Dear Parents/Caregivers,
It has been a very busy and productive term for staff and students. There have been some fun and interesting incursions across our sites. Pre-primary children at Quinns had a visit from some sweet farm animals from ‘Cuddly Animal Farm’ and they got to hold them and learn all about how to look after them. The Farmyard on Wheels visited the Padbury Pre-primary children and they had just as much fun learning all about farm animals, and broadened their understanding and knowledge about life and living things. These incursions were organised to help develop the children’s vocabulary and understanding linked to the Literature Based Unit on ‘The Three Little Pigs’.
This year Gina Williams and Guy Ghouse came and presented the fabulous Wanjoo workshop to Poseidon children. They are coming to Padbury this Friday 24th June. The performance includes a number of Noongar language songs that are focussed on the importance of keeping Noongar language and culture alive. These workshops are incredibly engaging for the children and have been a resounding success every year.
The School Development Day this term included guest speaker, Narelle Rice, who has developed a resource called ‘Bond Blocks’. Bond Blocks are designed as an intervention system and build addition and subtraction knowledge alongside basic number facts. Narelle is an enthusiastic and dynamic presenter who is passionate about ensuring that young children are given the skills and understanding to enable them to develop strong number skills. We have purchased multiple sets of Bond Blocks for classes across the school and teachers are excited to start using them with the children. Christine Vawser, one of our Lead teachers ran a session on Formative Assessment and Visible Learning. As usual, Christine’s session was very informative, and highlighted the importance of ensuring teachers shared learning intentions with students. Sharing learning intentions is a fundamental requirement both for learning and feedback. It allows the student to understand what it is they are learning, what it will look like to get it right and how they can make improvements moving forward.
Emily Dawes, one of our Speech Pathologists ran a session on Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). The session was particularly informative for our new staff but we always learn new things due to current research. If you want to find out more about DLD, the Raising Awareness of Developmental Language Disorder (RADLD) website is a good place to start. https://radld.org/
It has been quite a difficult term for the children, with disruptions due to Covid, staff off sick, children off sick and family members sick, but let’s hope that everything settles down next term. The children have actually coped well with the numerous different faces in the classroom when teachers were off sick. Thank you to everyone for being patient and keeping your sick children at home. Let’s hope next term is better for everyone with less absences.
I hope everyone has a great term break. If you are going away have a great time and if you are staying home, I hope it is a restful and relaxing break.
Ms Catherine Regan
Principal