Dear Fremantle LDC families

Thank you to families for rapid changes around COVID. Your support in keeping our school and community safe is to be commended. It was lovely to see your support in making the drop offs and pickups quick and seamless, with limited time on school grounds and with everyone wearing masks and physically distancing. Thank you. Our students have also been amazing during what must be a very strange time for them. Thank you for all your support in creating such wonderful and resilient children.

The COVID situation continues to evolve, so please make sure we have your most up to date contact details (phone and email) so we can contact you should we need to make changes swiftly and during the school holidays. We have our fingers crossed that we can return to our Phase 5 restrictions and the lifestyle we are so fortunate to have in this world pandemic climate.

Semester 1 Reports

Teachers have been busy this term with Individual Education Plan Review meetings and preparing your child’s school reports. Both reports have been emailed to you on Monday. As you know, the latest COVID restrictions impacted on our face to face meetings with you to discuss your child’s report, but we are hoping that these can either be completed over the phone or next term when restrictions enable us to do so.  I’m sure you will join me in thanking our teachers for their dedication and professionalism in ensuring our students’ get the best level of intervention and support for their learning.

Business Plan

We have now finalised our next Business Plan. We have all worked very hard in our school self-assessment to identify the school improvement priorities that we will be working on over the next 4 years.

Our Improvement Priorities for 2021-2024 are:

• Student Achievement
• Excellence in Teaching
• Culture and Care
• Strengthening Relationships

The Fremantle LDC Business Plan (2021-2014) can be found at the following location on our school website: https://fremantleldc.wa.edu.au/about/business-plan/

I encourage you to have a read of it and get to know our exciting school improvement plan.

Happy Holidays

I would like to wish you all a lovely school break. We are all looking forward to a well-rested break and a safe return of our students on Tuesday 20th July for Term 3. Our staff return the day before to engage in a full day of professional learning.

Take care and stay well. Please don’t hesitate to contact the school if you have any questions.

Kind regards

Vivienne Doig
Principal

Welcome back to Term 2

I hope you all managed to have a restful school break. It was lovely to see all our students return yesterday and excited about the term ahead.

Staff School Development Day

On Monday, our staff started off their term with a full day of high quality professional. Our focus areas included:

• Our Education Assistants worked all morning with our Literacy Coach, Fleur Aris, in learning how to provide quality Literacy intervention and the best ways to support the learning needs of our students.
• Our Teachers and Speech Pathologists were involved in professional learning around “Teaching Sprints”. Teaching Sprints is a process that supports our teaching staff to continuously enhance their teaching expertise. The process involves the meaningful engagement with the best available research evidence in the field, and involves collaboration and disciplined dialogue in order to deepen their knowledge and strengthen their practice.
• Our afternoon involved a highly engaging presenter, Claire Orange, who provided us with Professional Learning around Health and Wellbeing & Social/Emotional Development of our students. Claire Orange is a highly respected author, mum, parent educator, speaker and trainer in these areas. We were extremely fortunate to be able to have her share her amazing knowledge with us all and the evidence behind the Little Highway Heroes & Highway Heroes social/emotional programs. You may already be familiar with her work through the work she does with Channel 9 and through our great parent resource we provide – Parent TV.  (If you have not yet accessed this great resource, Parent TV, please contact the office for the login details).

Our next staff development day (pupil free day) will be Monday 19th July, 2021.

Farewell to Georgie Sounness

It is with great sadness that we say farewell to one of our Deputy Principals (Speech and Language), Georgie Sounness, as she has now retired. On Monday evening we had a lovely staff dinner with Georgie and her family to congratulate her on her retirement and wish her well for her future adventures. Georgie has been an integral part of Fremantle Language Development Centre since its inception in 2005 and prior to that at Carawatha Language Development Centre. I would like to thank Georgie for all she has done for our students, families, staff, community as well as the students of all the schools she supported in the Kimberley, Pilbara and South Metro regions. Georgie should be very proud of the work she has done and the difference she has made to so many children.

Business Plan

We have now nearly finalised our next Business Plan. Our Improvement Priorities for 2021-2024 are:

• Student Achievement
• Excellence in Teaching
• Culture and Care
• Strengthening Relationships

More detailed information around these priorities will be available soon. I look forward to sharing our school improvement plan with you.

Online Policy – 3rd Party Apps

This week your child will receive some forms that relate to the Department of Education Online Policy and the 3rd Party Apps we use at Fremantle LDC. In order for your child to use particular apps at school, we require permission from parents and caregivers. Could you please complete the forms as soon as possible and return to your child’s classroom teacher to minimise the disruption to their learning program. Thank you for your support.

We look forward to meeting and working with all parents and families throughout this 11-week term. Please don’t hesitate to contact the school if you have any questions.

Kind regards

Vivienne Doig
Principal

 

Welcome back to the 2021 school year. It was a bit of a rocky start, but it was lovely to see our students so excited to be at school on Monday.

New staff

I would also like to take this opportunity to welcome some new teachers to our school this year. This year we welcome Ms Lauren Hoath (Beeliar Support), Ms Prue Lane (Willagee C3 Support), and Ms Nicola Luke (Willagee A7 Support). We also welcome back some staff who have returned after working to other roles last year: Jodie Shepherdson (Outreach Deputy Principal and Transition), Nicole Hitchens (A6 Support) and Elizabeth Langford Smith (Beeliar TA4 Classroom Teacher).

Staff Professional Learning

We were very fortunate to have our 2 full days of amazing professional learning completed prior to our lockdown. These included the following focus areas:

• InitiaLit
• Reading Tutor Program Training
• Brightpath Narrative
• Synthetic Phonics

These will form some focus areas within our new Fremantle LDC Business Plan for 2021-2023. This is currently in development and will be shared with you in the very near future.

At the end of last year, as part of our School Planning Day, our staff brainstormed their hopes and dreams for their students and our school in 2021. This formed the following word cloud which reflects our aspirations for this year. We look forward to achieving these hopes and dreams this year.

Class Meetings and COVID-19 Restrictions

Due to the evolving COVID-19 restrictions, our class meetings will look a bit different this year. As these will look different across the school and sites, your child’s teacher will be in touch with you soon to let you know how they will provide an outline of their programs, timetables, classroom requirements and organisation. This is a wonderful opportunity to gain an understanding of how you can support your child throughout the year.

At the start of the year the speech pathologists and teachers will administer assessments so that we have current data to develop your child’s Individual Education Plan (IEP). There will be an opportunity for parents to meet with the classroom teacher on an individual basis to review their child’s IEP. This will be held at the end of the term. More information about this will come closer to the time.

I will keep you updated of any changes to our COVID-19 restrictions as they arise.

P&C

Our school P&C is a wonderful group of parents who enjoy getting together to share, support and help raise funds for the school. All parents are encouraged to be a part of our P&C and please let your classroom teacher know if you are able to help out by being a class representative. The first meeting for the year (AGM) will be conducted on Wednesday 17th February at 5.30pm in the Caralee CS/Fremantle LDC staff room (Willagee Site).

We look forward to meeting and working with all parents and families throughout the coming year. Please don’t hesitate to contact the school if you have any questions.

Kind regards

Vivienne Doig
Principal

 

 

Dear Parents and Carers

Our school will be closed today following the Premier McGowan’s announcement yesterday.

The Perth metropolitan area and the Peel and South West regions moved to a 5-day lockdown effective at 6pm, Sunday 31 January, 2021 until 6pm Friday, 5 February 2021.

This means all public schools in these regions will be closed for this week. Our teachers and school staff will also remain at home. This will be an extension of the school holidays and no lessons or supervision will be provided.

Public schools in all other areas of the State return on Monday 1 February.

Information about the lockdown is available on the wa.gov.au site. The latest health information is available through WA Health Department.

I will provide more information during the week about school arrangements beyond Friday.

Kind regards

Vivienne Doig
Principal
Fremantle Language Development Centre