From the Principal
Book Week
What an absolutely fun-filled and exciting week! This year our staff, students and families have totally outdone themselves with their commitment to celebrating Book Week 2019. Our parade on Wednesday was such a wonderful display of the love of reading we foster here at LPS, and I would like to say a big thank you for all the adults at home who made it possible for around 95% of our students to turn up as their favourite characters. Having three children at home to organise, I can personally relate to how much time and effort is gone into each costume and I can honestly say that this year has been the best I have been a part of. The joy on each students face when I was able to guess who they were dressed as was worth every minute of your time. Mrs Sheehan and Mrs Rookie also held some wonderful activities and competitions throughout the week and it was great to see the levels of excitement and participation in these over the course of the week.
Professional Learning News
Last week our staff presented our findings for the four Action Research teams that have been active over the past two terms. You may remember from an earlier newsletter, that this is where small groups of staff meet regularly to identify targeted areas/identified school priorities and research best practice. They then make recommendations about how to address issues, provide ideas and solutions and make suggestions about how to resource them. This year our focus groups were in the areas of:
- Home/school communication tools
- Playground environment/kitchen garden
- Behaviour Management policy
- Refocusing Teaching and Learning (play based learning)
Over the next couple newsletters I will talk about what each group has presented, the recommendations made and how this will impact on our school community.
Home/school communication:
This group researched the best method of communication from the classroom level to parents and families. The groups subsidiary questions were: What are we looking for with these communication programs/apps? What do each of the programs/apps offer in relation to student electronic journaling, assessment opportunities, communication between teacher, parent and students. The group conducted independent research and found that the most user friendly and appropriate tool was an app called ‘Seesaw’. Many of you are already familiar with the app, as some of our staff have been using it for the past three years. This group made recommendations about how it is currently being used in our school, how user friendly it is for families, teachers and students, as well as how we can resource professional learning for all of our staff to adopt this app by 2020. Over the next few months individual classes who are not already using the app will be trialling certain aspects of it and we will be providing professional learning in Term 4, with the aim that all classes will be using it in 2020. All parents will be sent home information and instructions and there will be strict protocols involved in the sharing of information.
Playground environment/kitchen garden:
This group researched some ways to improve our outdoor play spaces, in particular the area outside the Music building, including the garden and loose parts play pod. The group have submitted some designs and requests for equipment that reflect our intention to introduce inquiry and play based learning spaces that ‘outdoor classrooms’ to utilise during investigations and inquiries as well as a proposed ‘Outdoor Music Walk’ which leads up and around the current school garden. The proposal also included some ideas and recommendations related to different kitchen garden programs and how we could potentially resource these here in 2020. This proposal has been shared with our grounds staff and is now being submitted for the Student Representative Council to have a look at and gain some student voice. After this process it will be presented to the School Association to request assistance towards funding the proposal.
These action research groups are integral to identifying areas within our school that we can improve on. At this point, it is important to note that this process happens regularly across the school in leadership team meetings, support staff meetings, as well as grade team meetings to ensure that the systems and processes at LPS are up to date and relative to our current school priorities, context and student cohort. Through this newsletter, our aim is to keep parents and families informed as regularly as we can of these updates, and where possible, consulted. Our School Association is also a great way of staying up to date with these reviews and processes. As an example, at a recent School Association meeting a parent brought up the courtyard and why we didn’t go ahead with the proposed upgrades. I was able to explain and answer questions on this topic and speak in detail about why this did not occur. If you have any issues, concerns or ideas I would welcome you to attend the next meeting or contact the school via phone or email.
Warm regards,
Kel Innis
Principal
