Dear Parents/Caregivers
We are moving into the referral period for 2022 placements and we are getting many enquiries from referring speech pathologists and psychologists. As part of the process we let the agencies know about possible places for the following year.
Year 1 Parent Program
This Term Emily Dawes and Emma McFarland have been trialling a series of workshops for parents of our Year 1 students at Padbury. This program is focused on building your knowledge of your child’s Developmental Language Disorder and how you can advocate for and support your child as they transition to mainstream schooling. It has been very well received and will be completed at Poseidon later this term and into next term.
Case Conferences
The teachers and speech pathologists are also working through data and profiling students in preparation for the upcoming case conferences (Kindy and Pre-primary are held this term). Year 1 will have exit interviews in week 10 of Term 4.
Pre-primary and Kindergarten parents will be or will have received information about the annual case conferences for each student. If your child is Kindy or Pre-primary and we are recommending an exit, this will be discussed with you. As communicated before, it is not common for students to exit these years. Students with Language Disorders have this for their life, and while we work to improve their language and to teach strategies that will enable them to access the learning program in mainstream, this takes time. If you are considering placing your child in mainstream next year (when we are recommending they stay), please discuss this with me, your site Deputy or Speech Pathologist before making your final decision. Please do this as soon as possible as exits impact on the number of places we have available at each site for new referrals.
Year 1 Transition to Mainstream
Parents need to let us know the name of the school you are enrolling in for Year 2 in 2022. If you would like your child to spend a day or two at their mainstream school during Term 4, please discuss that with your site Deputy. You would also need to discuss it with your mainstream school. Generally we run a parent workshop on transition during Term 4 but we also have a short video that parents can view from the website (Transition to Mainstream – West Coast Language Development Centre (westcoastldc.wa.edu.au) ).
School Development Day
On our recent School Development Day, the staff spent time at Kings Park learning about Aboriginal (particularly Noongar) culture and heritage. It was a very enlightening and productive day where staff were able to explore their own knowledge and understanding of our important Aboriginal histories while considering how we can teach this to our students.
Sports Days
Last year at this time, we were under phase 4 restrictions due to Covid 19 and each mainstream principal at our sites interpreted these guidelines. In some cases, parents were not allowed to attend the sports carnivals. Fortunately, we are now in phase 5 and this means that parents can attend the sports days when they are scheduled for your site. We still ask that you consider social distancing as we are still in pandemic mode.
Ms Shelley Blakers
Principal