Newsletter - Wangaratta District Specialist School

Transcription

Newsletter
Wangaratta District Specialist School
Date 3/06/’16
Ph. 5721 7424
[email protected].
Fax. 5721 8601
From the Principal’s Desk
Reports
As I hope all of you read in a letter sent out last week, this year your child’s report will look different to previous
years. To align ourselves with the expectations set out by the Department of Education, we have moved to the
new Victorian Curriculum which includes levels A-D for students with a disability. Also, we have begun to implement a new student information management system called COMPASS. Because of these two things, we have
changed our reporting format to provide each student with a comprehensive and clear statement of progress and
achievement. Each student has had 12 month goals set by their classroom teacher, and their progress towards this
goal will be reflected against a 5 point scale. You should expect to see an achievement rating of “2 – Making
some progress towards the goal” as you would expect students to be progressing towards their 12 month goals. In
some cases, students may have achievement ratings of 3 or 4 which would indicate that students have made
enough progress towards their original goal to have additional goals set for the remainder of the year. In either of
these cases, you can expect your child’s teacher to consult with you at the beginning of Term 3 to set any additional goals. We are very excited about this new report format, and are confident it will allow us to paint a detailed picture of student achievement. If you have any questions about this, please contact us at school.
Staffing
Frazer Dent has successfully applied for the advertised graduate teacher position we had advertised and will be
remaining with our school until at least the end of next year. We are incredibly pleased to have Frazer joining our
staff more permanently, as he has built tremendous rapport with the Kossie students, who are just as pleased that
he is going to be their teacher for the rest of the year!
Parent Feedback
A friendly reminder to those parents and carers who received a school review parent feedback survey last week,
could you please take the time to fill these out and return to school with your child. These will provide valuable
feedback about our school performance for our upcoming school review. Thank you to those families who have
already completed and returned.
Week 6
Mark Pirrett for being respectful by demonstrating fantastic sportsmanship during the staff/
students netball game
Principal’s
Awards
Sarah Lord for being respectful by coming to school each day with a positive attitude.
Nicholas Fitzgerald for being respectful by holding the door open for Kaitlyn
Week 7
Lizzie Hendricks for being respectful by demonstrating respectful behavior all week long
Chris Harvison
Shaneevah Jacob for being respectful by demonstrating respectful behavior all week long
Principal
Corey Davis for being respectful by allowing less able students to join in games at recess and
lunch
Dates to Remember
O.T. - Paula -
Monday - Thursday
Public Holiday - Monday 13th June
Speech - Lily - Mon, Tues, Fri.
Last Day Term 2 - Friday 24th June
Key Word Sign - Thursdays - 2nd, 9th, 16th and 23rd June
Cont.
Positive Behaviour Support News from Leanne
Wangaratta District Specialist School
Promoting Positive Behaviour and Preventing Behaviour Issues
At WDSS staff take a number of steps, both within and outside the classroom to promote positive behaviours and prevent incidences of challenging behaviour.
Strategies include:
defining and teaching explicit school-wide and classroom behavioural expectations
establishing mechanisms for recognising and rewarding positive behaviour
establishing and communicating consistent school-wide and classroom consequences for challenging behaviour
establishing school-wide and classroom processes for early identification of students experiencing academic and/
or behaviour difficulty
developing school-wide and classroom processes for ongoing collection and use of data for decision-making
empowering students by creating multiple opportunities for them to take responsibility and be involved in decision
-making
providing a physical environment conducive to positive behaviours and effective engagement in learning
utilising evidence-based interventions, monitored regularly for those students who face difficulty with learning
and/or behaviour.
In the classroom, quality planning and instruction that is tailored to the needs of the students can prevent
and reduce challenging behaviours. Some specific instructional strategies include:
When planning activities, consider both how much time students will need to complete it and how long they are
likely to be fully engaged by it - this will often vary depending on the type of activity.
Take into account the interests of your students and integrate these into lessons.
Be mindful of how much time you spend on lesson introductions and instructions. Align this time with the amount
of time students are able to actively pay attention.
Use clear, consistent, step-by-step instructions to support students.
Provide additional instructions when students are working in smaller groups.
Try to minimise interruptions to your learning activities.
.
Together We Will: Be Learners. Be Safe. Be Respectful.
Warby - Treena and Lizz
Warby has been extremely busy over the last fortnight. We couldn't believe it was newsletter time again!
We have spent a bit of our time practising an item we presented at last weeks assembly which was a PowerPoint and musical item of ‘I Am Australian’. There was a lot of discussion leading up to this presentation
about nerves and how they can make us feel and things we can do to overcome these nerves. Each practise,
one student in particular had tears in her eyes, everytime. This student was able to conquer her fears by not
only reading in front of the whole school, but singing with her peers in front of the whole school. Wow! What
an achievement, and a very special thing to witness. Treena and Lizz were so proud of everyone that was involved. You are able to check this video out on our school Facebook page. Please visit www.facebook.com/
wdss5226
Once again, another one of our focuses has been respect. We have been discussing and displaying how to respect our classmates, friends, teachers and ourselves. An example of this would be lining up as a class to walk
through various areas of the school. Warby have been trying our absolute best to stay in a line and walk quietly and respectfully through the school. Because of this Warby students have earnt a lot of Goldies!
As a part of our healthy eating goal, last week we decided to use a portion of our cooking money to spend on
Fruit. We were able to buy lots of different fruit, which we have been using to have ‘fruit break’ during session one. Treena and Lizz are pleased to see the Warby students eating so much fruit on a daily basis :)
big Congratulations to
Elise & Harley on the arrival of Pippa Alex
Mae Dalgleish. Born on the 30th of May. We
Warby would like to say a
are looking forward to Elise and Pippa coming in for a visit.
Key Word Sign.
Tina James will be conducting a Key Word Sign Workshop at the school for anyone interested in learning this
very worthwhile skill. The Workshops will take place in the Mt. Pilot classroom at the school commencing at
6.00pm and run for the four Thursday evenings in June. June 2nd, June 9th, June 16th and June 23rd.
Tina is very happy for anyone to bring their tea with them. Tea, coffee and biscuits will be provided.
Hotham - David and Hilly
On the weekend, several of our students attended the Lions Club Children
of Courage awards in Tocumwal. Ewan was one of the proud recipients.
This week we were entertained by Shabba and his African drumming. We
practised different rhythms and dances.
Xavier: “I liked drumming really fast.”
Logan: “I liked the way I drummed.”
Chris: “I liked joining in.”
Ryan and Kenny: “I enjoyed the dancing.”
Kosciusko - Frazer and John
The boys in Kossie have had a great past two weeks. We are continually building our positive relationships with
each other by being respectful, being safe and being learners. The boys were lucky enough to head down to the
local table tennis centre for PE. They enjoyed playing singles and doubles, and a round robin is being organised
for the boys as a small friendly competition.
We are still cooking with our Stephanie Alexander Program each Friday. The past two weeks we have made
‘make your own pizzas’ and this week we made a delicious ‘zucchini carbonara’!
Stanley - Renee and Simon
Stanley Crew
The Stanley Crew
Senior classes have been riding along the local bike paths to prepare for
their end of term bike ride from Beechworth to Tarrawingee.
Sport News
Students from the junior school have been enjoying sessions at the Community Traffic School in Ryan Avenue.
Sports Awards
Sports Awards are presented to Sonia McGrath for being a respectful
learner during her P.E. sessions and Vincent Gercovich for being a learner
during indoor games.
Buffalo - Phillipa and Fiona
What another great fortnight in Buffalo. Lots of new things
happening. We are now visiting the Traffic School every
Friday for the next few weeks. Hop lets us ride the train
and we learnt how to stop and go with the different signs.
We really enjoyed our first trip last week and look forward
to this Friday with great anticipation.
On Tuesday we got to participate with our Buddies in an
African drumming session. It was very loud and some
of us didn’t really like it because it was loud but we had
lots of fun. We are all beginning to find that it is very
exciting coming to school as we have lots of new experiences.
This fortnight we have been working on being RESPECTFUL. We practise this both in the classroom and within the
yard. We all sat together and had to learn how to share the
Lego and how to make a piece of construction with someone
else. We got to use our respectful words. It was fun to play
with our friends without getting upset.
Feathertop - Kate and Marley
Feathertop class are giving
change or working out the
change from different amounts
using different ways.
Feathertop students have also been
working on the catastrophe scale
or working how big they perceive
their problem to be, how this
would make them feel and what
they could do about it.
We try and cook most days in Feathertop class.
It’s a great life skill and we get to practise our
reading, writing and measuring skills. Each student is allocated a task in the recipe.
Morgan - Judd and Sheydin
Happy Birthday Harvey!
This week in the Morgan room, we celebrated Harvey’s 14th Birthday!
Harvey is a very respectful student, who is a great role model to his peers.
We really wanted to commend Harvey for all his hard work this term, so
we decided we would have a party to celebrate. We had Harvey’s friends
from Hotham join us and the class enjoyed some party food and a cake.
Great effort Harv!
In the classroom…
Our maths focus for this week has been number fluency.
We have introduced some fun new maths games for the students to learn. It was fantastic to see the students having a go at new things, using different strategies to help them solve answers and mixing it up and
working with different partners.
Mt. Emu - Leanne and Luke
Mt Emu class has begun ukulele lessons. Students have
become familiar with the basic
components of the instrument
and how the sound is produced. They are learning to
master the chords C, F and G
which in turn will enable them
to play a number of tunes.
Along with the enjoyment of
playing an instrument, learning ukulele helps to increase
students’ concentration, fine
motor co-ordination as well as
their ability to work cooperatively as a team. Well
done Mt Emu for your positive
attitude and the terrific progress you have made this term.
Mt Pilot - Lee and Tina
Mt Pilot has been having a great time
during the cooking program. On a Tuesday we cook a main meal and on a Friday we do some baking. Last Friday we
made mars bar fudge. This recipe has
lots of cutting up in it. We had to cut up
a bag of marshmallows, they were really
hard to cut up because they were sticky.
We started cutting them up with a knife,
but discovered it was too tricky, we then
decided to use scissors, and this was a
lot easier. We had to cut up some mars
bars, they were also really sticky and
hard to cut up. This week we are hoping
to make choc chip cookies.
We have been continuing to enjoy
taking part in our boys and girls
groups with Mt. Beauty. Last
week the boys had some fun with
electronics. Some of the group
had to make a clock run by vinegar and some had the task of making an electronic maze. The boys
appeared to have a great time and
some even wanted to take their
clocks home to show their friends
and family.
Buller - Allan and Mab
The students in Buller were thrilled to participate in the African drumming extravaganza
this week. As the drummer played, the deep,
resonant beat of the drums filled us with great
joy. It was impossible to sit still during the
performance, you just had to wriggle and
dance! The rhythm was stirring – it was irresistible and everyone had a tremendous time.
You should have seen the smiles on our faces
and heard the screams of delight! All too
soon the drumming show finished and we
returned reluctantly to our room with the
sound of the primeval jungle throbbing in our
hearts.
We can’t wait till the drummers come back
next year.
Mt. Beauty - Lisa, Helen, Ranni and Sharon
The beginning of winter means the end of swimming (for a while) for the Beauty class. We have enjoyed swimming for almost 2 terms, and learnt so much. Prue is a fantastic teacher, who shows us how to do torpedos, kick
on our back and stomach, breathe properly, use our arms, collect things off the bottom. All the time we have
fun and practice being safe in the water. We also had a great time earlier in the year at the town pool, with races
and the waterslide. We are grateful that we can do swimming at school as it is such a great experience and
teaches us very important life skills.
Bogong - Jacqui, Jill and Lea
The Bogong girls have had a couple of
birthday celebrations over the last few
weeks which has meant that we are
averaging one birthday cake a week.
Lucky us. The girls have been really
enjoying their Art sessions and have
been producing some amazing art
works. We have been using our brand
new pin boards to display our work in
the classroom. We have also been focusing on our writing. We have been
putting together some procedural pieces where we list the steps that we take
to make a cake or a tart. We have continued our cooking with this week’s
delicious meal being a spinach tart
with a rocket and pear salad.
VCAL 1 - Adrian and Ashley
Every second Thursday the VCAL 1 class have been going to Wangaratta CBD to sell chocolates to
raise money for the school. The boys have been bravely and politely asking members of the public if they would
like to buy chocolates to help support our school. The record number of chocolates we have sold in one session
is an amazing 53 chocolates. So far we have sold 3 boxes! Many thanks to the VCAL class for proudly embodying our PBS mantra of Together We Will: be learners, be safe, be respectful. And big thank you to the beautiful
people of Wangaratta who have been fabulous in making time to talk to us and support the school.
From The Chaplain’s Desk
Lion’s Chidren Of Courage Awards:
On Sunday David and I had the pleasure of travelling to Tocumwal for the 2016 Lion’s Children Of Courage
Awards. There we joined with award recipients from our school and other schools in the district, their families
and friends and Lions Club members from throughout the district. It was heartwarming to hear the citations
about the courage shown by the 18 winners of this award and to witness them receiving their certificate and gift.
The afternoon tea was none too shabby either! We offer our congratulations to the following students and their
families and thank the teachers of these students for completing their citations:
Normia Rhodes-Orton, Jordan Barkley, Jason Allcroft, Ewan Parker, Shakira Banks, Zac King, Blake
Brown-Cottier and Wayne Davey.
School Wide Positive Behaviour Support
Over the past 4 weeks 158 students have traded 3,245 Goldies, 31 students have reached the 100 Goldies Milestone, 3 students have reached the 250 Goldies Milestone, 6 students have received major prizes, donations have
been received from Jenny & John Houghton (Lions Club members and school supporters), Tammy Mackrell
(parent) and Val Gleeson (former Mayor and school supporter) and postcards have been sent to 3 families to
share exemplary student behaviour.
Professional Development
I have been busy over the past weeks with training as following:
-2-day Annual Access Ministries Conference in Melbourne with segments undertaken on Domestic Violence,
Children and Trauma, Resilience and Whole Care For Our Children
-Safe Minds Champion Training, Benalla-dealing with the mental health issues faced by students
-An Evening With Michael Grose on Parenting and Resilience
-An Evening With Michael Carr-Gregg on Parenting, Resilience and Mindfulness
-Seasons For Growth Companion Training for parents who are dealing with their children following divorce or
separation.
Kind regards to all as we drag out those woollies and brace ourselves for Winter.
Rose
Music with Robyn
AFRICAN DRUMMING
With Shabba
Tuesday 31st May
We had great fun with Shabba from African Drumming who taught us some cool
drumming patterns.
Everyone joined in and we even got to show a few dance moves!
Thanks to Shabba for sharing his talents and teaching us more about drumming.
And thanks to Suzanne for organising Shabba to come to our school. We look forward
to seeing him again next year!
Stirling - Kate, Stella and Lea
Stirling: On the 17th of May the students of Stirling along with Kate, Lea and Luke made their way to 15 Mile
Creek. All the students participated in hut building, making damper for lunch..delicious! and the flying fox.
All the students and staff had a wonderfully busy time and all were very very tired. Thanks to Luke for driving the bus and for the many photos.
Taminick - Shardae and Sam
The students of Taminick have had lots of fun at Apex
Park during their community access sessions. After the
class does their weekly shopping, they are rewarded with
some playtime on the different equipment. It is fantastic to
see the students of Taminick playing together.
Art with Roz
After Reptile Encounters
students engaged in creating a variety of reptiles although most were CROCODILES.
We have looked at the works of SIDNEY NOLAN and KEN DONE. Sidney Nolan did a wonderful series of paintings featuring NED KELLY. Students used Sidney Nolan’s work to inspire these art works.
FERAL ANIMALS IN AUSTRALIA
Since the arrival of The First Fleet to Australia animals from other countries have been brought to Australia for a variety of
reasons. Rabbits were brought as a food and pelt source. Foxes were introduced for hunting and furs. Camels were brought
here to traverse central Australia. Cats and dogs were brought as pets and security. However all these animals having no
natural predators have increased to the point that they are considered feral. They are causing great destruction to our native
flora and fauna. Here are the art pieces based on these feral animals.
Students of the Week
20th May week 6
27th May week 7
Bogong
Elizabeth Hendricks for being a learner.
Elizabeth has shown great effort in the area
of mathematics.
Buffalo
Jean Luc Lewis for being a learner and us- All of Buffalo for being respectful at Traffic
ing more words each day.
School
Buller
Vanessa Allison for respectful and melodi- Emily Barbary for maintaining a respectful
personal space.
ous singing.
Feathertop Alex for good maths work with Mary.
Hotham
Dylan for being punctual when returning to
class after recess and lunch
Ryan O'Connor– for being Respectful and Xavier Simpson for being a great learner by
following the class rules.
progressing to level 30 Books.
Kosciusko Matthew Cole—For being respectful by Tim Marengo—for being a learner by setting
following the teachers’ instructions, even if high standards with his work and challenging
it is something he does not want to do.
himself.
Morgan
Bailey—for being respectful by speaking
kindly to staff and students in his woodwork elective.
Colin—for being respectful by remaining calm
in a challenging situation.
Mt. Beauty Tamara Lord
for being respectful and Locky Jacobs for being respectful and opening
bouncing back quickly.
the car door for others
Mt Emu
Jordan for being a respectful student and for Zac King for being a respectful student and a
always helping his friends in their learning. role model to his peers. Well Done!
Well Done!
Mt. Pilot
W and writing a letter to his peers.hole class Kane Pierce for being respectful
for being respectful.
Stanley
Jhett—For being safe and listening to Will- For being a learner and answering quesRenee when she was offering a helping tions using his Aided Language Display.
hand.
Stirling
Aaron Feltham for being respectful by fol- Aidain Bongers for being respectful, by helplowing instructions and making good choic- ing others without being asked
es
Taminick
Callum Sartori for being respectful by saying ‘excuse me’ to his teachers when he
wants their attention.
VCAL 1
Michael Jensen for being a learner by suc- Nick Fitzgerald for being a learner by being a
cessfully completing his first time in charge great leader of his canteen group.
of the canteen.
VCAL 2
Jade Bree and Grace for showing initiative Respect for Nathan Campbell who was successful in his nomination for the Pierre D
helping out without being asked.
Coubertin award.
Warby
James Paull– for keeping himself and help- Kostya Fitzgerald– for being respectful and
ing others be safe in the yard and in the dealing with situations with a great deal of maturity and looking out for his class mates.
class.
Amelia Langfield for being respectful by holding the door open for her teachers and friends,
and using good manners by saying ‘thank you.’

Newsletter - Wangaratta District Specialist School

Transcription

Similar documents

Term 3 Week 3 - Wattawa Heights Public School

Be “Paws

September Newsletter - Good Spirit School Division 204

5th Grade Parent Orientation April 2015 v2

Ben Vaske – Unique approach of basic skills

Mitchell High School

Percussion Class Info

learner services guide