Implementation of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) to Improve Learning

Last week we had a visit from our Director of School Improvement and Principal colleagues to check in our implementaiton of PLCs to improve learning. We receieved lots of great feedback and some suggestions to help us to continue moving forward. Here is a snapshot of our feedback:

• Teachers mentioned that PLC discussions helping to meet the needs of students has increased, as we know more about what they need to do to improve. Peer coaching in place to allow teachers to share practice across the school.
• Many teachers were actively conferencing with students to check in on understanding and set next steps for learning.
• All students were actively engaged in quality learning tasks.
• The spiral of inquiry has helped teams to be more narrow and targeted.
• The use of data is strong across all teams.
• All work centered on vision - safe and supportive learning culture, improving reading outcomes.

Wonderings to shape our next steps may include:

• How can sharing opportunities across PLCs be embedded to ensure continual sharing of ideas and progress both within the school and wider across the system?
• How is student voice honoured and valued in all aspects of work in professional learning communities?

Buddies for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children's Day 

The theme for National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Day 2021 is proud in culture, strong in spirit. Our students had a great time working with their buddies to explore culture.

2021 School Satisfaction & Climate Survey

Each year, the Directorate surveys all parents and carers, school staff and students in Years 4 to 12 about their experience of public education. The 2021 School Satisfaction & Climate Survey will be available online from 13 August to 3 September. The survey results will help us to continue to make quality informed decisions about how to improve our school. No personal identifying information will be provided to any school or college.

 For each child in their family who attends an ACT public school, parents and carers will receive:

• A letter about the student survey outlining the reasons for collection and privacy provision for the data; and
• An email about the parent survey, including a unique link to access the survey. Genuine survey invitation emails will have the title "The 2021 School Satisfaction & Climate Survey is now open!" and will be sent from EDU Surveys & Evaluation with 'from' address EDU@qualtrics-survey.com.

If you do not receive the survey invitation, please check your Junk email folder; if it is not there, send your contact details to EDUSurveysandEvaluation@act.gov.au to request a survey invitation.

The Parents and Carers Survey will be available online in other languages: Arabic, Burmese, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Urdu, Vietnamese, Punjabi, Bengali, Spanish and Telugu. Respondents can select their preferred language when they start the survey. A shortened paper-version of the Parents and Carers Survey is also available in the following 5 languages: Dari, Dinka, Farsi, Karen, and Mon. These surveys are available at the Front Office.

For the results to reflect the opinions of our whole school community, we need as many parents and carers, staff and students as possible to complete the survey. Your feedback is important, and we hope you will take part.

For more information, visit: https://www.education.act.gov.au/public-school-life/school-satisfaction-and-climate-survey

Rebecca Turner

Principal

Measurement

During our unit on measurement, we have been learning about the unit litre. To investigate how much a litre is and how many litres a variety of tubs and containers can be, we estimated how many litres these tubs and containers would hold. First, we would select a tub or container and estimate how many litres it would take to fill. Once we had estimated, we then began to fill the tub with sand. As we filled the container with sand, we counted each litre of sand it took to fill it. Some of us underestimated and some of us over estimated. It was interesting to see how many litres some containers could hold.

Multiplication

This term in mathematics students are exploring their times tables. We have spent the past few weeks learning all of our times tables and strategies to help us solve them quickly and efficiently. Some of these strategies include doubling, adding a zero and skip counting. We have achieved this through warm ups and hands on math games. One of our favourites is multiplication noughts and crosses, this is where we race our opponent to answer a multiplication question the fastest to win a spot on the board.

Poetry

Students have been looking at different types of poetry and learning about common poetic devices. We learnt about rhyming words and their use in poetry. We used our rhyming words and noun groups to create an entertaining poetry flip book.

Spelling

Each week in our spelling lessons we begin our week with students finding words with a particular sound or letter combination. Students will use words that they already know of but do not know how to spell, words from their book work, dictionaries, word walls, alphaboxes and words from reading books in our classroom libraries. They have a ‘word of the week’ that they investigate possible prefixes and suffixes, meanings, syllables, synonyms and antonyms, vowels and consonants, root word and then use the word in a creative sentence. With their list of words, other spelling activities through the week are focussing on helping them to remember the spelling and meanings while adding these to their vocabulary.

Zoo Excursion

To accompany our learning of ‘Living Things’ in Science, year 3 went to the National Zoo and Aquarium in Week 4. We all had the opportunity to have a tour with a zookeeper where we found out loads of interesting information about the animals that live at our zoo. Some students were even brave enough to pet and hold a Corn Snake! Students had a wonderful day and many have selected animals that we saw to research further during our Science learning.

Responsible Learner

Responsible Learner 

Louis R	Umaima G	Logan B
Maxwell F	Parker H.B	Sereen M
Nyok A	Abigail L	Cooper T
Olivia J	Charlotte B	Isabella R
Alen S	Aiden H	Amelia H
Samaira S	Addison C	Lucas O
Abigail L	Ayaka S	Kahlia B

Respectful 

Arzo K

Utho O

Respectful

Responsible Learner 

Safe

Does your child have access to TikTok?

TikTok is a lively social network built around creating, sharing, and searching for user-created music videos. Users can upload videos of themselves singing, dancing, or performing some kind of stunt. Videos shared publicly can be viewed, commented, or remixed by other users.

Features include:

• Stickers, filters, and augmented reality (AR) animations can be added to videos.
• Uses can live-stream themselves and interact directly with online audiences via chat.
• An in-app store lets users purchase in-app currency that can be used to buy digital “gift” icons for their favourite live streamers.
• a Digital wellbeing setting allows parents to set two-hour screen time limits with the app (locked with a password).

Minimum age: 13 with parent consent, however experts recommend 15+

So that means, none of our students at Ngunnawal should have a TikTok account, but we know students do!

What are the risks?

• Videos and lyrics may contain swearing, sexually suggestive or even explicit material. There is no way of controlling what content appears next when your child is scrolling through TikTok.
• Setting accounts to Private does nothing to eliminate previously obtained followers.
• Users cannot delete accounts themselves and must request a delete code from the developers after submitting their phone number.
• Privacy and Safety settings are still imperfect; users still cannot delete accounts themselves, and if accounts aren’t made Private from the start, children could retain unwanted followers.

(source: Beacon Cyber Safety App)