan, we will be commencing our School Review, in preparation for the development of a new Strategic Plan for 2016- 2019. The first part of the review involves undertaking a school self-evaluation and this involves the whole school community. We will look at our achievements and areas for improvement, and will be seeking feedback from all our stakeholders: students, teachers and parents. The findings for our self-evaluation will impact on our school’s directions over the next four years.
Look out for forthcoming invitations to have your say on future directions for the school.
SCHOOL PHOTOS
Friday is school photo day. (Details on page 4.)
Parents are requested that children come in full school uniform. This includes the official gold t-shirt (rather than the optional maroon t-shirt).
Thank you.
Heather Hill