Term 3 is always my favourite term because there are so many great events. We will kick the term off with NAIDOC Week celebrations on Friday and welcome back David Newham to our school. Half way though the term will be Book Week/Education Week and to finish it off we will be having our sports carnival. We can't wait.
Yesterday the teachers and I were lucky enough to attend the STEM 22 conference in the Hunter Valley. This was the first time we have actually all been able to attend off site professional learning altogether in many years. I asked each of the teachers for their highlights and the 'what next' after attending this learning.
Mrs Baker: I really enjoyed learning a different way of structuring a maths lesson, where students are encouraged investigate and explore problems and concepts and bring back to the class their own discoveries and strategies. I loved that it was called 'making your brain sweat!' I want to make 1/2BL's brain sweat!
Miss Castle: Our session was presented by a proud Wiradjuri man, David Newham. I could listen to him all day! David is so passionate and has such knowledge of the Aboriginal culture. He has inspired me to learn more about local Aboriginal culture so I can feel confident to include this in my teaching practice.
Mrs Dowman: Our session was the best! It was so hands on. We got to design a toy for a real echidna from Taronga Zoo, to keep it's mind stimulated whilst in captivity. It came complete with real maggots!! It wasn't all play .. we did learn about the design thinking process and how we can explicitly teach this. I am looking forward to teaching design thinking through developing projects on topics that have been chosen by students and have the input from community members and experts.
Mrs Le Roux: There are so many things .. I went home and talked my husband's ear off! Something that was new for me was a different way of teaching word problems in maths. We were told about looking at the last sentence first as that is where the problem is. The whole process of how you get the answer in mathematics is just as important as the answer.
Mrs Jenkins: I had a great time with Mrs Dowman learning about the design thinking process. I am really excited to be introducing some of this to Stage 1 and Kindergarten during RFF and library time. We were told about a an interesting project starting this term, involving Taronga Zoo and I can't wait to work on this with Stage 1 classes.
Mrs Hughes: I participated in the Aboriginal culture session with Miss Castle and I agree that David is an amazing storyteller. He really emphasised the importance of connections and storytelling and how we can teach our students across the curriculum (not just STEM) by using traditional stories. He also emphasised the importance of giving the students lots of different pathways to connect to the story, whether it be through song/ dance, science or art. One of the key not speakers spoke about nature play and this made me realise we have so much more we can do in this space. I thought it connected really well to David's session too as he explained to us all the importance of the land to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I keep looking at the amazing space we have in our school and would like explore this more through nature play and embedding Aboriginal culture.
As you can see we are all feeling very inspired and the day was a great way to kick off learning in Term 3.
Before I sign off for this week, I have some happy/sad news. Mr Michael Schwetz will be moving on from NLHIS this term. He has accepted an offer of an Assistant Principal position in Queanbeyan. Michael has been such an amazing support to the students and teachers. He have asked Mr Schwetz to call back in so the kids can say goodbye. We will miss him greatly, but know he will be an asset to his new school.
Lisa Hughes
Principal
