Heard on the Hill Term 2, Week 6

From the Principal

Bonjour à tous, and Wanju

Sorry for missing last week's Heard on the Hill.  I was away in Albany at the SWER Principals’ Conference. There was some significant learning for us. 

Aboriginal Education
Our Department documents have a focus on Aboriginal students succeeding as Aboriginal people. What does that look like? Currently, we are measuring the success of Aboriginal students against department measures that do not take into consideration the communities input. I have asked our Aboriginal Advisory Council to consider this issue and provide us with some advice.

Neuro-Diversity
We were addressed by the ICAN founder. ICAN is a company run by neuro-diverse staff to mentor students with Autism. As well as providing his own stories, Chris gave some strategies for Principals and staff to support students with Autism.

Recruitment
Staffing shortages and department responses were presented to the group. The situation required some long, medium and short-term solutions. Today I am meeting with the Dean of Education from ECU to discuss some strategies to build a pipeline of supply for us.

Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS)
MTSS is an acronym that you will hear with increasing frequency. It simply is ensuring that the supports that we have at each tier are built on each other and are measured for effectiveness. You will see this already in action across the school. Analysis of our data for effectiveness and an audit of many of our processes will direct resources more directly where they make the biggest difference to students.

AI Chat Bots
You would have seen a local Bunbury man who is at Oxford in England on 60 Minutes talking about Artificial Intelligence. It has been a hot topic for a while now. The speed of change is moving quickly and we will need to keep our eye on this space or be run over. I recently purchased a subscription to ChatBox. No, this newsletter is not created by it but I urge you to start using and investigating ways to use these AI chatbots to enhance the teaching and learning process. I see now that there are even PL sessions that you can access.

Have a great week.

En Avant

Nuts and Bolts

HIT Strategies for students with Autism

• Give the focus of some students a purpose - set them a specific role within your classroom
• Leverage their interests and motivations to deepen their learning and increase their engagement
• Model positive first reactions to your students
• Be explicit about what not to do in investigations and task
• Be explicit with pairing during collaboration learning activities

CORNELL NOTES

The Instructional Leadership Team (High Quality Teaching Team) are asking all teachers to encourage students to take their in class notes using the Cornell Note-Taking System.

Why are we asking?

Research shows that taking notes by hand is more effective than typing on a laptop. The physical act of writing can help students remember better than just listening or reading.

Students can do this on their iPads using a stylus/Apple pencil or in paper notebooks. It is ideal for note-taking in class and requires very little preparation. There are some apps available as well that help students organise their notes such as "GoodNotes 5". OneNote is also handy.

I am focusing on just my Year 7 class at the moment and especially focus on my "messy" writers. It is part of our classroom routine where students enter the room, rule up their Cornell note page and write the title of the days lesson at the top. Sometimes the cue section is used for a question, sometimes for a definition, and sometimes for a prompt for procedural writing - aim, hypothesis etc.

I am currently using the summary section as a reflection or sometimes a hook for the next lesson. My favourite strategy is getting the students to write a $2 summary, where each word costs 10c. You can switch up the cost of each word to make them really have a think about how they can make their summary concise. I love watching the wrinkled brows and the finger counting as they try to figure it out.

If you are not sure how to use Cornell notes in your classroom or how to introduce it to the students, please come to find me for a chat so I can help you out.

A shout out and thanks to staff that have sent me examples of students using Cornell notes - it is much appreciated. Any more examples sent my way would be great.

I hope you have a fabulous week

Cathy Watson

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 (29 May - 9 June) you send the link to your students. They click on it and off they go. It is recommended that you 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.

LOCK UP & LIGHTS

Please be mindful when leaving school in the afternoon to turn off lights and lock doors behind you.

The cleaning staff will be grateful for your assistance.

Please also remember, if you are the last to leave the Kingia carpark in the afternoon please lock both gates behind you.

Workload Advisory Committee

Workload is often the main cause of staff stress or anxiety. Our school has a workload advisory committee, which was set up as part of our focus on Staff Wellbeing in our previous business plan, and which we continue to support through the new Staff Wellbeing Committee.

Staff Representatives for this year (continuing their 2 year tenure) are: Renee Chapple, Luke Marinoni and Adam McGill.

If you have workload issues, please discuss them first with your line manager, as many of these can be resolved quickly and easily.

If you have an issue that cannot be resolved, please submit it via either the survey link provided here, or on the document below (which can also be found in the School Templates folder on your desktop.

Social Media Content

We love seeing students in action, whether in a classroom setting, in an incursion or off-site for an excursion or camp.

If you are conducting any activities you think are suitable for our school's Facebook or Instagram pages, please submit your content through the link below.

Please contact me with prior warning if you would like me to attend a session, lesson, activity etc if you would like me to take photos/videos to accompany your story.

If you have taken photos on your phone/iPad and are unsure of how to transfer these to me, please send me an email or come and visit me and I can assist you.

Submit your Facebook post using the link below.

Schoolzine

Keep up to date with all the latest news for staff and parents via the schoolzine app. You can access Heard on the Hill, the school's website, Facebook page, calendar, Connect, and more via the homepage of the app.

This easy-to-use app also sends you notifications when newsletters have been published.

See below for how to download the SZapp.