From the Principal's Desk
Published by Rochedale State School
Students are really excited about the Colour Run tomorrow, it will be an afternoon of fun.
Thank you to Rob Timms and Cilla Gray for organising the event.
Teaching and Learning
The work that we are focussing on at Rochedale State School is closely aligned to the regional priorities. The Regional Director shared with principals on 19 July, the priorities that help us to stay the course:
- delivering the Australian Curriculum with evidence informed pedagogical practices in every classroom
- rigorous moderation practices
- strong student case management to have a shared understanding of individual students and their progress.
The Australian Curriculum - Information for Parents
What is the Australian Curriculum?
Over the coming weeks, I’ll provide parents with information about the Australian Curriculum, with a focus on English and Mathematics. This week I will focus on the Foundation year of schooling. The Foundation year in Queensland is known as the Prep year.
The Australian Curriculum is designed to develop:
- successful learners
- confident and creative individuals
- active and informed young people who are ready to take their place in society.
It sets the goal for what all students should learn as they progress through their school life - wherever they live in Australia and whatever school they attend. The Australian Curriculum, with its eight learning areas, provides a modern curriculum for every student in Australia. Included in the content of learning areas are seven general capabilities intended to help prepare young Australians to learn, live and work in the 21st century.
There are three cross-curriculum priorities that are also a focus across the learning areas. The Australian Curriculum is flexible so that teachers can plan the learning for all their students, also taking into account their local school community.
In their first year of school, Prep students learn through teaching interactions with others, experimentation, practice
and play in the classroom and school community. Priority is given to literacy and numeracy development as these are the foundations upon which further learning is built. Opportunities to develop literacy and numeracy are found in all subjects but particularly in English and Mathematics. Learning in a classroom and belonging to a school community are key to the first year at school.
English
In the first year of school, students view, listen to and enjoy texts that entertain and inform, such as picture books or, rhymes. They begin to learn to read and create texts.
Typically, students will:
- communicate with others in familiar situations
- read stories with one or more sentences, pictures and familiar vocabulary
- recognise rhyming words, syllables and sounds
- recognise letters and the most common sounds the letters make
- listen to, read and view picture books, stories, poetry, information books, films and performances
- write some words
- recognise some words and develop skills in ‘sounding out’ words
- create their own texts such as giving information orally or in writing; presenting a narrative, which may include pictures.
Mathematics
In the first year of school, students develop a sense of number, order, sequence, pattern and position in relation to familiar settings.
Typically, students will:
- connect numbers, their names and quantities up to 20 count numbers in sequences up to 20, continue patterns and compare lengths of objects use materials to model problems,
- sort objects and discuss answers group and sort shapes and objects
- connect events with days of the week develop an understanding of location words, such as above, outside.
For more information about the other learning areas of the Foundation (Prep) year please visit the following site: https://docs.acara.edu.au/resources/Information_for_parents_Foundation_year.pdf
Next week, I’ll include information on Years 1 and 2.
Your Child, Our School, One Team
The message currently displayed on our school sign, "Your Child, Our School, One Team" is one you may see at other schools across Queensland this week. It's part of the advocacy work of the school leader professional association called QASSP (the Queensland Association of State School Principals).
The Association represents the 337,500 state primary school students in this state. The message the sign is intended to convey is that everyone in our school community is committed to supporting and helping every child in our school to achieve their potential. To do this, it's important that we always treat everyone in our community with dignity and respect.
Parents as Learners – Inclusion and Disabilities
Definitions of disability and the NCCD categories
What is disability as defined in the Disability Discrimination Act 1992?
The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA) defines disability broadly as:
- total or partial loss of the person's bodily or mental functions; or
- total or partial loss of a part of the body; or
- the presence in the body of organisms causing disease or illness; or
- the presence in the body of organisms capable of causing disease or illness; or
- the malfunction, malformation or disfigurement of a part of the person's body; or
- a disorder or malfunction that results in the person learning differently from a person without the disorder or malfunction; or
- a disorder, illness or disease that affects a person's thought processes, perception of reality, emotions or judgement or that results in disturbed behaviour;
and includes a disability that:
- presently exists; or
- previously existed but no longer exists; or
- may exist in the future (including because of a genetic predisposition to that disability); or is imputed to a person.
To avoid doubt, a disability that is otherwise covered by this definition includes behaviour that is a symptom or manifestation of the disability.
What is imputed disability?
An ‘imputed’ disability is something that someone believes another person has. To impute a disability the school team must have reasonable grounds to make such a judgement. At a minimum the student’s parent, guardian or carer must have been consulted about concerns the school has and been involved in identifying reasonable adjustments to address the identified concerns.
A personalised learning plan or behaviour management plan does not equate to a child having a disability, but may be an indicator of an imputed disability when it documents the teaching and learning adjustments that have been made so that the child can access the curriculum.
Social disadvantage and/or disrupted parenting can be addressed through evidence-based quality teaching and in and of itself does not constitute a disability under the DDA.
A good test of your own confidence in the judgement is to ask, ‘If we were challenged to explain our decision would we feel we had reasonable grounds and documentation to support our judgement?’
See the Imputing disability for the NCCD page for more information.
