19 June 2014

Reading Reports...

Today I brought home a big cardboard box of Report Cards to sign.

Yes, it's that time of the year again. As I put the box on the floor next to my table my young rag doll climbed in and lay all over the folders. Oh, the life of a cat... 

I've had to wrestle the folders out from under him and as I sign each Report Card and have a last flip through I reflect on this process every school will be going through right now.

Report Cards and the process involved in preparing them is perhaps one of the most time consuming processes for any school. At Peregian Springs we believe that Report Cards are one of the most important documents provided to parents. This is why they are time consuming and often difficult to produce. In fact, it is because of their value and importance to parents that we read and sign each child’s report after the teacher has written it.

We do this for many reasons:-
We want to know how each child is developing and to read about their progress over the semester.
We want to be sure of the ‘quality’ of the content of the report. As a teaching profession, we believe teachers need to be accountable for these reports as they are a record of what has taken place.
We want to affirm our wonderful teachers in the work they have put into reflecting on student progress and writing their detailed reports. 


So my hand is aching and I've gone through two pens already. And I'm just hoping that parents will appreciate the efforts their children have made in their learning, and the thinking their teachers have put into providing an accurate report of each child's progress. I'm also wishing that all I had to do was lay all over them and look cute. And I'm hoping that some children don't find stray cat hair in their report when they open it up and read it next Friday!


18 June 2014

School photo day...such excitment over having your picture taken!

Last week was the annual school photos event. There was such excitement everywhere about having your photo taken. All the classes looked fantastic as they marched up to the Indoor Sports Centre - checked shirts, hair combed, ribbons and bows in school colours, and black shoes. Teachers all over the school were checking each member of their class for sticky up hair and shirt collars, dirty knees and odd socks. Teachers were all dressed up too. One said to me 'I've got make up on for two days in a row!' And another turned up in a tie and dinner suit! (I saw him later in the day and he had ditched the tie and rolled up his sleeves!)

Thursday morning was staff photo time - the kids were disappointed they couldn't watch. Up until this year staff photos have been done in the middle of the oval with all the kids looking on and laughing. Last year my heels sank into the boggy grass and my hair blew everywhere and I said to Mrs Cathcart, 'please organise an alternative for next year'. So we built the Sports Centre! The photographers lined us up and I had to sit down the front and in the middle - as usual. All the tall men stood in a group behind me. We definitely need to break with tradition next year - I'm going to stand up at the back!

This year the photographers allowed the classes to have a fun photo, as well as the more serious traditional class photo. Some of these are gorgeous - actually all of them are! I think we need to reverse the trend of spit and polish for photo day and include more waggley ears and sticky out tongues. 

Sometimes we take ourselves far too seriously!

14 June 2014

A licence to be creative

I love it when teachers send kids to see me with their 'best' work. It's a chance to celebrate learning, have a chat and ask children about their activities. It's also an opportunity to indiscriminately hand out stickers - I always ask 'are you too old for stickers?'. They never are...

The other day a group of Year 5s appeared at my door asking me if I wanted to see their movies. I don't need any other invitation to down tools and take a break. They proudly explained that their teacher had been to a conference and had returned and implemented a session once a week where they could be 'creative'. (It's always funny the ways in which kids see things - I'm pretty sure the teacher would be horrified if she knew they thought they could only be creative once a week!) They had made some movies about Queensland Day and as they pressed play up came a stream of photos of underwater scenes, the Queensland outback and other iconic Queensland images.

'Lovely', I said. 'Did you take those photos?'

'Oh, no', said one of them. 'They're from Creative Commons'. And so began a conversation on intellectual property, stealing the work of others from the Internet, and how many people make their living from their work online and should be paid for it. I was so impressed that 10 year olds already understand that you can't simply just copy and paste whatever you feel like using and pass it off as your own work. I was so impressed they knew about Creative Commons, what it means and how to find images they could use which didn't infringe on the rights of others.

This, of course, is a key outcome of our mLearning Program. Students are learning how to navigate the online world safely and ethically. They are learning to be creators of knowledge, and not just merely consumers. If we can pull this off, and at the same time maintain their innate curiosity and creativity, then we have done our jobs well.

(For those of you wondering, Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.)

  1. From http://creativecommons.org.au/

05 June 2014

I wanted to bring this little guy home from Edutech

Six of us went to Edutech Australia 2014 this week and I got a little attached to this little guy. Edutech is Australia's premier conference on learning technologies and the latest thinking in education. Four of us went last year and in all my years as a Principal I have never seen so much value from one professional development event. The teachers that came with me transformed their learning environments, talked excitedly with kids about learning and the future and were constantly at my door with the refrain 'I've got this idea... this is what we want to do now'.

Sure, Edutech showcases all the shiny new toys and the latest gadgets to engage students in their learning...and last year we walked around the product displays round eyed and wistful (and I was desperately trying to keep the credit card in my wallet.) We bought a couple of things - a 3D printer and some 'light' reading. And we also raided all the free stuff to bring back to school. We raided all the free stuff this year too! But what was different was that we just wanted the ideas. The ideas are the most valuable commodity for our teachers and their students.

We were treated to the likes of Ken Robinson, Sugata Mitra, Ian Dukes (21st Century Fluency Project) and Yong Zhao and the ideas were flowing. The messages about educating for creativity and fluency with technology rang loud and clear and was music to our ears. We have a ton of things we want to do to ensure our children retain their innate curiosity and develop their ability to be creative problem solvers and creative opportunity finders - essential skills of our world now and in the future. We learned about concepts that will feed our creativity as educators for the next 12 months and more.

(Having said that I was still a bit keen on the little robot. I'm sure I could think of some way he could further creativity in our school!)

Bring on Edutech Australia 2015. We want to take a whole new team next year and I'm excited already!