WELCOME BACK TO ALL OUR FAMILIES

Our staff welcome all families back to the beginning of Term 3. We hope our limited travelling families really enjoyed some novel adventure and special family time. Our ‘staycation’ families had cool wet and isolated conditions, which made for lots of indoor choices and challenged our creative and innovative measures to make something of our holidays.

Please keep in your thoughts and prayers families, who have been confronted with sadness, challenge or COVID-19 concerns through this period and we pray that a good outcome will prevail over the coming weeks.

A special welcome to Mrs Turner, who joins our relief from face-to-face teaching team. Angela returns after sharing special time with the littlest Turner, Hudson and her family.

The following students join us this term and we warmly welcome them and their families to our community:

NAIDOC WEEK - FEELING PRIVILEGED

Our NAIDOC Assembly on Tuesday morning was a very special way to begin our week. Aunty Rhonda began our Assembly with a ‘Welcome to Country.’

Our presenters followed with a prayer and reflections which were highlighted through engaging video productions of young indigenous people expressing their culture.

Mr Leary concluded the ceremony by pointing out how privileged our school is to have such a proud indigenous presence, highlighted through our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and supported through Aliya Morris-Boyd, our Indigenous Education Worker.

He also thanked Mrs Cameron for her wonderful support of the ceremony and Mrs Robb and Ms Nardella, who are great mentors for Aliya.  See article under MISSION.

HEADLINES AND ANTHEMS - ??????  

Dance kicks off and you can name the second half of the title - 3 word maximum. Entries must be in by Thursday 22nd July and the children will  vote soon after to confirm the final title.

So good to see our little people engaging in their first dance classes for Term 3.

Miss Julie-Anne already has the children embracing their new routines and expending loads of enthusiasm and support for each other, as they begin mastering their moves.

WE REALLY APPRECIATE OUR FAMILIES

With changing communications and the need to incorporate a revised drop off and pick up routine with short notice, you could understand people‘s patience being tested.

Many staff commented on the wonderful way families adapted to the new organisation and how nice it was to see parents and carers with smiling eyes and a welcoming wave at Drop Off and Pick Up time this week. 

Thank you for the way you have managed change, and more particularly, for your ongoing warmth and generous spirit.

Morning Drop Off

Afternoon Pick Up

STAFF LEARNING ABOUT DECONSTRUCTING LEARNING

Thank you for your support of our Staff Professional Learning Day last Monday.

Our staff spent the majority of the day looking at ways we can improve children’s capacity to learn.

We delved deeper into the following terms and connected teaching implications in deconstructing learning. Terms that are now very much in our schools’ ‘learnscape.’

Learning Intention - Teachers are now very explicit about what it is that children are learning and why they are learning it, and this is shared with the children at the beginning of the learning.

Success criteria - These are the structured measures that allow children to know where they are along the Learning Intention. 

A probable difference - When our staff learnt, the teacher probably had these in mind or maybe even in some of their planning, the difference was… we probably never knew.

Descriptive feedback - This is the constant and consistent specific feedback in ‘short sharp doses’ that we provide our learners - it confirms what children are achieving and then prompts their learning to meet the next success criteria.

A probable difference - When our staff learnt, we could complete significant amounts of work prior to receiving any feedback. The difference….teachers are now providing constant and specific feedback to learners to confirm when they are on the right path and to help lead them to engage with the next success criteria (eventually supporting achievement in the learning intention).

MISSION

NAIDOC Week Prayer Service

We were fortunate enough to start our term with a beautiful NAIDOC Week prayer service on Tuesday morning, facilitated by our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and Indigenous Education Worker, Miss Aliya Morris-Boyd. Many thanks to Aunty Rhonda for coming in to Welcome Country and to share with us some language from the local area. We all learnt how to say we are feeling awesome! Aunty Rhonda spoke beautifully of her special connection to land. 

Aliya worked with the students across the school this week, celebrating and honoring our rich Indigenous heritage through art and craft. We were treated to a cultural dance performance by Audrina and Havarna Stone to close our NAIDOC Week celebrations, and learnt about some important signs and symbols from Aliya explaining the Aboriginal Spirituality Kit. You may like to view the special songs we used to celebrate NAIDOC Week together:

Feel the Fire - Josh Arnold Small Town Culture

Our Connection to Land - Josh Arnold Small Town Culture

Prayer For Naidoc Week

God of love and compassion,

you are the creator of this land and of all its people.

We pray for your strength and grace to understand and respect the culture, spirituality, traditions and customs of our First Nations people.

Open our eyes, expand our thinking and teach us to respect the gift and life of Country.

Amen

LEARNING

Learning How to Learn

Change is occurring much more quickly than in previous generations, which means that the future our students are facing is rapidly evolving.  As the future for today’s students unfolds, it will appear very different from what we are experiencing today. As educators of these young people, we are preparing them for a future that lacks the clarity of past generations. What is clear though is that learning how to learn will be vitally important, more so than ever before.

In the 90’s the trend in education was of Learning Styles – Visual, Audio and Kinaesthetic. The idea was that we all had a particular learning style and, taken further, that teachers were supposed to teach every lesson to every different learning style in the classroom. What the theory behind this concept actually said was, we all have a preferred learning style, be aware of it; it is a strength, but make sure that you practice other ways of learning so you have the ability to learn in a variety of ways. Then, when presented with a problem or concept, students have a number of different strategies to tackle it in order to find a solution.

Regardless of whether we agree with the concept of learning styles or not, what I hope we all agree on is that we want our young people to have a range of ways and strategies to help them with their learning. In educating our students for their future we must all be nurturing their ability in ‘Learning How to Learn’. If a student struggles to spell a word, solve a problem or understand a concept, they need to be able to employ other ways to do so. Finding information has never been easier, but the ability of a person to move their learning forward, to be a valuable team member and contribute in various situations helps to build confidence, courage, tenacity, sense of responsibility and self-awareness.

If we think about people of past generations who were visionary, creative and definitely before their time, like Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, we can see people who were able to adapt to anything required by the circumstances at the time. We must make sure that our students don’t put themselves, or allow themselves to be put in a box and categorised by the notion of a predisposed, inflexible thinking style.

Geoff Leary  Principal

Karen Robson Assistant Principal Learning

Rebecca Cameron Assistant Principal Mission