From Christian's desk....

The great homework debate!

During Remote Learning the Senior students had a learning focus on persuasive feature in language. One student, Andy from SKG, put forward the view that homework should be banned! This led to a debate between Andy and me – with Miss Gommers acting as the chairperson/mediator. Our debate concluded with neither of us conceding on our viewpoint and an agreement that we’d meet over lunch when we returned to onsite learning.

Fast forward to last Friday and we met for Round Two! Andy made some valid points around a balanced lifestyle. She drew upon evidence to support her contention that homework led to a sedentary lifestyle and as a result led to increased incidences of obesity-related deaths.

I countered sharing the main benefits of homework:

Homework reinforces skills, concepts and information learned in class.

Reading every single night improves word recognition, comprehension, fluency, and word attack skills.
Practising maths skills such as number facts and problem solving improves automatic recall and thinking routines.
Revising is about quality, not quantity. Spelling revision reinforces the spelling rules, patterns and the ability to practically apply learning.Homework prepares students for upcoming class topics.

Homework prepares students for upcoming class topics.
Homework teaches students to work independently and develop self-discipline.
Homework encourages students to take initiative and responsibility for completing a task.
Homework allows parents and carers to have an active role in their child's education and helps them to understand their child's progress.
Homework activities relate what is learned in school to children's lives outside of school and helps to connect school learning to the real world.

Whilst we worked to some sort of consensus that homework was beneficial in areas of need, we did conclude (without firm agreement) that homework should be banned. One thing we did agree on: McDonalds for lunch is a sometimes food!

School Review Update

As shared in previous newsletters, this week we began our formal DET School Review. The feedback from our Review team so far has been overwhelmingly positive with highlights being:

Warm inviting classrooms, happy children and staff.
Excellent student behaviour and classroom management; appropriate noise and engagement in learning
Teaching instruction that includes explicit teaching, questioning, collaborative learning, use of metacognitive strategies, and evidence of differentiation in learning via small focus groups and varied tasks.
Community engagement in the life of the school.

School Review – Parent Focus Group Feedback Session

Our Review Team, School Council President, Sian Jamison and School Council Vice President, Cameron Yorke will be hosting small-group feedback sessions on Monday 16 November at 2:40pm. If you would like to be involved please complete this FORM (3 questions).

At this stage, the meetings will be over Zoom. I will send through the link on Friday afternoon.

Parent Opinion Survey – Last chance

A reminder, all families have the opportunity to complete DET’s Parent Opinion Survey. To ensure we are provided with valid data we request families prioritise this exercise prior to its closure tomorrow.

To complete the Parent Opinion Survey, head to your Compass landing page for the PARENT OPINION SURVEY 2020 item in My News, follow the links and access the survey with the provided log-in details.

Repeat: Placement of staff and students into classes for 2021

Our school leaders have now developed our 2021 staffing structures. Following that exercise, our staff will begin the task of allocating students to classes for 2021. As per the norm, our staffing allocations and final class structures will then be announced in late December.

As with our teaching teams, class groups are developed after careful consideration, balancing a range of issues and needs. Factors such as academic ability, behavioural challenges, friendships, and previous teachers are all taken into account to create balanced classes.

A valuable part of the process is stakeholder feedback:

Students are given the opportunity to list friends they would like to be with for the following year. Our staff ensure that students are placed with at least one friend on that list.

Parent perspective can also add information to support this process. If you have any valuable information, regarding the class placement for your child for 2021, that is above and beyond what the classroom teacher and leadership team already know of your child, you may wish to make an appointment with or email your child’s classroom teacher to share your thoughts. Please do so prior to Friday November 13th. Please note: parent input on the placement of their child with a nominated class teacher is not an aspect where parents have a choice.

The entire process is then completed by the current teachers and Leadership team.

I encourage families to trust our school’s judgement and, like I do, value our teachers as high-calibre people who care first and foremost for our children. Ultimately, it is our current class teachers, as professionals with all available information that are in the best position to place students in classes.

Further, I am sure that you would understand that it is not always possible to accommodate all requests and that an important part of any student’s journey through their schooling is the development of vital life skills. This includes meeting, getting to know and working with different personalities.

Christian Holdsworth - Principal

From our Assistant Principal