Learner Profile Awards
Last week I had the privilege of holding our first learner profile morning tea for our award recipients. It was celebration of the achievement and students shared what was working during this time. What stood out was they were very grateful for their teachers and the work they had been preparing and what they wanted to change was being able to have more interactions with their friends.
Professional Development: Teach Meets
All staff have been participating in ‘Teach Meets’ over the past week. These are hosted and organised by the Victorian PYP Network and have over 80 schools and more than 1000 teachers meeting and sharing best practice ideas and resources. This term was bigger than ever, given that the online format was accessible to schools across the state.
In a ‘Teach Meet’ individual teachers present for 2 to 7 minutes on a range of topics, all with the intention of improving our (online) learning practice. This term topics included play-based learning, explicit development of life-long learning skills, specialist programs and general professional development ideas. It was a fabulous opportunity to connect with our peers and develop our own professional knowledge!
We would really like to recognise the efforts of Lee Beattie (developing language and identifying learner profile traits), Amy Liu (assessment using ‘real world’ scenarios) and Peta MacGregor (morning check in routines) who presented and shared their own learning. Congratulations and well done for the effort and thought that went into your presentations!
Literacy at Home: Sustained Reading
Reading stamina or the ability to stick with reading for extended periods of time is a useful skill for everyone. At McKinnon Primary School we provide learners with opportunities to read for pleasure each day. We plan for and support learners to eventually read for a period of at least thirty minutes on their own. Obviously, we build up to this, with much shorter lengths of time expected for our younger students.
The creators of the CAFÉ approach to reading that we use at McKinnon have released some videos for parents to help them support their children’s literacy development. This week their focus is on teaching children to read by themselves for thirty minutes at a time. I encourage you to check out the resources. Here is the link https://www.thedailycafe.com/content/reading-home-parents
The Café team have also made available some useful student tracker resources (e.g. reading record chart, word and phrase collector) that might support your child’s engagement. You do have to register to download these resources but they are free. https://mailchi.mp/thedailycafe/r-w-student-tracker
Science@Home: Students Celebrating Science Week!
National Science Week is from the 17th to 21st of August with a theme of ‘oceans and water’. Students will be engaging in a wide range of different ways in their on-line classrooms.
Meanwhile, at home students have already been igniting their Bunsen Burners, adjusting their safety googles and making fantastic contributions to the McKinnon Science Fair. So far we have already had more than thirty scientists that have conducted, recorded and shared their videos which is AMAZING! Over the next two weeks students can continue to contribute to the Fair. Please visit the TEAM ‘Science@McKinnon’ and check Compass News for more information!
Have a great weekend,
Simone, Suzanne, Chris and Andrea