At Willoughby Public School we aim to cultivate socially-aware learners who are critical and creative thinkers, within a safe, respectful and responsible learning community.
Dear Parents/Carers,
I want to acknowledge the awesome job you are doing supporting your children with online learning. I hope you are also taking some time out each day to look after your own wellbeing.
Thank you for your recent feedback, which we have used to make adjustments to the online learning packages. The adjustments to the learning program are reviewed and updated as we evaluate and receive feedback including changes from the Department of Education. It was overwhelmingly positive and each stage team leader has followed up with their teams during meeting times to be responsive to this feedback.
(See attached PDF of survey results below)
Many parents also reported that their children required support ‘always’ or ‘often’. When students and teachers are working together in class, there are numerous scaffolds being used to differentiate the learning to support a ranging ability of students. While teachers are constantly working collaboratively to improve the learning packs, we also want to acknowledge that parents are not trained professionals with the ability to do these on the spot adjustments. When teachers see the student learning they are able to provide feedback for the students to allow the children to review where they have made a mistake or where to next, or provide a prompt to expand thinking. Please know that help is here and students will always have their questions answered if they post them online. Or please feel free to follow up with a phone call. Please know that we understand this is a difficult time and we are doing our absolute best to support every student and family. Our teachers are phoning families on a fortnightly basis, so you may have an unidentified caller appear on your phone. Teachers have reported that some of their calls are not being answered, our teachers are using their own mobile phones for the majority of these calls to check in with families and answer any concerns. If you have a missed call – it maybe your child’s teacher. The online learning activities reflect our WPS scope and sequences in each key learning area for Term 3 so learning is moving forward.
I also want to thank the teachers for their hard work and dedication, which is demonstrated by them constantly working to improve their practices throughout remote/ online learning. We have recently surveyed teachers to gain their feedback (as a leadership team, we are also constantly trying to learn!). Teachers working from home spend their days answering questions and giving feedback to students, meetings with their teams, lesson planning and programming, undergoing professional learning, phoning families as well as coming in to school for on-site supervision. For example; teachers can receive up to 100 questions, comments or work submissions per hour in Seesaw or Google classroom. So, they may not be able to respond to your concern immediately but they will respond.
Thank you for supporting Education Week last week by sending in photos of your children learning from home. The theme of being a lifelong learner is something that resonates with me especially as I am always looking to learn new information myself. I know the teacher’s loved sharing their favourite books with all of the students! We have been receiving many positive comments about the strong partnership between teachers and families, and from all of us at WPS, we want to thank you for all of your hard work during remote learning. We know it’s not easy and we appreciate you supporting your children with their learning.
We received this lovely email from the Bowel Cancer Charity association. Thank you to our SRC for nominating to support this important health charity.
Dear Willoughby Public School
We just want to convey a sincere THANK YOU for the generous gift you made to our Red Apple Annual Giving Day campaign in June. We very much appreciate you choosing to support Bowel Cancer Australia. Your amazing gift is helping to save lives and improve the health and wellbeing of people living with bowel cancer. Bowel Cancer Australia's vision is to have an everlasting impact on our health future - where no Australian dies from bowel cancer and all those diagnosed receive the support they need. As a 100% community-funded charity, we rely on public support to continue our work. On behalf of all the team at Bowel Cancer Australia, thank you again for your generosity. With best wishes and kind regards
Rose Vacher | Donor Care & Charity Services
Willoughby PS and Willoughby Girls High School worked together through the tender process to select a new canteen provider servicing both schools. We are excited to announce that Vanilla Blue Catering will be running our school canteen from Term 4. Vanilla Blue Catering is committed to sustainability. Both schools support Vanilla Blue Catering to significantly reduce packaging with the introduction of the Ruzi system of recycling. We plan to incorporate sustainability lessons to generate understanding of the new system being implemented at Willoughby PS in Term 4.
Stay safe.
Jennifer Simmonds