Monthly Archives: November 2014

Community Market Day @ SAHPS

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Did you make it to our Community Market day?  If you didn’t you missed a great day!

Market

Our maths extension students developed a whole school event as part of their Think Tank program.  Each class participated in the Hour of Power each week and planned their market stall in terms of product, cost, size of the stall, and budget spending.  The outcome was a celebration of real life maths learning with many eager students, staff and families participating in a very successful Community Market Day.

We raised around $1400.00 as a result of the good work of all involved.

Thank you to Ciara Stewart and her team of students, and to the rest of the school community for their active participation.

Learning with iPads in 2015

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Our school has started to explore options for going 1:1 with iPads in Foundation to Year 2.  Already we have a number of iPads in the school and we use them to support our student learning.

We held a forum recently for parents, teachers and students to learn more about the benefits of using the technology and the ways we could move forward in the future.  Parents, staff and students all felt it was a great idea to have one iPad per student.  This would mean that:

  • students could follow their own progress of learning on their iPad
  • they could use it when needed rather than wait to borrow one
  • the iPad could go home and create a link between home and school
  • learning could be ongoing and supported between home and school

There will be more information to be shared soon as we try to develop a costing plan that could meet the needs of all families.  Our School Council members are supportive of this direction and also keen to see it being implemented in the school.

In the meantime, you can watch a video that was made about the introduction of iPads with my previous school.

Or look on the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development website for other school case studies http://www.ipadsforeducation.vic.edu.au 

To find out more call the school and speak with Helen Otway.

Learning another Language

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JapanOver the last two terms at St Albans Heights Primary School, we have been consulting with the community and the school staff about the language we will be offering next year.   As part of the government initiative, all schools will need to offer a language study to at least the Foundation level students by 2015.

With this in mind I collated:

  • Parent choices during the midyear parent teacher interviews
  • Staff choices
  • Local secondary school languages
  • Use of languages around the world

Language consultation

Our School Council met last week and have used all the information provided to decide on JAPANESE as the language of study at SAHPS.  All other languages were considered and valued but we could only choose one.

We will be now looking for an exceptional Japanese Teacher to help us support this program and we look forward to an exciting journey into new learning and intercultural understanding.