Good Day Kunyung Families!

What excited children, enthusiastic teachers and beautiful weather to come back to!

With so many things happening, there has never been a better time to highlight the collaborative nature of schools! Do we always get everything right? No we do not…..but as a school we own our errors just as much as we celebrate our successes. We are able to do this because we work in teams, with students and staff always given opportunities to contribute and add their thoughts, ideas and suggestions to what we do.

Learner Agency is a HUGE part of what we do, and how we do things, at Kunyung………student and teacher ownership and responsibility of their learning and growth of themselves and the school is KEY to keeping all members of our community engaged and feeling a sense of school pride!

Some examples of collaboration and LEARNER AGENCY in just two weeks back at school!!

Kitchen Garden
Caspar van der Meer, Stu Andersen and their families have spent much time putting into ACTION the plans and ideas of our Eco Team (led by Lucy Kyriaciou). Our students have been meeting with Lucy all year to design and cost our very own Kitchen Garden. We are now ready to start planting the garden and putting together the final touches….stay tuned to hear more about this collaborative project!

Collaborative Planning
Each team of teachers meet for 2 hours every week to plan out what our students will be learning, how best they might learn it and how they will know if they have learnt it! Add to the conversation- how the students might add or drive the planning, how teachers might give them ownership of this learning through things like setting their own goals, choosing best ways to learn and writing their own questions and you have Learner Agency being promoted at the coal face of our classrooms on a daily basis!

Senior Students Unit of Inquiry
Our Senior Students have been learning all about politics and the influence that decision making has on others. How better to do this than by creating their own political parties who will going to an election at the start of May! Classes have had to work as a collaborative team to work out Leaders, Ministers, policies, media campaigns and strategy!! Working closely with the Governor General (me) who is representing the Queen (Elaine) the winning party will have the opportunity to act on their policies!

ANZAC DAY SERVICE
The Action Team have been working with Mrs Howard and Miss Murray to prepare for the ANZAC DAY assembly this Friday and preparing daily to sell ANZAC DAY badges at lunchtimes.

Local PYP Network Meeting
Our staff went in teams to all 5 Local PYP Network Schools- Kunyung, Mt Eliza North, Benton, Mornington and Toorak College. Staff went to share examples of how they promote Learner Agency in their classrooms. All specialist teachers attended Kunyung from the 5 schools and shared innovative and exciting practice! Our staff ROCK!!

School Tours
Walking past Elaine’s office today I saw a group of Year 4 students discussing with her what they think of Kunyung. Preparing to conduct School Tours in the absence of Year 6 students, as a team they developed common understandings of what our strengths are and how to articulate them to others! Our students are a very impressive bunch!

EXTRA EXAMPLES: School Council Meeting consisting of staff and parents, School Council Sub Committees, The PYP Victorian Network Meeting held at Kunyung, School Captains preparing weekly for Assemblies as a team, Senior School Leadership Teams, our office staff working together on a daily basis, School banking team…….the list could keep going on………

Collaboration is a key to 21st Century employment, learning how to effectively communicate with others, listen to, and respect, their thinking and ideas, the ability to make group decisions and adopt a variety of roles are all skills that are required to be able to function effectively in many fields of employment- those we know about now and those we don’t even understand yet!! 🙂

We try at Kunyung to, not only teach and support the development of these skills, but to also model them to show what they look like if they are done well!

Happy Days!

Kim Jackson