Another Great Week @ FHC- Week 5

Welcome to our first blog edition of Another Great Week @ FHC.

This week we ran Rhythm Nation. The night was a great success and the Tribes all made fabulous contributions.Congratulations Green Tribe on a job well done. Thanks to all staff who gave up hours to support the students. I am sure they are very grateful.
Our Pre VCE group enjoyed an excursion to Healesville Sanctuary on Wednesday. They saw many animals in natural habitats that they will not have seen before.

Jenny, David, Meagan, Vernon, Marianne and Amanda all went to the Whitehorse/ Maroondah Leadership Conference at Cape Schank. The focus of the conference was on what is it that expert leaders do in a globalized world. We learnt lots and look forward to returning next week with a sharpened focus on leadership of schools in the 21st Century.


A reminder that next week is National Reconciliation week. Some resources that you might like to use in your classrooms to support any work you may be including in your curriculum next week are listed below.

http://www.reconciliation.org.au/
http://www.shareourpride.org.au/

Our year 7 teams went to the Tutankhamun exhibition on Friday. Thanks to the staff who put this outstanding opportunity together for our students.taking student's learning outside the 4 walls of the classroom opens up many eyes and allows students to understand their learning from a different perspective.

Our College Aths team competed in the District Carnival and as usual , the students represented the College with pride.


Our meetings for the week were Professional Learning and Working Parties. The PL was targeted at leading staff through a toolbox for PEER OBSERVATIONS.It began with building trust relationships and moved into the E5 rubric self assessment tool.

Vernon spent a lot of time looking at models for our new timetable and worked 1 on 1 with Domain leaders, listening to their ideas and needs. We are looking forward to seeing a range of options presented to us following this work.
Octane began, and from what the three of us all saw, it was a brilliant success. The students were totally engaged in the program.

The student leaders met with Naomi, Jenny, David and Meagan for breakfast and we discussed their work in administering the recent student attitudes to schools surveys, and how they will construct focus groups of students and then present all the data back to all students.
We also asked some questions about their teaching and learning. They provided an animated discussion and some fascinating insights into the use of technology in classes, student motivation levels, the need for genuine choice in years 9 and 10, and their wish to have iPads as their mobile device in classrooms.

The first of our next round of Primary School visits commenced this week.A lot of work from our staff goes into these, and they are making a big difference to the transformation of our public profile.

Thanks to all members of the Espressivo concert team. The sounds coming from rehearsal were magnificent. Unfortunately we have all been unable to attend the concert, due to our attendance at the Network Leadership conference. I believe the band sounded wonderful

For those lovers of fine music amongst us, we have a star on staff. Sophie Anderson is performing in the Melbourne Theatre Company's production of 'Next to Normal' and by all accounts doing an outstanding job.

We met with our consultant to do a final inspection of the building works on the T Block classroom refurbishment.

Tenders closed on Wednesday for the admin refurbishment. We have had a second look at the staging of this work and are considering an option that creates no movement of any staff during the first stage, and the only staff that would need to move to allow development of the second stage are the Admin and Prin teams.We have moved the tender decision meeting to next Monday, and a decision will be made on Monday and communicated to the builders then. If all things proceed to plan, demolition will begin immediately, under our new staging plans. Below is a link to my Dropbox and some graphic images of what the front office will look like when completed.

http://db.tt/u15bUPa

This weeks PL is a bit of a trial. It should open up as a link to a TED presentation on the innovative uses of ebooks on IPads.I have had some trouble opening this on my iPad, but it has worked fine on my laptop, I hope it works for you.....

http://learningwithipads.blogspot.com/2011/05/highly-interactive-ebook-apps-for.html

In case it does not work there are some other links to some interesting stuff.....

http://www.marktreadwell.com/Whatever_Next


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A-ZVCjfWf8&feature=youtube_gdata_player

http://mobile.ipadsforeducation.vic.edu.au/

http://delphian.com.au/mobile-learning-articles