Principal's Message
Preps celebrate 100 days at school!
Our wonderful Preps and their teacher, Ms Steph Chivell, shared a very special day last Thursday, as they celebrated attending 100 days of school during 2020. Celebrations were very different from previous years with the celebrations taken online. Students dressed up and wore their individually decorated ‘100’ day glasses. Thank you to all involved for organising the day, Steph and parents, for ensuring that this was a special day of celebrations in a challenging environment. Congratulations Prep students on completing 100 days of learning. You are the first group of Prep students at Warrandyte Primary School to complete 100 days of learning working at school and also working remotely at home.
School Vision
Our school vision for the next four years, has had input from staff, students, parents and our School Council. The final stage in the process is to select the wording that will make up our vision statement. A poll has been put up on Compass for parents, staff and students to select from some statements that they believe should be included in our schools vision statement. The poll will be available for one week for feedback. Some of the statements are included below. You may choose to combine statements together, change wording or make up your own.
Vision Statements
Where student thinking, curiosity and creativity is limitless
Where students/young people begin with a curious mind and leave with a learning growth mindset
Where students act locally but think globally
Where young people leave more open to learning possibilities than when they came in/started
Where families see growth in their child that opens up learning possibilities. They are inspired by it
Where young people grow their mind and leave more open to learning than when they came in/started
Staff Professional Learning
‘High performing schools help teachers improve instruction by learning from each other.’- How the world’s best performing school systems came out on top (McKinsey 2007)
A focus of our strategic plan is to develop professional learning communities amongst our staff. Last year, the majority of staff were involved in PLC training, provided by DET. Last week we conducted the first of a number of online sessions going forward, to investigate how we can embed the PLC model into our daily practice. With student learning at the core of everything we do, the process takes us through a continuous cycle of developing and planning, implementing and monitoring, evaluating and diagnosing and prioritising and setting goals. During our work in this area, we will be supported by a PLC Manager and PLC Instructor who are provided by the Department. The training provides a great opportunity to ensure that all staff are on the same page and that we have consistent high quality teacher practice in all classrooms.
…improving teacher and school leader expertise, ensuring that teachers and school leaders work together on common understandings about progress and high expectations for the impact of their teaching and school leaders who focus on developing collective expertise among their teachers.
(Hattie, 2015)
Slime Making
I had the great pleasure of sitting in with our Year 1/2 students this week, to make ‘slime online’. Mad Scientist Katie and her assistance Ned had concocted (no doubt after years of crazy experimentation) a recipe for success. There was blue slime, green slime, yellow slime and even multi-coloured slime produced by the students under the guidance of Katie and supervision of parents. Slime is challenging to make at the best of times but online makes it even more challenging. Well done Mad Scientist Katie and assistant Ned, another successful experiment and a fun way to learn about procedural text.
Congratulations
- Year 5/6 students for the work they have done on researching a country of their choice. They will be running a travel expo during Term 4
- Prep students for completing their 100 days of school
- Year 1/2 for successfully making slime-well done
Have a great week,
Craig