Dear Parents and Caregivers,
Research continues to provide evidence on the enormous advantage reading with and to your children has on their academic success. Reading is the foundation to all that we do and provides experiences and understanding of events far beyond our everyday experiences. Take time to sit with your child and read, discuss their books and take their learning further by providing conversation and experiences to make connections.
Information is provided in this newsletter of how you can access your child’s Literacy Pro account, it explains how you and your child can log on at home and access books online – use this to encourage your child to have ‘sneaky reads’ and log on to read when in the car, at home, waiting for an appointment or any other opportunity. Just imagine how many words they can read and experiences they can have doing this rather than playing online games!
By logging into Literacy Pro you can see a list of books at your child’s interest and Lexile level, it also tells you if the books are available in our school library! Students are encouraged to read 50 points higher or lower than their Lexile level, but really as long as they are reading and enjoying the experience it doesn’t really matter. When you log on you can also see how many books and words your child has read as well as how many quizzes they have taken to check their understanding.
Last Friday our staff worked with another school within our Partnership on student improvement in all areas of the curriculum. The day was broken into three sessions, the first one being Building our understanding of the Big 6. This session focused on the importance of vocabulary in student success and achievement. You can assist us in this area by expanding your child’s vocabulary through experiences you share together and by talking to your child using rich vocabulary. Our teachers are developing Word Walls in their classrooms to support their students in this area. The second session focused on learning intentions & success criteria to move learning forward. This session talked about effective feedback and the impact this has on moving students forward with their learning. Staff have been focusing on this throughout this year and are continuing this journey in their classrooms as well. The last session focused on shifting from engagement to empowerment and provided information on how students can become more involved in their learning by taking more responsibility by setting goals and reviewing their work by providing feedback to themselves and others. This links to our previous work of teachers using WALT – What are we learning today? and WILF – What I’m looking for this provides clarity for the students to know exactly what they need to do to be successful. After the Pupil Free Day teachers have been exposed to many more strategies to use in their classrooms.
To continue to assist us with our planning for 2020, if you are planning to move from the area or know of families who are moving into the area please inform us of this as soon as possible. In addition, if you have any special considerations for your child/ren’s class placement that we need to be aware of during the class placement process please complete the attached form and return it to the Front office before 18th October 2019.
Your feedback is important to us. We would appreciate you taking the time to complete the links for our Parent Opinion Survey and Volunteer Award as your children are the centre of everything we do and we aspire to improve student learning outcomes for every student who attends Thiele Primary School.
Parent Opinion Survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/GR5W5DF
Kind Regards,
Sharon Willoughby
Acting Principal
