AROUND THE SCHOOLS
Silkwood State School celebrates National Simultaneous Storytime MARIA GIRGENTI THERE was a whole lot of bling at Silkwood State School last Wednesday as students and staff celebrated National Simultaneous Storytime. This year's story was 'Whitney and Britney Chicken Divas' written and illustrated by Lucinda Gifford and published by Scholastic Australia. Whitney and Britney are two gorgeous chooks who live alongside Dora von Dooze. But Dora is perplexed - why do her dear chickens seem to sleep all day long? Dora decides to snoop. She follows the chooks out at night to the local jazz club where she discovers, to her amazement, that they are Whitney and Britney: Chicken Divas! Despite some modifications to the program due to COVID-19, students still enjoyed the craft activities with mixed age groups and created their very own Chicken Diva.
Acting Principal Chris Cattarossi and Teacher Librarian Sarah Taifalos dressed in the 'Bit of Bling' theme
Every year a picture book, written and illustrated by an Australian author and illustrator, is simultaneously read face-to-face at libraries, schools, pre-schools, childcare centres, family homes, bookshops and many other places around the nation.
This year, due to COVID-19 restrictions particpants were encouraged to host and all who registered received a number of electronic resources including videos and audio recordings. They were also able to access downloads, resources and activities online which could be shared. National Simultaneous Storytime (NSS) is held annually by the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) as part of Library and Information Week. Now in its 20th year, the annual campaign aims to encourage more young Australians to read and enjoy books. The colourful, vibrant, and fun event promotes the value of reading and literacy, using an Australian children's book that explores age-appropriate themes, and addresses key learning areas of the National Curriculum for Foundation to Year 6. NSS receives positive media coverage, generates a great deal of community interest and is held annually as part of Library and Information Week. Last year was the biggest and most successful NSS to date with over 1,138,000 participants at over 11,550 locations, including participants from New Zealand, Thailand, United Kingdom, Canada, Singapore, Vietnam and Hong Kong.
El Arish State School Embraces On-line Learning THE COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated a change in work practices in most, if not all work sectors. For Education this meant schools having to develop their own systems for delivering learning material to all students, as well as monitoring and correcting completed work. With schools being encouraged to incorporate on-line learning, they had to contend with many challenges when developing their systems including: determining whether students had access to the internet and a suitable device (tablet, computer, iPad etc); the age of students - with lower primary students generally having limited computer and/or typing skills; finding suitable computer programs that were permitted to be used by Education Queensland and lastly upskilling staff and parents quickly on the use of these new technologies. At El Arish State School, Principal Mr Chris Richards, a self-confessed ’tech geek’, was keen to pursue on-line learning possibilities. He was particularly keen to find a program that would allow face-to-face teacher and student interactions. With popular on-line conferencing programs such as Zoom and Google Classroom being unavailable for Queensland primary school students, he eventually found an Australian-designed program called iSee Virtual Collaboration. Using world-first technologies, the students were overwhelmingly engaged in this cloud-based platform that merges video conferencing and 3D gaming technologies.
Each day, after a virtual roll call and daily messages, students followed their usual school timetable, including explicit face-to-face lessons and small group work. Staff remained in iSee all day to offer individual help and students (and even some parents) felt comfortable popping in throughout their independent learning time, to ask for assistance. One of the many benefits of iSee was the ability of students to socialise with each other and remain connected. Students were often found already logged in and chatting to one another at 7:30am, well before school started at 9:00am. In the P-2 classroom, teacher Ms Megan Dickson also spent a considerable amount of time researching and choosing an appropriate on-line program for her younger students. She chose See-Saw, which allowed her to record her lessons via video, and could be easily accessed by students at any time. Students could only access their own work and could send their completed work back to Meg using voice recordings, photos or video recordings. She would then correct the work and provide verbal feedback via video. The completed work was then able to be stored easily via individual digital portfolios created for each student. Meg was also really pleased with the on-line learning experience for her and her students, stating See-Saw was easy for parents and students to use, links could be added easily, work could be corrected and filed efficiently and effectively and students could choose their own avatar, which increased the engagement level. Another valuable feature of See-Saw was the built-in community library, where students could access over 500 different activities, according to subjects and year level. Meg also sees a potential future application of See-Saw, for students to complete their homework on. As mentioned earlier, it was not just students who required additional support and instruction during this period of change, with many parents taken well and truly out of their comfort zone. As a result, El Arish State School created its own YouTube Channel to provide parents and students with detailed instructions on how to access and utilise these new programs. In addition, families were able to access tech guidance face-to-face and via phone. Despite the steep learning curve for everyone involved, for this small school, the on-line learning process was hugely positive. Chris congratulated everyone – staff, students and parents for all of their hard work over the past five weeks or more, and for ensuring continuity of learning for El Arish State School students during such challenging times.
Page 16 Cassowary Coast Independent News, Thursday, June 4, 2020
Schools around the region steaming ahead on the road back to normality
IMOGEN KARS
AS the second full week back at school draws to a close, students and staff across the region are finally getting back into the full swing of things. Mission Beach State School is working hard to bring fun and colour into the school day, with a number of exciting events happening. To the delight of South Mission kids, MBSS has resumed its beloved ‘Bike Bus’. Every Wednesday, weather permitting, students who live from South Mission Beach inwards team up and bicycle all the way into school with the help of parents. Sheryl from the office says it’s an awesome way to get the kids excited about coming to school, and it’s a great way to centre health and fitness. Their Biggest Morning Tea, held last Thursday, was also an amazing success. Staff and students raised $626 in proceeds for the Cancer Council, and the students had an exciting day dressing as their favourite characters. Upcoming is their annual pie drive from the Tully Bakery, which is a timely initiative that encourages supporting small businesses around the area.
