Belmore South Public School

This week our Kindergarten teachers are working in small groups with their new students eliciting a variety of literacy and numeracy skills. . . research shows that early intervention gets the best results when it comes to improving literacy and numeracy skills.

Under the Best Start program our specially trained teachers are assessing our new students’ reading and writing, their communication skills and recognition of the sounds and letters of the English language. Our teachers are also looking at students’ early numeracy skills in counting, number recognition and how they work with groups and patterns.

The program allows teachers to assess and diagnose the starting point of a child’s education and gives students the best start to their formal education by allowing teachers to plan their lessons to cater to each child’s level of proficiency in literacy and numeracy. This means each Kindergarten student will have an individual learning plan developed for them. The teachers will then share these with the students’ parents.

More information about Best Start is available at: http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/beststart/parents.htm

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As a whole school we are implementing a comprehensive program which is designed to address the social and emotional aspects of learning (SEAL).

During the year all Stages will address in greater or lesser depth as is appropriate to their stage the following themes:

* New beginnings
* Getting on and falling out
* Going for goals
* Good to be me
* Relationships
* Changes

Every morning the students and their teachers sit down to talk, explore and negotiate their way through the initial theme New beginnings.

The program has a strong emphasis on literature; developing a love of reading and discussion about what is being read.

Developing a social skills based on one program from K to 6 ensures consistency of language, expectations and behaviour.

Congratulations to our SRC class representatives and school leaders who were presented with their badges during last week’s assembly.

Each class, except the Kindergartens, elects one student to represent their class on the Student Representative Council.

There are 10 student councillors and they are led by our School Captain.

Each term 2 of our vice Captains will have the opportunity to work with the SRC.

The SRC will meet regularly and they will be responsible for organising School Assemblies on alternate Fridays throughout the year.

We are excited about how the SRC will operate this year and look forward to it organising many activities and charity events.

The SRC is mentored by three teachers: Ms Wilson, Ms Dongas and Ms Mealing.

Here are a couple hard at work during lunchtime today helping out their peers.

They carry their crib sheets and recording sheets with them on a clip board. . . this is serious stuff

Look out for the yellow vests. There will be 2 mediators in Area 5/6 and 2 in Area 7 every day.

The Special Interest Groups (SIGs) run for 2 hours every day for the first full week of Term1. These groups work with 2 teachers and are made up of students from Year 1 to 6.

These groups are designed to provide opportunities for students to meet with students from other grades. It also gives the students an opportunity to choose an activity that they want to do.

The activities offered this year were:
* Video games, using handhelds, Wii’s, Playstation and computers
* Cooking – savoury
* Cooking – sweet
* Art
* Drama
* Sport
* Music
* Movie making:animation

During our first assembly for the year most of the interest groups either performed or told the audience of their experiences.

The cooking group actually gave every class a plate of their goodies to share.

Our Literacy Committee, led by Mrs Filacouridis and supported by Mrs Pericles, Mrs Harrison, Ms Rhodes, Ms Wilson and Ms McIntosh has been working extremely hard on developing our teachers’ skills through workshops and providing a wealth of excellent resources to ensure our student reading outcomes will improve.

At the end of 2009 all of this year’s teachers attended a 2 day workshop on teaching reading. They were provided with a number of strategies and resources to promote the development of our students’ reading skills.

On Thursday we were trained by Ms McIntosh in implementing a consistent set of reading assessment strategies. These are designed to provide a K to 6 continuum of student progress.

This year we will be make sure our students work in reading groups of no more than 10.

We are determined to make sure all students, the capable and the ones who struggle all have the opportunity to improve their skills to the best of their ability.

This is our percussion group who have worked tirelessly to fine tune their skills for their first public performance.

Have a listen! They’re pretty good aren’t they?

Percussion Group performing . . . from Gail Miller on Vimeo.

We were too late to try the sweet treats . . . look how well they cleaned up ready to go back to class.

Then we went to visit the savoury group only to be greeted with the leftovers being cleaned away!!

Students from Year 1 to Year 6 rose to the challenge of making a claymation using Frame Thief. They have learned how important it is to plan and storyboard what they intend to do.

They all demonstrated an understanding that a narrative has an orientation, at least one complication and a resolution. They talked about settings and characters needed to make their stories interesting.

They learned the motto was KISS “keep it simple sweetie”.

Once the planning was completed the hard work began, making characters, drawing settings and then taking the hundreds of single pictures needed to make the animation.

In just 8 hours most of them had produced their animation, loaded it into imovie and used it to make titles and credits as well as adding music and sound effects.

They were unanimous in the pride they felt at what they had achieved. Stay tuned for the rest of the movies due to be published next week.