Positive Climate for Learning

Richard Crawshaw 

Assistant Principal

I write this with a sense of optimism, not just because all the flowers are blooming in my garden, but because it is great to be able to count the days when we can open up the classrooms again. I feel like we all need to have a big piece of cake to celebrate! I have learnt to be circumspect during the announcements this year, and I could play it really cool right now, but I have to say it will be exciting to have everyone welcome back onsite week 2 next term. As a new member to JSA, I am overwhelmed at the inconceivable amount of work the JSA staff have put in this term, and how the community have responded. Students and families / carers have been amazing throughout this change, so many life skills have been learnt, and it gives me great confidence that we will all cope with the change back to onsite learning again.

Holiday Activities

We know that as restrictions lift, we will be able to edge closer and closer back out into our communities and spend quality time again with our family, friends and loved ones. But just to take us there I thought it timely to remind you all of some of the activities we took away from the recent PE and Health day. It is really important to keep up daily exercise and here are a few active undertakings that you could consider over the holiday period;

• Skipping with a rope
• Throwing and catching a ball against a wall outside your house, or with yourself
• Star jumps
• Dancing: choose your own moves to a dance song from https://www.gonoodle.com/
• Yoga: Check out 'Cosmic Kids Yoga' on youtube
• Fitness Circuit: Have a super session with 'PE with Joe' on youtube

Autism Alert Card

Recently, ASPECT have released an ‘autism alert’ card – see link below for further details if you are interested.

https://www.autismspectrum.org.au/alert-card

Attitudes to School Survey for students

Reminder that the students attitudes to school survey will close this week. The close date has been extended until this Friday so as to give teachers time to be able to follow this up with you. If you haven't had the chance to complete this survey, please contact your classroom teacher who will support your child/ren to complete the survey. Thanks to those students who completed the survey, the school improvement team will be able to use this important data moving forward in our planning.

School Improvement Team

Last week, the team ran some professional practice for teachers which drew connections between the teaching and learning that is taking place on Seesaw, and how we can best support learning for your children. The session was filled with creative learning, as well as teachers sharing some of the ways they have been using Seesaw features to best engage students. This weeks professional practice session, the team built on this learning by looking at the feedback / reflections that students have given teachers, and see how they can best support this, and be used for future goal setting.  Teachers from each of the sub schools shared their work with the larger group so that teachers had a chance to connect and collaborate on what best practice in this area is looking like this year. Seesaw has been a very important platform for learning to take place through remote and flexible learning, and it is important to us to bring learning from the remote forms of teaching, back to onsite learning.