Stanley Avenue's gala went ahead on Wednesday after the mere fact of a cyclone postponed the event last Friday! What an amazing evening it was! Wonderful food, entertainment and competitions for the whole community to enjoy. We are so lucky to have such a committed PTA who put in such a huge effort for this event to occur! Check out our latest SAS TV episode to se the gala form the teachers and students perspective!
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Sunday, March 16, 2014
21st Learning Environments for our Learners
Stanley Avenue is on the cusp of entering into a new five year property agreement with the Ministry of Education. Fortunately the school is in excellent condition and every dollar is going to be able to be spent on enhancing the school's learning environment. So what can we do? Recent research by Le Corbusier and in particular Thornburg look at creating flexible spaces for personalised learning spaces. I love the descriptions of these flexible places on Core Educations web-site:
-The Camp Fire where students can share stories, exchange thoughts and build on each others ideas.
-The Mountain Top where you can share your learning with pride!
-The Sand Pit where you can play, innovate, experiment and learn from your mistakes.
-The Cave where there is opportunity to reflect and make connections in a quiet, personal space.
These are some of the considerations we are taking in organising our classroom refurbishments for the future!
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Future Tech
This week Mr Spicer started taking an extension activity with some lucky Year Six students. This six week course is going to investigate coding, robotics and began with taking part a computer! I can't wait to see the learning and fun that eventuates!!
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Camp Epworth
What a picturesque day to visit our senior campers in action. It was awesome to see and hear our students supporting one another in challenging situations.
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Mike Scaddan Magic
What an amazing day of fun and learning! Mike took us on a journey from putting ourselves into the shoes of our students through to considering what latest brain research means for us as teachers. We were given so many ideas to help make learning 'stick'.
An amazing final session saw mike and the team form some ideas of merging our work on the Stanley Avenue Learner with students maturation/social needs and a learning to learn curriculum.
Mikes assistance sees us moving ever closer to a truly student centred school.
What is an mle?
With the refurbishment of rooms seven and eight complete it is a good time to reflect whether any of our learning on MLEs has been worthwhile!
One of the major foci for the refurbishment was to 'break down the walls' between the rooms both for practical senses (shared toilets!) and learning. I think the build has been a tremendous success. A huge fox us over the last few years has been giving opportunities for our students to practice the skills required to be an effective team player. Now there is a 'hub' are where group activities can take place, with (and without) direct teacher supervision. This provides amazing opportunities for collaboration for teachers and students.
It has been very interesting to see the large covered deck area being so popular during class time and during breaks. Teachers have commented on how great it is to have an area where students can take themselves to complete a task independently. This is reinforced by our teacher only day with Mike Scaddan.
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