Belmore South Public School

The students and staff at Belmore South should be congratulated for the best Basic Skills Test results they have achieved in ten years.

The school’s strength is in the area of writing. Year 3 and Year 5 results are at the state mean and above the regional average.

Another notable achievement is the amount of value adding in all Basic Skills Tests. Our Year 5 students results improved above both state and regional average levels.

In Year 5 98% of the students achieved Skill Band 2 or higher in Literacy and Numeracy.

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Today we had a visit a group of educators from the USA. The photos show how much everyone was enjoying themselves.

Our guests are members of the Board of the Association of Supervision and Curriculum Studies. They were led by their President Nancy DeFord and accompanied by Jenny Lewis who is CEO of the Australian Council for Educational Leaders.

The group came to Australia to attend a conference and visit schools to see what is happening by way of educational innovation in our country.

We had about 2 hours to show them all the things we do in our classrooms. We had  4 teachers and about 10 students to take them on a guided tour through many of our classrooms.

The Board were keen to see how the teachers embed technology into theclassroom. They saw students making games, playing games, writing and reading blogs, using web 2.0 tools creating digital storybooks, making movies, building lego land and playing junkbots, doing number games, drawing like Picasso and testing their knowledge of the eye. All these activities involved using digital technology in the form of IWB’s, computers, Cameras, and videos.

The students and the staff warmed instantly to the interested and interesting visitors. We enjoyed the day enormously and look forward to strengthening our contacts. We learned priceless snippets from talking to these wise and experienced people.

The greenback has already begun its journey!

On Friday 14 September we welcomed some very notable guests from the United Kingdom and Australia to our school. They wanted to see a school where Technology was part of the everyday life of most of the classrooms in the school. Interactive whiteboards were being used in all the classes the visitors went to see.

They saw Bill give a group of Stage 2 and 3 students a lesson on the IWB about the basics of using Gamemaker. They then went and had a chat with Stage 2 students who were being peer tutored in making games by some Stage 3 students. While they were in that room they saw the Brightsparks’ blog and promised they’d get students from the Uk blogging with us. We look forward to making more friends in the United Kingdom.

S2/3 P shared various projects they had been doing using: Mission maker; Scratch; Vokis and the Wii.

Down in the K to 2 building they saw: SK1 working together to make an animated story about Mr Potatohead; S1R exploring the art of Piet Mondrian and his use of primary and secondary colours; S1K playing maths games that reinforced their number learning; S1S doing reading activities that related to their investigations of the senses; and they found S1F creating Lego worlds and testing their problem solving skills by playing Lego Junkbots. 

Mr Owen Lynch, who has visited many schools and classrooms around the world, said that he had never seen the IWBs used so well as they are used in our school. He especially liked the way the students were in charge of the IWB’s. All our visitors were very impressed with the level of oral language our students used and the confidence they displayed when using technology and working in groups. 

All of our visitors were surprised to find such a warm, vibrant, exciting and fun learning environment behind the dull old buildings they first saw as they approached the school from Canterbury Road.    

We enjoyed sharing what we do in our school with Owen Lynch(consultant to the Uk Department for Children, Schools and Families, former CEO, BECTA), Jimmy Stewart (Director C2K N. Ireland), Tom McMullan (former Director C2K (N.Ireland), Gary Putland (General Manager,education.au), Greg Black (CEO, education.au) and Kellie Stephens (NSW DET Centre for Learning Innovation).

 
Today we were very honoured to have 5 guests from Singapore visit our school to see what our wonderful students and teachers have been doing in their classrooms.

The ladies and gentleman were from

Ministry of Education:  

Lim Lai Cheng, Chan Lai Peng, Vincent Lim

Infocomm Development Authority:    

YIP Yuen Fong,  Belinda CHNG

Our special guests were escorted to various classrooms around the school by Sam-James, Sharliyah, Yilmaz and Martin.

On their visit our guests saw classes doing: maths activities, blogging, playing games, making Lego worlds, solving lego problems, doing internet searches and writing. Martin and Yilmaz even showed our guests how to make a computer game.

Our guests saw the students working in groups, as individuals and as whole classes. The teachers and students were all interested and highly motivated in what they were doing using a wide variety of technology. They were using interactive whiteboards, computers and the usual pen and paper. It was not so much the technology that was important but the fact that the technology is just a natural part of our students’ and teachers’ daily lives.

In one classroom the children were working in groups and it was observed how noisy they were. When we looked about they were noisy because they were excited about the activities they were doing. Two girls we noticed were arguing but they were arguing passionately about the problem they were solving.  

In our classes it is important that the children feel comfortable to air their opinions appropriately and be heard. We believe for our children to learn most effectively they need to:

DO IT!          TALK IT!      READ IT!        WRITE IT!

We told the Singapore visitors we had given up using textbooks when the Interactive Whiteboards came into our classrooms.  Why do we need textbooks when we have masses of resources at our fingertips from all over the world and we can choose the best and most appropriate for our students needs?

Thank you for visiting we enjoyed sharing our school with you and we would like to learn more about Singapore.

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Today all the boys and girls in Years 3 and 5 have been writing a narrative and an exposition as a part of the requirements of the Basic Skills Tests for 2007. These tasks are assessed by teachers from other schools and are used as part of the Basic Skills Test results. These results will be available for parents half way through Term 4.

Year 4 and 6 also completed two writing tasks. Their tasks involved writing a narrative and a review. These tasks will be assessed by their teachers and used as part of their annual school assessment.