The Widemere Whisper!

As stated in our last newsletter you know we have all been very busy developing our next 4 year School Strategic Improvement Plan (SIP).

Part of the process is to develop a Situational Analysis (SI) of our school. A situational analysis is an authentic and rigorous assessment of our school's current position and is used to inform our school's improvement journey in learning, teaching and leading.

Data for our situational analysis is drawn from many areas including but not limited to student learning outcomes (including internal  and external data); school formative and summative assessments; student attendance and engagement; student and staff wellbeing; human resources; and finance. 

We have been busily surveying staff, students and parents and will continue to do so next term. We have already looked at some parent and carer data from our online survey and it has been very helpful leading us to look at changes across our school and develop our new vision.

I would like to thank our parents and carers who participated in this survey. The responses were wonderful with 99% of parents being extremely positive about our lovely school. 

We have also recently completed a classroom skills audit and have plotted Widemere teachers and the school against the School Excellence Framework. We are using this data to review our professional learning procedures and programs, decommission (declutter) strategies or programs that are no longer deemed as valuable as they once were and replace these strategies with products and processes that strategically maximise student learning outcomes.

We are also evaluating other school programs such as the Instructional Leader Program, the Initial Lit Program (Kindy whole class reading program) , the Mini-Lit Program (Year 1 & 2 intervention reading Program) and the MacqLit Program (Years 3-6 intevention reading program).

We are also looking at ways to improve our Positive Behaviour for Learning Wellbeing Program (PBL) and our Learning and Support Program (LST).

 We are listening to the views from all stakeholders to develop a comprehensive improvement plan. We will be again inviting you to share your thoughts and suggestions in the Tell Them From Me Survey which will come out next term on Facebook.

Analysing this data and developing a situational analysis will allow our school to develop a rich and highly contextualised understanding of our school's current situation moving forward.

Widemere Public School strives to keep our school COVID free. As you know we follow directives from the Department of Education and NSW Health to enable our students and staff to remain safe and happy at school.

Many of our changes to school procedures will continue until the school is advised otherwise.

However there are some Good News Changes:

*Camps and Excursions can go ahead so that means our Year 5 and 6 will be able to attend camp in Term 4. A permission and payment note will be sent home early next term.

*Year 6  students will be able to attend our Taronga Zoo Snooze end of Year 6 celebration. 

*2021 Kindergarten students will be able to attend their Kinder Orientation session however parents and carers are still unable to enter the school.

*The Library will be open and start re -borrowing books:

*Year 6-7 High School Orientations will start.

No Changes to:

*All staff and students with even mild flu like symptoms (cough, runny nose, headache, muscle aches, pain or temperature) should not be at school. If they present with these symptoms staff and students will be sent home. 

*If your child or our staff have been sent home the school will need to sight negative COVID test results before students or staff suffering from even mild flu like symptoms are able to return to school;

*Students are still not singing in the choir or in classrooms or playing the recorder due to DOE directives;

*Students in different cohorts still do not mix except outdoors;

*Parents are still not permitted on school grounds unless in extreme circumstances and invited by the Principal;

*Staggered school pick-up times and gates have not changed;

We will update you as new information comes to hand particularly regarding our end of year activities.

Our school remains committed to physical distancing and good hygiene practices.

Widemere Public School is committed to providing a positive learning environment where the expectations of student behaviour is based on the core values of responsibility, kindness and respect.                

Kindergarten enrolments for 2021 are now open. Please contact the office for information on how to complete your enrolment form. There are new enrolment procedures that the school needs to follow so please apply soon.

Our Kindergarten Orientation program will be modified this year due to COVID-19. Parents should have received an acceptance letter in the past few weeks. We are currently putting together an orientation video of a day in the life of Kindergarten. We have also been notified that our 2021 Kindergarten students will be allowed to attend our Kindergarten Orientation days however parents and carers will still not be allowed on site. We will run a Parent Orientation Meeting on Zoom. Please keep an eye on our Facebook and Skoolbag pages for further information.            

The P&C held its regular Zoom meetings last week. Our school raffle was great success and so easy for everyone to pay online and no-one had to put the raffle books together! The P&C made $960 on the raffle and lots of families won great prizes.

Students really enjoyed the Pyjama Day and the P&C raised $285 in funds that will be use to improve our school.

Our school thanks the P&C for their hard work and dedication to our school.