school+Yarraman+Oaks+Primary+School

Yarraman Oaks is a small primary school, approx 190 students, in Noble Park. Last year (2009)Yarraman Park merged with Oakwood Park PS onto the Yarraman site. We are a very multicultural school with many, many nationalities represented but no one dominate culture. We are a level 9 school (high EMA and high ESL). This year I am in the classroom for 4 days and introducing the Kathy Walker Learning Approach to the 1 / 2 area. This has been very enjoyable, challenging and is making us reflect even more on our practise. I am the school Literacy coordinator and P - 2 area coordinator with 2 graduates in our team.. We are taking part in the IDEAS project with the University of Southern Queensland and am the school based faciliator of the project, if you wish to know more you can find it on ideas.usq.edu.au. I have a few other minor responsibilities in the school. In my coaching I am working with my team of Prep to grade 2 teachers to develop and deepen our understanding of the Walker Learning Approach to improve our practise and using our data to focus on the children's needs and track growth. We are always looking to improve what we do with our students and I appreciate having the opportunity to extend my knowledge. I have enjoyed the first few days of the course. Having time to reflect and discuss with other colleagues is a bonus. If you would like to know more details about the school please click on the link. [|www.yarramanpark.vic.edu.au].

I found the Assessment day interesting and it tied in with a lot of the work that we are doing in using data to inform and as evidence. I have shared some of the resources we used with the leadership team and we are thinking of adapting some and using them in our teams. I got so much out of the Cathy Toll day. She was such a knowledgeable, entertaining, passionate speaker who was so responsive to our needs. Great. I have also shared her information with our school's teaching and learning caoch to give another view of caoching and this has started some good professional conversations. I feel that I would like to start over again and change my focus but I probably will stay with what I thought initially.I wou

Day 6 - I found revisiting the "Star diagram" useful and will go back to that to refer to it. I also liked revisiting Jill's 3C's continum. Both were brought back to the forefront. The session on multiliteracies was very interesting and prompted a lot of thought about how that could be used in our context and to make our teaching more relevant to the children's lives. Loved looking at the other web sites - Tim Rylands, prezi and will definately be sharing these with the staff. I had seen and used the 4 Resources Model before but was interested to see the updated versions. Again a day with a lot to think about, reflect on, share and discuss. Day 7 - Today I realy enjoyed the workshop session in the morning. Thank you Loren. To have the cahncews to see, discuss, question and then have the handouts, Cd and DVD to come away with was great. Again a lot of food for thought and idscussion as something we may be able to adopt. I really would have liked to opportunity to do a couple more of the workshops. To go throught the Effective Coaching with Julie was good and gives me a further insight into coaching and more knowledge to have discussions with our teaching and learning coach. Look forward to seeing everyone next time. I enjoyed the opportunity for reflection and discussing the triads projects on hte last day. i'm so glad that we can get together again next year. Ellen