Rylstone Review Term 2 Week 2, 5th May 2022

Professional Learning

Last week all teachers and Learning Support Officers (SLSO) attended Mudgee for the combined Cudgegong Learning Community Development Day. We attended training by Simon Breakspear on Learning Sprints which involved engaging with research-based strategies and creating incremental and sustainable changes to classroom practice. Reflecting on the complexity of teaching and the need for enhancing adaptive expertise and exploring the relevant research evidence that can inform our practice.

Rylstone staff then broke off into various workshops to further develop their professional needs. It was a hugely successful day with all staff coming back to school enthusiastic to implement their new knowledge.

High Impact School Leadership

Mrs Mulvaney and myself will be participating in High Impact School Leadership training. This training ties in tightly with the work of Simon Breakspear and Teaching Sprints. High-impact School Leadership is the practice of developing individual and collective teaching expertise and learning, and is pivotal to delivering the best outcomes for our students. We are looking forward to implementing these skills and strategies here at Rylstone PS over the rest of this year.

NAPLAN

Next week (Week 3), sees NAPLAN testing being conducted across NSW. Students in Years 3 and 5 will be participating in a combination of online and written tests. As children progress through their school years, it is very important that checks are made along the way to see how well they are learning the essential skills of reading, writing and mathematics – skills that will set them upon the path to success as adults. NAPLAN is a point-in-time assessment that allows parents and carers to see how their child is progressing in literacy and numeracy against the national standard and compared with their peers throughout Australia. At the classroom level, NAPLAN provides additional information to support teachers’ professional judgement about student progress. Parents are not required to do anything in preparation for the test other than make sure children have a good night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast on the day! Further information, including a timetable, is available below.

Rylstone P&C

Yesterday was our P&C Annual General Meeting held to vote in new executive member. Some positions were left unfilled, however I’d like to thank those parents who put their hand up to hold a position or join the general committee. Our school is so appreciative of all that you do. Special thanks is given to Sandra Stroud, our outgoing president, who has diligently and enthusiastically driven our P&C for the last few years. Ms Stroud is the contributing force behind our new multipurpose court and has organised numerous fundraising activities to support our students. We are so appreciative and grateful for the time you have given to our P&C and ultimately our students. Thank you!

Bounce Back program

Next week (week 3) will see us begin our whole school wellbeing and resilience program called ‘Bounce Back’. All classes will be following a similar theme and conduct Bounce Back sessions at the same time on Fridays.

The BOUNCE BACK! Wellbeing and Resilience program teaches children the skills and attitudes to help them become more resilient.

Ten coping statements are a core part of the program.

BOUNCE BACK! stands for:

• Bad times don’t last. Things always get better. Stay optimistic.
• Other people can help if you talk to them. Get a reality check.
• Unhelpful thinking makes you feel more upset. Think again.
• Nobody is perfect—not you and not others.
• Concentrate on the positives (no matter how small) and use laughter.
• Everybody experiences sadness, failure, rejection and setbacks sometimes, not just you.
• Blame fairly. How much of what happened was due to you, to others and to bad luck or circumstances?
• Accept what can’t be changed (but try to change what you can change first).
• Catastrophising exaggerates your worries. Don’t believe the worst possible picture.
• Keep things in perspective. It’s only part of your life.

The program can help your child to get better at:

• Using helpful thinking when faced with a problem or a difficult situation
• Thinking more optimistically, i.e. expecting bad times to get better
• Understanding that everyone has setbacks and difficulties, not just them
• Talking to people they trust so they get a reality check on their thinking
• Being brave and facing their fears
• Managing strong emotions and turning a bad mood into a good mood
• Getting along with others and cooperating
• Setting goals, being resourceful and not easily giving up
• Being kind, fair, honest, friendly, responsible, and accepting of differences
• Respecting other people and not bullying others.

You can help your child get the best out of their involvement with Bounce Back! if you reinforce the key messages they are learning.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please contact me on Ph: 6379 1404 or jodee.burcher@det.nsw.edu.au

Jodee

Principal

Please keep up to date with COVID information by accessing the latest news from the Department of Education at the link above.

Around the Classrooms

Pacific Ocean with Mrs Rankin & Mrs Fielder

Welcome back to term 2. Wow, we have only been back for just over a week, but we have managed to have such fun and recap much of our learning from last term.

We are getting really good at matching and writing the graphemes (letters) that represent some phonemes (sounds) in words. We do this as a whole class and the students are doing a fabulous job at listening for the sounds in words. We are working on our letter formation and making sure that we start at the correct spot when forming our letters. We are trying hard to remember which letters are grass, sky or underground letters when writing our words.

In maths this week we have learnt about 3D shapes and subtraction. We discussed different strategies we can use to come to the correct answer and shared our thinking with each other. We have used counters to take away and worked out the answers. We have been completing come fabulous lego challenges and creating miniature houses, rainbows, things that fly and fruit. We had to try and make sure that our creations were 3D and had height, width and depth.

This week we are very lucky to have Miss Shannon Comer come and join us at Rylstone for her first teaching practical. Shannon is currently completing her final 6 months of a Bachelor of Teaching (Primary) at Charles Sturt University. Shannon comes with a wealth of experience and it an asset to our class. She will be with us until the end of week 6.

We have been very busy doing secret squirrel business. We have had fun making things. We would like to take the opportunity to wish all our Mums a very Happy Mother’s Day. We hope that you have an extra special day and that you are spoilt by your beautiful children.

Atlantic Ocean with Ms Burcher & Ms Jacklin

We have started this term looking at narratives. Last week we were discussing exciting starts and describing words. This week we were looking at the complication or ‘middle’ of our stories. We have been participating in peer feedback and using rubrics to help us understand the steps needed for a good narrative.

We have been looking at 3D shapes and identifying prisms based on their bases and discussing vertices, faces and edges.

We have also been training for the cross country next week and enjoying reading in the beautiful Autumn sun!

Indian Ocean with Mrs Mulvaney

It’s been a wavy start to the Term 2 in the Indian Ocean classroom! We started with the majority of our class attending the GRIP leadership conference on the second day back at school. It was a great day and a wonderful opportunity for our students to think about how they can ALL be great leaders in our school each day.

Some of our usual routines are also undergoing a bit of change from the way things were done in Term 1 but the students of the Indian Ocean are doing fantastically at adjusting and showing just how adaptable they are.

We’ve had a bit of a shake up with our English tasks. We started doing some word investigations to analyse words and their parts to help us understand the meaning of words. It’s a work in progress! We’re also doing some review of what makes a good narrative and “quick writes” to help prepare our Year 5 friends for NAPLAN. 30 minutes goes really quickly when you’re writing

In Maths we’ve been practising our addition and subtraction skills. We’re applying them to some budgeting tasks and “visited” Five Wonders theme park this week to spend the money we earned on rides and food! Mrs Mulvaney even made us line up outside and pretend we were really excited… Some of us were obviously more willing than others…

Science groups have kicked off for the term. The 5/6 Science group has begun an interesting experiment to test the best conditions for growing mould. Each group has 5 pieces of bread in different moisture and temperature combinations. We’re super keen to observe the results over the coming days! We’ll give you picture updates in the next newsletter!

We’ve also been working on our Mother’s Day gifts but it’s secret squirrel business for now…