The past two weeks have been filled with important school and national events.

Open Day on 16 May was an amazing showcase of the wonderful things which are happening in the College in both Primary and Secondary.  Your presence with your children on the day made Open Day such a success and the feedback from new families in terms of class displays and student performances was so heart-warming.  The tour guides did an amazing job on the day and we are so grateful to these students and indeed all of the Primary students who “sold” our school so well to the visitors and new families.  It is this cross pollination which is so powerful on Open Day.

NAPLAN

These national tests for Years 3 and 5 give us valuable data which helps us to inform the future direction for our Primary programmes, pedagogy and classroom practices.  We use NAPLAN data to identify our strengths or weaknesses in various areas of Literacy and Numeracy and make plans to enhance or address these.

NAPLAN results are a snapshot in time and results must be balanced by how students are progressing in class on a day to day basis.  This is reflected in Parent/Teacher interviews and semester reports which together with National testing provide the whole picture of how your child is managing academically.

SHARP READING

During the past two weeks teachers and teaching assistants have been working with Mr. Hilton Ayrey from New Zealand as he has been modelling SHARP READING in every Primary classroom. Teachers have been observing and working on this programme with their respective classes, with Hilton giving feedback. SHARP READING is being implemented in a number of schools in New Zealand, Australia, South East Asia, China and Hong Kong, and Hilton travels to these countries training teachers in this method. He and Brian Parker developed SHARP READING after realising that universities often do not prepare young teachers with the essential skills for the teaching of reading.  With many years of experience, I have personally learned so much from SHARP READING myself and the feedback from teachers and teaching assistants during Hilton’s time at Glasshouse Christian College has been very positive.

Hilton will be returning later this year for a follow up visit to work with our staff to further develop a sustainable SHARP READING programme for the future, in our Primary school.   We are confident that our students will benefit greatly from the implementation of SHARP READING year after year as they develop into young adults.  We cannot stress enough the importance of Literacy for our children.

Cheryl Bryers, Head of Primary