Family Food and Fun Night Friday 15th March

Our planning is underway for our Family Food and Fun Night. This event is a wonderful way for us to come together as a community. It is also an important fundraiser for our school with the money raised being used to purchase new adjustable basketball rings and to further develop the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden by creating a greenhouse, worm farm and designated potting area beside the garage.

For this event to be successful, we are calling on parent and carer volunteers from each year level to nominate themselves as ‘class convenors’. We truly value the support of our families, so if you can devote some time to this event, please be sure to add your name to class rosters by contacting your child’s teacher. We will confirm the class stalls later next Friday. Please come to a meeting after Assembly in the staffroom on Friday 23rd February to assist with planning.

We will be holding a Silent Auction on the night and are currently seeking donations, big and small, from local businesses. If you have your own business and would like to donate, please contact the Office.

Lucky Jars

On Wednesday 21st February and Wednesday 6th March students are asked to wear free dress (not school uniform) in exchange for donating a Lucky Jar. The jar should be filled with something that would appeal to children. Some ideas for jar fillers are; small toys, stationery, coins, hair ties, marbles etc. We encourage you to be creative. The children absolutely love this stall.
Lollies are acceptable but please make sure that they are in individual wrappers or place the unopened packet in the jar (this is for health reasons). The jar may be of any size from a large coffee jar to a jam jar.
The jars are then sold through a lucky dip system at our FFFN for $2.

An Instructional What?

As teachers, we are constantly striving to ensure that our students achieve their best both in and out of the classroom. As professionals, we are endlessly reflecting on our own practice and tweaking things as we go, making sure that the learning is really working for every student. This year, we are continuing our efforts by embedding a school wide instructional model for every teacher, and every classroom.

Our Boneo Primary School instructional model was developed collectively at the end of 2023, and our first two curriculum days involved unpacking what it will look like for every year level across the school – consistency and collaboration will be our driving forces this year. Teachers used different ways to learn and practice the model and in our first two weeks of school, our students have done the same. Read how our Year 3 students understand our instructional model below.

‘The warm up is like the sun, it gives you energy’.

The warm up part of our instructional model is short and sharp. It’s where students make connections to prior learning or a quick revision of a skill. It’s usually only around 5 minutes long.

‘The launch is launching a rocket and a cannonball’ ‘3,2,1 blast off’

The launch is where a teacher is explicitly teaching a skill or new concept. During this part, we are modelling something; sometimes we use a great book, sometimes we use student work samples, and sometimes we work with students to develop a learning chart that is used to support the students’ time in the classroom. We change this up depending on what the skill or concept is, what our students need and how we know our students learn best.

Now our independent work is truly a little bit like magic. This is where we empower our students to make learning choices; to use tools that help them achieve their own personal goals. During this time, the teacher works with students in a few different ways. Here’s what our students said about the Independent Work time:

Conferences: ‘It’s like a meeting. It’s a teacher and student working together.’ ‘Like a handshake’

Assessments: ‘doing it by yourself’ ‘students not looking at other student’s answers’

Focus Groups: ‘teamwork’ ‘focus on the teacher’ ‘working together quietly’

Workshop: ‘kids talking in your groups’ ‘going to a workshop’

Next comes the feedback. From student to student, student to teacher or teacher to student – feedback is a critical part of the process to ensure students know what they did well, what comes next and how to improve.

‘Say to someone you did great or you can improve’ ‘feed forward’ ‘say nice stuff to people when they are hard on themselves’.

The final piece of the puzzle is reflection. Our students know reflection as:

‘Go back to your work and see what you can improve’ ‘Can I do this better?’ ‘If you did it wrong, go back and try to improve it’.

Researchers have found that consistency of instructional quality is what distinguishes higher- from lower-performing school systems (Barber & Mourshed, 2007; Chenoweth, 2007, 2009; Hattie, 2011;Jackson & Makarin, 2018; Kulik, Kulik, Bangert-Drowns, & Slavin, 1990; Pianta, Belsky, Houts, & Morrison, 2007; Reynolds, Stringfield, & Schaffer, 2001).

So with that, we are so excited to be sharing the learning of our students this year using the Instructional Model. We would love your partnership at home – ask your child/children what they did during the Independent Work time in Maths, Reading or Writing today!

Chloe & Tom