Narrabri West Public School

We are now in a busy time with PSSA sporting events. These do cause some disruption to normal routines but they are an important and valuable part of school life, as they give children the opportunity to represent their school and extend their abilities.

Being a member of a representative school sporting team is a highly sought after honour and all students take great pride in the opportunity to not only represent the school, but also to test their talents against students from other schools.  Representing Narrabri West in sport is also a privilege that has to be earned through appropriate behaviour and attitude at school.

Narrabri West is committed to our involvement in sport. Teachers work extremely hard to prepare school teams, often in their own time (after school or at lunch times) and we thank them for their efforts. Thank you also to the many parents who assist or support our teams.

Daily P.E and fitness programs continue, as does our Friday sports program, which will soon be concentrating on Cross Country, in preparation for our championships on Friday 6th of May.

This week we look at how we use effective and strategic questioning to enhance student learning in a thinking classroom. This is another in our series of articles explaining how we teach at Narrabri West.

Effective questioning is one way teachers can seek evidence to establish where students are in their learning, and is therefore the result of careful planning.

Specifically, effective questioning provides teachers with the opportunity to identify and correct misunderstandings and gaps in knowledge, as well as identify the need for extension work for those students whose knowledge and skills base demand it.

This kind of questioning provides information about student knowledge, understanding and skills. These then inform the teacher's planning and selection of teaching strategies to move students from where they are, to where they need to go.

Some key features:

1. In terms of student behaviour, effective questioning encourages students to:

·         listen actively;

·         speak;

·         take turns; and

·         be actively involved with learning.

If the classroom culture does not encourage 'hands up', but rather emphasises that everyone is expected to think and be ready to answer any question, students are more likely to be involved with the learning.

2. The asking of questions is a deliberate, planned activity.

3. Provide students with time to think after asking a question.

4. A critical factor in enhancing the strategic effectiveness of questions is teacher receptiveness. The teacher's positive response to both correct and wrong answers is essential.

5. The strategic effectiveness of questioning is further enhanced by:

·         Moving around the room to make sure questions are more likely to be evenly distributed. Other ways of making sure questions are evenly distributed include allowing students to talk to each other about a question, asking everyone to write down an answer and then reading out a selected few, or giving students a choice of possible answers and having a vote on the correct option. All of these tactics increase student participation.

·         Posing one question at a time. Asking a string of questions, particularly without any pause, is confusing.

·         Providing prompt questions such as 'Why do you think that?', 'Can you tell me more about …?' or 'Is it possible that ...?'

·         Posing fewer, well-chosen questions is more strategic as an assessment for learning strategy.

6. When planning, teachers need to decide the purpose of their questions and then select the most appropriate type of questions for that purpose.

Strategic and effective questioning is a skill that our teachers have been working on in their professional learning time.

I’d like to remind our students that we are a school that strives for personal bests. This includes all aspects of life; in our schoolwork, our extra-curricular pursuits, our appearance and of course, our manners.

If you are being the best that you can be, no-one can ever ask more of you. The question you should all ask yourself each day is: “Am I really trying to be the best person I can be?”

I hope every one of our students can honestly look in the mirror and say confidently....yes! If not...what are you waiting for? Make a positive difference to a life...yours!!

On a daily basis there are many examples of inspiring teaching and learning occurring at Narrabri West.

There is no doubt that the way we have our school set up again this year is having a positive impact on student learning and the feedback from teachers is that it is really making a difference to the learning and academic growth of our students. Well done everybody.

All teachers will be coordinating Learner Led conferences over the last two weeks of term. These are a very important part of our reporting process and we urge all families to take the opportunity to work with their child’s teacher by attending these.

An important component of each child’s learning journey is to support them in taking responsibility for their learning. Research tells us that things like goal setting, learning goals, success criteria and most importantly feedback, are essential to developing independent learners.

Learner Led Conferences are a strategy to develop in each student this sense of responsibility for their learning. They encourage them to think of themselves as the drive of their learning journey, where they want to go, what they need to do and how they will know when they have arrived. The more opportunities we give our students to reflect on their learning, through sharing their understandings, the better.

In Learner Led Conferences the student is actively involved in the reporting process. The purpose of the conference is to:

·         Have students take responsibility for their own learning and be the centre of the conference;

·         Celebrate growth in each child’s learning and achievements;

·         Teach self-evaluation and self-reflection skills;

·         Help direct future learning; and

·         Allow parents, students and teachers to celebrate success together!

These are an important opportunity to see how your child is progressing and they are looking forward to showing you all of their clever and exciting learning.

This term, our school, like many others in the state, will again participate in a Department of Education initiative: the Tell Them From Me student feedback survey. The survey aims to help improve student learning outcomes and measures factors that are known to affect academic achievement and other student outcomes. The focus of the NSW-wide survey is on student wellbeing, engagement and effective teaching practices.

More information about the survey is available at:

 http://surveys.cese.nsw.gov.au/information-for-parents

The survey is an opportunity for our students in Years 4, 5 and 6 to provide our school with valuable and quick feedback on what they think about school life, how engaged they are with school and the different ways that teachers interact with them. Schools in Australia and around the world have used the Tell Them From Me survey to help improve how they do things at school.

The survey is confidential and school staff will not be able to identify individual students from their responses. It is conducted online and will usually take less than 30 minutes to complete. It will be administered during school hours between Monday the 7th March to Friday the 3rd of June. Participating in the survey is entirely voluntary.

A consent form about the survey has been sent home with students. 

·         Monday 11th April to Friday 22nd April - holidays.

.         Monday 25th April - ANZAC DAY

·         Tuesday 26th April - School Development Day - students DO NOT attend.

·         Wednesday 27th April - students return to school.

Please Note: Tuesday 26th April is a designated school development day for Term 2. The purpose of this day is to improve the learning outcomes of students by:

·         Providing targeted professional learning activities aligned to school improvement targets and Department of Education priorities; and

·         Enabling whole school planning and enhancing teacher quality, school leadership and management practices.

On this day we will be continuing with our ongoing professional learning based on our growth as educators and will also undertake some further planning for Term Two.

Have a wonderful break with your children and we look forward to seeing you at our school events over the next week.

Classes have elected their representatives for the 2022 Student Council. Our student council plays an important role in our school and we are sure the students elected will once again be terrific representatives. They will represent their class for Semester 1 (Terms 1 and 2) and new representatives will be elected at the end of Term 2 to represent their class for Semester 2 (Terms 3 and 4). Kindergarten will elect their first representatives in Term 3.

Congratulations to:

1W     -    Freya Astill, Hazel Davis

1P      -    Daphne McDonald, Alexander Keeffe

2W     -    Koa Mackenzie, Braxton Templeman

2N      -    Rory Orman, Gwen Smith

3D      -    Mia McConnell, Hailee Orman                   

3S       -    Logan Gillmore, Zara Dalton

4S       -    Grace McClymont, Mark Ridley                 

4O      -    Mason Rushby, Lailah Thurston

5C       -    Max Booby, Bridie Seymour

5P       -     Adalaide O'Meara, Blake Eather                

6T        -    Ethan Megalokonomos

6S        -     Mia Williams

This week we will present badges to the 2022 Sports Captains/Vice Captains and Semester 1 SRC representatives. 

The assembly will be held this Friday, 11th of March. We would like to extend an invitation to parents of students who are receiving badges only. Parents will need to sign in and are encouraged to wear a mask.

The assembly will be held under the primary COLA, closest to Cooma Rd.

The Early Stage 1 Team would like to give a round of applause to our Kinder students for an exceptional start to the 2022 school year and their very FIRST year at school!

Miss Collier, Miss Snowdon and Mrs Gett are so very proud of how quickly the children settled into our classroom routines and learning habits. We have jumped straight into learning in all subjects and the children are working very hard.

Kindergarten students began the SMART spelling program, with the sounds and letters in c-a-t and the sentence of the week, “The cat sat on the mat.” Our spelling program facilitates conversations about other words that contain those sounds and letters. The students are loving learning how to spell and read!

In the first weeks of school, the students were introduced to the school’s behaviour matrix and taught the expectations around RESPECT for themselves, each other and property in the classroom and on the playground.

English lessons are focusing on the concepts of print and language. We are learning to predict, retell, sequence and respond to texts. Moving forward with the term, the children will be learning about sentence structure and working towards writing their first (of very many) sentences. The students are engaging in reading group activities and learning to read words and books.

We begin our Maths sessions with a brief number sense activity.

We have had a wonderful start to the year in Stage One with 89 enthusiastic students engaged in their learning. The Stage One team, teachers are Mrs Manoli Phillips (1P) Mrs Jacki Ward (1W), Miss Emily Ward (2W) and Miss Mattise Neeves (2N). Mrs Hatton continues as stage supervisor.

School begins everyday with roll marking, organisation and fruit break. This allows the students time to get their resources organised for the day, hand in notes, have something to eat and be ready to learn. We realise many families start the day early and fruit break ensures students have something to eat before learning. We suggest cutting fruit into pieces to make it easier for the children to manage.

The students are busy setting personal goals for their learning. They work with their teacher on strategies to help them achieve their goals and success is celebrated when they do. Feedback is an important part of the learning process in our classrooms and students are learning to listen carefully to feedback from teachers and peers and apply it to improve their learning.

In English this term students are learning to write a recount based on a walk around the school grounds with their class. They have been learning to sequence events using time connectives and plan their writing using a graphic organiser. Once they have completed their plan, they use it to write their first draft. The teacher and peers provide feedback indicating what students did well and how to improve their writing. The children will then recraft their writing applying the feedback.

In Mathematics, whole number, place value, addition strategies, collecting data and investigating capacity and mass have been the focus for both Year 1 and 2. Maths sessions begin with daily number sense activities where students spend a few minutes developing their number sense. Students also participate in learning conversations to further develop their mathematical thinking.

In Geography, students are investigating weather patterns in Australia and other parts of the world. They are enjoying learning more about the world they live in and how the weather impacts people where they live, very topical at the moment. Students have been developing their visual arts skills in drawing, sketching and painting while creating artworks, some of these artworks may end up in the Narrabri Show School artwork section. A reminder that all students need an art shirt to protect their uniform when they use paint. Fundamental Movement skills are the focus of the Physical Education (PE) program. This term students are learning how to run, catch, throw, hit and kick a ball while playing the games netball, soccer, tennis and T-ball. Science lessons have been very exciting, students are learning to identify features of dinosaurs, plants and other living things.

Homework – Students receive a list of spelling words to practise based on the spelling covered in the classroom that week. Students are encouraged to practise spelling them aloud and writing their words at home. They also take home a book to read as part of their homework. Please take the time to listen to your child read and ask questions about the characters in the story or facts they read in factual texts to improve their comprehension. Reading the texts multiple times improves comprehension, fluency and phrasing.

Library - Each class visits the library once per week to build their love of reading books and to return and borrow books to read at home. It is important students have a library bag so they can borrow from the library during these sessions. If students do not bring a library bag, we have shopping bags for them to use as we want all children to be borrowing from our well-resourced library.

It is wonderful to be involved in your child’s education. We look forward to meeting the families during Learner Led Conferences and keeping you informed about your child’s learning. If you have any questions or would like to talk to teacher please call the school to make an appointment.

Stage One Team

Mattise Neeves, Emily Ward, Manoli Phillis, Jacki Ward and Cathy Hatton.

On Monday 28th February Lucy Booby, Jedd Stanford, Savannah Hughes, Ryan Warnock, Bridie Seymour, Lexie Fernance, Max Booby, Michael Harris-Clayton, Maicee Astill, Marley Cunningham, Ruby Lee Moodie, Evander Russ, Joseph Wilkins, Kiara Vlahopoulos, Armani Todd, Jedda Cochrane, Lennon Simmonds, Ethan Megalokonomos and Ryan McConnell competed at the North West PSSA Swimming trials in Armidale. All students swam well and showed great sportsmanship.

Congratulations to the following students who will now swimming at the NSW PSSA Swimming Championships:

Lucy Booby: 8yrs Girls 50mtr Freestyle

Ryan Warnock: 10yrs Boys 50mtr Butterfly and 200mtr IM

Zone trials were held on the 2nd of March. North West trials will be held in Tamworth on the 15th of March. Congratulations to the following students who were selected to trial at the next level:

Michael Harris-Clayton, Blake Eather, Tyran Lawler, Dustin Hilderson, Lennon Simmonds, Kiara Vlahopoulos, Emily Simpson and Jedda Cochrane.

Even though the weather is still warm, now is the time to purchase your school jackets so they will be on hand for the cold weather.  Jackets cost $50, are in stock and are available at the front office.  Please come into the office with your child to try one on for size.

Our younger students are sometimes unsure of the procedures around spending money at the canteen. The following rules are stressed, especially with our Kindergarten students, to minimise problems:

·         don’t ask others to buy things for you;

·         don’t take money that belongs to others;

·         don’t give your money to anyone except the helpers in the canteen;

·         don’t buy for others; and

·         don’t share food or money.

Please contribute so that the school can purchase much needed additional resources for our students.

In 2022 ALL SCHOOL FEES WILL BE USED TO PURCHASE RESOURCES for students to use in the classroom. 

We will be placing this order at the beginning of Term 3. What a great asset these would be for our school.

The cost of contributions remains unchanged again this year at:

·         $30 for the first child;

·         $25 for the second child; and

·         all other children in the family pay $20. 

All Year 6 students will have received an Expression of Interest form for Year 7 2023. This is the first stage of enrolment to high school. Narrabri High School is the local high school. Please complete the form and return it (if you have not already done so), to the school office before Wednesday 30th March. 

Please note: If your child is not attending Narrabri High School, the Expression of Interest still needs to be returned with your choice of high school indicated.

The P&C AGM will be held on Monday 4th April at 6:00pm in the staffroom and followed by a general meeting.

The P&C helps raise funds for projects to benefit students and provides valuable support and guidance to the school.

New members are most welcome to attend. It’s always nice to meet new parents who are interested in making a positive difference for our students special events – you are supporting our school and your children. Thank you for this.

To find out more please find P&C Federation Home Page and Constitution links below:

https://www.pandc.org.au/ (P&C Federation Home Page)

https://www.pandc.org.au/forms/Federation/150217%20Constitution%20of%20the%20Federation%20of%20P%20and%20C.pdf  (Constitution)