Heard on the Hill Term 3, Week 4

From the Principal

Please see below for a copy of last week's leadership minutes:

NAIDOC Week at BSHS 14-18 August 

BSHS is celebrating NAIDOC Week from 14 to 18 August. The Cultural Inclusivity Committee needs your support to make this year's NAIDOC the best ever! This year's NAIDOC theme is For Our Elders. We will be trying to get many elders into the school throughout the week.

A calendar of events and activities will be published next week and we hope that you will promote and encourage your students to participate as much as possible.

On Monday 14 August during period 2, we will have a special whole school NAIDOC assembly with special guests.

There will be an official opening of the student hub - its official name is Koolangka Kadadjiny Wardarn (Children Learning by the Sea).

In the weeks leading up to and including during NAIDOC week, it would be great if you could incorporate some aboriginal content into your curriculum. The SBS website has a range of resources.

Classroom Observations

As we move to the mid 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. If you are actively involved with classroom observations here are a few self-reflection questions to start the observation ball rolling.

At this stage of classroom observations, it should be more than a general observation or ‘tick a box’ compliance. Value comes from being specific in what feedback you are seeking. Widely claimed to influence student achievement, teacher collective efficacy refers to the beliefs that individuals hold about a group's combined capacity to achieve goals that relate to student learning. If we all look at classroom observations as a means to improve student behaviour and/or academic achievement then collectively we will continue growing.

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 needs 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.

IT Committee - 02/08/23

Craig Bourne, Kyle Smith, Nicki Sharpe, Catherine Simmonds, Greg Hiscox and Andrew Healey 

The next meeting is Monday 28 August. Please consider attending to give clearer direction of the committee and the use of IT within the school. The first request is thoughts from LAs or teachers concerning the use of AI within the school. This includes student use of AI as well as teachers using AI in the classroom.

Hi folks,

As part of my role as the Instructional Leadership / High Quality Teaching Team Coordinator, I can help you out in a lot of different ways.

You can contact me for help or a chat about behaviour management and instructional strategies in your class. I can do classroom observations, provide ideas for classroom differentiation and help implement our Shared Instructional Framework or High Quality Teaching Framework strategies for your learning area. I also run the graduate support group, so if you are in your first few years of teaching and need some questions answered or help with your portfolio completion - head my way.

Alternatively, you can just see me for a chat about how it's all going in your classroom and where/who you can access for further help - I can usually send you in the right direction.

Please email or find me in the Science Office/Room 30 if you need a hand, a coffee and a chat or a debrief. I am here to help!

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.

KINGIA ARTICLES

You can now submit your articles for the Kingia 2023 edition.

The deadline for the articles is FRIDAY, 8 September (Term 3, Week 8). 

No articles are accepted after this date, unless prior arrangement with Ellie Horsfall.

If you need to supply more than 10 photos, please drop your photos into the folder on the M drive (storage_admin) called Kingia 2023.

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.