Richard Gill School Blog 054- Welcome to Term 1, 2025!
Welcome to the Richard Gill School Blog for the month of February. While we are in our first week back at school for students, staff have already completed a whole week of Professional Development and training, more on that later in the blog.
Our students have experienced a settled return to school. It was lovely to observe the excitement of first day, especially for kindergarten. We hope this is an amazing year of academic success, maturity, and experiencing community and belonging for all students.
New Principal and New Staff
Welcome to Kindergarten, Mrs Smika, and welcome to Stage 1, Mrs Godfrey.
I want to thank all board members, staff and families in welcoming me to the temporary role of relieving principal. I will be working with staff to introduce new teaching and learning practices and my teaching load will primarily focus on working with Miss Kelly in the 3/4/5 class. I will be here for 6 months while Mrs Stanford is on maternity leave. Mr Limon
Explicit Direct Instruction
Staff Professional Development has primarily focused on learning new teaching strategies and programming styles in Explicit Direct Instruction (EDI). Professional development usually focuses on curriculum. A typical school would usually concentrate on one or two key learning areas of curriculum to develop over a one-year period. Richard Gill School will focus this year on the pedagogy of Explicit Direct Instruction. Pedagogy is the science and art of teaching. The “how” a curriculum is taught. Explicit Direct Instruction is a set of teacher practices developed through research. It is an evidence-based approach to teaching which the school and the staff have committed to for the year. The school will focus on EDI strategies in the areas of Reading, Spelling and Maths this year. Richard Gill School noticed significant improvement when introducing MultiLit reading programs last year and this is an extension of the strategies from that particular curriculum. We hope this leads to greater educational outcomes for our students over the course of the year.
EDI is a powerful tool to make teaching and learning more effective, but it can also be quite boring. We will endeavour to provide regular, short, updates on strategies being taught in each Principal’s Blog.
Muswellbrook Shire Council Incursions at Richard Gill School – What a load of Garbage!
We look forward to Muswellbrook Shire Council’s garbage truck visiting our school to kick off our participation in Clean Up Australia Day. We want to instill in our students a sense of community and environmental responsibility as we participate in Clean Up Australia Day. Students will take part in cleaning up the area around our school after the visit and information session featuring one of our local garbage trucks on the 28th.
Music at Richard Gill School
Ms Ellis is excited to take on the Music coordinator role this year. She is teaching classroom music lessons, morning singing, violin group lessons and string ensemble. Stage 2 and 3 students will begin our string instrument group lessons next week. We have Gillian Miles and Leisa Vaughan from the Upper Hunter Conservatorium continuing as our Cello and Choir teachers. Our first whole school performance will be at the Upper Hunter Show on the 14th of March.
All staff are involved with music professional development opportunities with our mentor from Music in Me, Dr Sue Lane, and through the Musica Viva program. We have exciting Musica Viva performances for the students booked for Term 2 and Term 4.
ABC Radio Visit
Families listening to ABC radio this morning will have heard Mr Limon and Ms Ellis on the morning program. This was some positive (and free) publicity for our school. The school hosted a remote visit from ABC, and we also had the opportunity to welcome a representative from the Brook Christian School who attended for their interview slot with the ABC.
Cultural Learning
Koby from the Wanaruah Local Aboriginal Land Council will be attending our school each fortnight commencing 14/02/2025 for a short session. We welcome Koby and appreciate his time. Our key goal is to learn about, and respect, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture.
Sporting Schools
We look forward to our Fit4Kids Cricket and Sports Days – via sporting schools grant which commences 18/02/2025 for 5 weeks all happening on site at Richard Gill School.
NAPLAN 2025
NAPLAN is an Australia wide assessment of students in Years 3 and 5. We do not treat this as high stakes testing, but view it as a snapshot of how your child went on the day of the test. We encourage all students to participate. One of the advances in recent years is the adaptive element of the online tests. If your child makes an error, the next question becomes a little easier. However, if your child gets an answer correct, the test automatically adjusts the next question slightly higher. It becomes a test of what your child can do, rather than a test of whether they experience success at a particular level. Any questions or concerns regarding NAPALN can be directed to the class teacher.
Upper Huner Show Day
Students from Richard Gill School have been invited to perform at the Upper Hunter Show on the 14th of March. More details to follow.
Swimming Carnival 2025
This year’s swimming carnival is for Years 3-5 and is on Friday 21st March. More details to follow.
Meet the Teacher
Tuesday 11th February is our Meet the Teacher afternoon. Communications with details have already been distributed to families. This will be a great opportunity for families to understand school and class processes and routines to help their child achieve success.
Enrolment
We love our school. We hope you do too. RGS has space for more enrolments in all classes K-5. You may find the opportunity to recommend us to other families in the area. We would love to hear from them and welcome the opportunity to share the vision of our school and explain why we are a unique learning community.
Thank you
Nigel Limon