Last week, the focus was on our students as we celebrated lifelong learning for Education Week. This week it is the teachers' turn! Professional Learning is an essential part of our 2021-2024 Strategic Improvement Plan in helping build teacher capacity to be able to achieve our goals. The most effective professional learning is collaborative in its nature and ultimately has a positive impact on outcomes for students.
Yesterday, Mrs Baker and Miss Castle started training in teaching reading with the focus on fluency. Fluency is reading expressively with accuracy and at a good pace. It has an important link to comprehension. Mrs Dowman, Miss Eveleigh and Mrs Le Roux completed this training earlier in the year and found it very worthwhile. You may notice that some of students have a fluency skill as their reading goal.
Today, Miss Castle moved from reading to maths and worked with our Teacher Quality Advisor from Adamstown office to learn how to administer a new online number assessment. We are looking forward to learning about this new assessment and the information it can give us to help our students improve their numeracy skills.
To finish off the week, Mrs Le Roux, Mrs Dowman and Miss Eveleigh will be completing the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check. The Year 1 Phonics Screening Check is a short assessment that tells teachers how students are progressing in phonics. The Check takes 5-7 minutes and is carried out in the classroom by classroom teachers with each student individually. Results are available immediately. Teachers analyse the results and, if necessary, plan for any additional support that students might require. Our school took part in the trial of this check in 2020 and it has now been made mandatory for all NSW DoE Year 1 students.
Next week is my turn with a full day leadership course which will focus on fostering a culture of trust. I will also be starting the High Potential and Gifted Education leaders course, so we can continue to plan our implementation of this new policy.
Our brains will be bursting, but we love it!
Lisa Hughes
Principal
