Firstly, welcome back after lock-down 5.0. I would like to thank all in our community for their support over the last couple of weeks. This extends to our students who have done the best they could, the families that have soldiered on in very difficult scenarios and our staff who did incredible work.  I was going to write a bit of a wrap up of the last two weeks in this edition, however an unfortunate weekend has meant that this has been delayed.

Over the course of last weekend, a group of teenagers (from all reports) congregated on our school grounds. Their purpose appeared to be to damage our school and making life difficult for neighbours, passers-by and other members of the community. I would like to re-iterate that if there are people who witness anything untoward occurring on our school grounds, they should call the police directly on 000.

Annual Implementation Plan

Every school has a document called the Annual Implementation Plan(aka AIP). This outlines the goals that the school sets for the year and the strategies that it seeks to employ. Throughout the year it is monitored by the Leadership team and externally through the Regional Office. Over coming weeks, I will include a section of the AIP so that the community is informed about our direction and progress. This week the focus will be on Student Well-Being. I would like to thank Sophie Herbert who is in charge of this work at our school through the AIP team and Amanda Dwyer who is our Student Well-Being Coordinator.

How we work

The school has a dedicated Student Engagement team that meets fortnightly to work on these actions and has a representative from each sub-school to lead the work in teams and classrooms.

What we have achieved

• Start-up program built around explicit exploration of the school values in classrooms is embedded as part of practice
• Smiling Minds parent information session to share mindfulness strategy to parents and connect our wellbeing approach with the community was conducted
• Smiling Mind lessons implemented as part of our weekly wellbeing activities, in conjunction with RRRR. Use of Smiling Mind meditations after recess and lunch to settle students into learning
• Revised the Behaviour Management Flowchart - to specifically address procedures that address high needs students
• Investigate the process of implementing the tracking of behaviour using Compass to be trialed in second half of the year
• Student Wellbeing and Engagement, Bullying, Parent Complaints policy updated
• Started lunchtime club options for students who need wellbeing support or different options during breaktimes.

Going forward

To start with - this indicates that a lot has been achieved in the space of the first half of the year. It indicates that all of the structure has been built to set up a cohesive and comprehensive Well Being program. The work will be to implement these actions consistently and with fidelity over Semester Two.

Research on Working Memory

In 2019 I attended a course at Boston University that focussed on the Science of the Brain and its implications for teachers. It was run by Andrew Watson, and it covered such topics as plasticity, memory and attention. The area of working memory was really fascinating. His book Learning Begins is always on my desk in the office.

Working Memory (WM) is where we hold information in order to process it and fit it into our existing schema. It really is the pivotal phase in the learning as we take information in, we make sense of it and then store it in our long-term memory as learning.  It’s a critical stage because during this time the brain is susceptible to overload through too much information being held in the WM. If this occurs, then not only does the new information not get retained but information that is already held in the brain can be lost or scrambled.

Working memory capacity changes over time (Gathercole S.E. et al 2008) and develops as children get older. This is why teachers tend to deliver shorter chunks of information in primary settings which gradually increases as learners may go to secondary school and then on to tertiary settings.

At IEPS our whole school lesson structure recognises the importance of these concepts through clear learning intentions, specific introduction of new material (10-15 minutes) and an opportunity for students to integrate new learning.

Brett Millott.

brett.millott@education.vic.gov.au