VOLUME 4

23 March 2000

Ph: 8381 7166

Fax: 8381 6041

Email:
hvsadmin@happyvalley.sa.edu.au

Website:
www.happyvalley.schools.sa.edu.au

Inside this issue……..

No Hat Policy, Modems for Sale, School Card, SAPSASA, Host Families, Instrumental Music, Gala Day, Kookaburra Café, Sports Day, OSHC, Parent Club, Congratulations, SHIP, Free Literacy Courses, School Achievements, Diary Dates, Community News.

SCHOOL CLOSED TOMORROW - FRIDAY 24 MARCH

While it is a quiet day away from school for our students, our staff will all be hearing a special address from our Chief Executive, Geoff Spring, followed by a day of exciting and challenging Training and Develop workshops involving around 300 staff from local schools.

A couple of reminders for all that park around the school.

• The staff car park is not for picking up or dropping off students, unless special arrangements have been made with the principals.
• Please do not encourage your child to cross at any point on Greenbriar Ave; School Council is most concerned about the potential for a tragic accident.  The corner of Greenbriar Ave and Education Roads is the place designated by road traffic authorities as the safe crossing point and that is the crossing point that the school asks students to use.  Alan Short from Onkaparinga Council will be at the next School Council meeting at 7.30 pm on Monday 3 April to discuss possible changes to parking along Greenbriar Ave and the Education Road car park.  If you have an opinion on this issue please come along to this meeting in the staff room.

Our School Directions or Priorities are reviewed at the end of each year and staff together with some input from school council and feedback from our parent survey, set the next year’s directions.  Most of the priorities are a further development from last year, but Boys and Education is a new focus.

The following is an extract from our School Statement of Purpose which highlights our Four Priorities and what we expect our students to be able to do by the end of this year.  Strategies for achieving these expectations are listed.  Coupled with this expectation is the training and development that staff will undergo to implement these programs.  Parents are welcome to collect a copy of the complete document.

Priority:  Learning Technologies

We wish to develop our skills and resources to provide sequential learning opportunities for students; thereby developing their skills and abilities to cope with a rapidly changing technological environment.  We want students to access a variety of Learning Technologies and to use them to enhance their learning, and increasingly as an alternative to traditional methods of accessing information and learning.  We wish to map students’ Learning Technologies skills as they are applied across the whole school curriculum, with particular emphasis on how they reflect the other priorities for 2000.  We value giving students opportunities to use Learning Technologies appropriately to share their work widely, to investigate and collaborate.

Student Learning Outcome:  Students are using IT as a learning tool to produce work across all areas of the curriculum

Strategies:

• Enable students to access and select information using the Internet, the Intranet and CD Rom programs more effectively through explicit teaching of Resource Based Learning skills
• Enable students to publish work using a range of media and techniques
• Enable students to record/practise their progress and reflect on skills achieved
• Enable students to access special initiatives across the school: the Jason XI Project (Year 7s only), the German Language program, READ and WRITE Special Education program, music software

Priority:  Thinking Skills & Students with High Intellectual Potential

We value all students’ individual strengths and therefore wish to provide a range of flexible and challenging learning opportunities, within the classroom program, to enable students to develop their full potential.  We are committed to teaching a sequential whole school program of thinking strategies, believing all students should be taught how to think more effectively.  We recognise that gifted and talented students often have differentiated cognitive, social and emotional development and needs.  We seek to understand more about caring thinking abilities, recognising that they are just as important as one’s abilities to think critically or creatively.

Student Learning Outcome:  It is evident that students are applying higher order thinking skills in their learning

Strategies:

• Provide a challenging and supportive learning environment, whilst recognising students’ social and emotional needs

• Use R – 7 thinking skills program as per our Scope and Sequence document

• Revise designated thinking skills focus of previous year levels

• Involve resource people who have a particular expertise in an area of giftedness or talents.  (e.g. sport, the arts, writing, the environment, technology, inter/intra personal)

• Provide opportunities for students to be involved in inter and intra-school challenges.