Heard on the Hill Term 3, Week 9

From the Principal                  

Bonjour à tous, wanju and for this week Konnichwa also.

The South West Festival of Japan was across the weekend. I hope that you had the chance to visit the Matsuri Day and take in some Bonsai, J-Pop or other cultural delights. The festival stretches out over the month and there is still plenty to see if you haven’t had the chance. The Lantern Festival will be held next Saturday and is always a crowd favourite.

This week on Tuesday we will host a small group of Japanese exchange students and they will appear in some classes during period 3. 

Japanese_visiting_schedule.pdf

Japanese_visiting_schedule _pdf 129.45 KB

Student Voice and Data

We don’t often think of ourselves as being in customer service but the truth is without the students a school would not exist and by virtue of that neither would a teaching job. In the past, there was little opportunity other than a school to receive an education. That is not the case these days. Information is free and at the fingertips of any hungry learner.  Unlike the past, we are not able to have a – “take it or leave it” attitude towards students learning. Where delivery in the past (and present) is dictated by an outside agency disconnected from the “client”, it is easy to see why some students may disengage. Our job to walk the line between complying with curriculum requirements and staying student focussed gets harder and harder. You do an amazing job at this, which is evident by the many engaging approaches we have to curriculum delivery.

Student voice should be a growth segment of our work. It clearly sits alongside the use of data-informed practice that we are required to undertake to evaluate the effectiveness of our practice. Simple questions like …

“My teacher seeks the students' opinions, thoughts and views “

or

“The teacher encourages us to set goals to do with our achievement in this subject. “

help us to know our clients' needs. We do the same thing in pitching our curriculum when we analyse NAPLAN, grade, or PAT data. You may be surprised to see the list of data sets that we constantly analyse across the school to enable us to make informed decisions – eg Work Force profiles, comparative budgets, Health and Wellbeing surveys, NSOS, suspension and behaviour data, …… I know that everyone in the school is at different places in their understanding and use of data to inform practice, but I urge you to think objectively and use as much feedback and data as possible, from a variety of sources, to inform your decision-making and classroom practice.

Have a great week.

En Avant

Nuts and Bolts

This year the Term 3 SDD has been scheduled in Term 4. This day is planned almost exclusively for learning area use. It is the time for teams to review student performance, evaluate assessment and program effectiveness and collate as much of the learning area review as possible. We have done this to further ease the burden of internal TR that is usually created in Term 4 for this function.

The welcome morning tea for the Japanese delegation will be at 10:00am Tuesday.  If you have a DOTT and would like to attend please feel free to come and join us for, our Welcome festivities.

Leadership Minutes

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

Nudges to avoid burnout from the BSHS Staff Wellbeing Committee

Michelle McQuaid, Positive Psychology expert quotes 'Research has told us of the four wellbeing factors that are contributing the most to workers’ levels of exhaustion. Be sure to check out the tiny wellbeing nudges that can help to change this for you and others'.

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

Thank you to all those who got in their Kingia articles! 

The end of Term 3 is always very busy and I appreciate all the hard work you do to get me those articles.

THANK YOU!

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.