Heard on the Hill Term 4, Week 6

From the Principal

Bonjour à tous, and Wanju

At our leadership planning day, last week, we gave a lot of thought to student behaviour. As you can imagine it is a wickedly complex problem with many facets to it. We have a number of medium term strategies and some long term strategies that we have started working on but I think, and you all might appreciate, some short term things are needed to get us through to the end of the term.

We can all help by showing our support for each other

• Question a student every time you see them out of uniform, even if they have a uniform pass. Ensure that the student is ok, that is the context of them being out of uniform. If it is a jumper give them the choice of removing it and putting it in their bag or getting a replacement from SS if they are cold. Otherwise, they will need a uniform pass.
• The inconvenience of being asked repeatedly is a consequence of being out of uniform.
• At the end of each lunch break, Andrew and I will walk the school, questioning errant students and being visible to settle students quicker and move them to classrooms.
• Keep your students working right up the bell. The only critical bell is the end of the day for buses. Have some reflection, closure strategies and pack up strategies up your sleeve. If you need to increase your repertoire please speak to your PC, an experienced peer or one of our Teaching and Learning Committee.
• We are working on some strategies with the small group of Year 9 and Year 10 boys who have been “ganging up” together to create safety of disobedience in numbers. Watch this space as that evolves.

At this time of year, as we get tired and the end is in sight, it is easy to miss things or not tackle the difficult parts of our work. This short term strategy, above, is really just about consistency. Consistency is the key factor for building trust in each other. The trust we have in each other to act in the manner above gives us a sense of purpose and collective efficacy. We can not do it alone but together we can sustain the orderly environment that we have built. 

Last week I also spent some time with the Director General of Education. In both a big forum and a smaller one over dinner with a small group of Principals. Please look in the Nuts and Bolts section for more detail.

Have a great week.

En Avant

Mike Sinagra

Nuts and Bolts

I had the pleasure of spending some time with our Director General for the educational conversations. This is the Department’s way of collecting feedback to help build their strategic plan. There were people from across a range of positions. Principals, Deputy Principals, Teachers, Cleaners, and Gardeners.

There were a number of presentations.

NAPLAN potential vs WACE outcomes

We are already a part of a small group of schools that are trialling a metric.  It compares the students' lower secondary performance to see if they have met their potential in Year 12. This is great data as it gives targets for individual students from Year 7 to Year 12. The Leadership Team interrogated our school data last week and I’m sure that you will see more of this over the remainder of the term and into next year.

Wellbeing Taskforce

The taskforce aims to set clear expectations for and embed effective approaches to student wellbeing and care across WA public schools. This is to assist us to concentrate on our core function. There will be 6 main foci:

• Expectations of schools in relation to student wellbeing
• Support schools implement whole school approaches
• Improve support for effective case management
• Consider the role and practice of the school psychologist
• Consider effective wellbeing metrics
• Identify policy changes and system guidance required

High Quality Teaching

When it comes to the quality teaching strategy the focus is not on the teacher it is on the teaching. There are three main components:

• School culture
• Environment impact to help teachers grow
• Teaching practice

Survey My Class

It's that time of year again, when we offer teaching staff the opportunity to survey their classes to get some feedback. We offer this twice during the year, in Term 2 and again in Term 4.

The process is simple. During the dates the survey is open (14-25 November) you send the link to your students. They click on it and off they go. It is a good idea to actually give them some class time to complete it. They can use their iPads to do the survey.

The survey data for each individual teacher remains private to those teachers. The combined data of all staff is compiled into a report for the Executive Team, which is simply another piece of data used to inform our school improvement plans.

Participation is not compulsory, but it can be a useful process to do for your own professional development.

If you have any questions about the process, please contact Kelly on 78902.

Classroom Observations

As we move to the latter part of the term this is a brilliant time to organise a peer to come and observe an element of your lesson. This could be a teaching strategy, a specific CMS feedback or a simple observation of student behaviour. The BEST teachers are always open to self-learning and sharing with others. You can see this around the school where teachers don’t hide in their rooms and collaborate with each other; sharing ideas.

I like to say thank you to Lewis, Aaron, Renee and Kevin for allowing me to watch their classes last week. I saw a brilliant ‘checking for understanding’ strategy in full operation, sound low level CMS, self-paced learning with technology and no opt out responses during revision.

Self-Reflection

I am very good at….

• encouraging students to talk about content
• leading students to learning success through collaboration

I know perfectly well….

• that instruction need to be clearly formulated
• that a variety of teaching strategies need to be incorporated

My goal is always to….

• encourage students to communicate more with each other
• encourage students to present their thinking and solution processes more often.

WACE Examinations

Thank you for your patience regarding the examinations. This is the final week with the last examination on Thursday.

Staff Wellbeing

For more than 20 years, Mental Health First Aid® Australia has been working to improve the mental health literacy of Australians.

Take a look at what’s currently available.

Download SZapp

Download the SZapp to keep up to date with all our school communications.

It's a very easy-to-use app with links to all of our school platforms, including the school website, newsletters, Facebook, calendar plus more!

Watch the video below on how to download and some of the features.

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Is something interesting happening in or around your classroom? Having an incursion or excursion this term? Please let me know!

We love to share updates from the school with our community and would like representation from each area of our wonderful school; no matter how big or small.

Please submit stories for our Facebook page via the wufoo link below and include as much information as you can, plus a few images to accompany the article. If you are having trouble with the wufoo form, you can email the information to me directly.(ellie.mackay@education.wa.edu.au)

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