22 Feb 2019

22 February 2019

Jockey Club Sarah Roe School’s latest newsletter is available to read now. Find out the latest news around the school and upcoming events.

Principal’s Message

One of our key focus areas for students in their last few years of their education is to provide opportunities to practice skills and behaviours that prepare them for life after school. This can include the world of work. We are delighted to have two students who spend every Wednesday at the ESF Centre on work experience. Cole and Gavin have a number of jobs helping the staff. They are beginning to develop relationships with a number of people and are greeted enthusiastically by all the people who see them regularly. It’s so nice to see our young men proudly taking on challenges and continuing to learn. Thanks to Jenny and all the people who are supporting this great initiative.

We are also very fortunate to have Virginia Morris as our School Council Chair. Virginia recently facilitated a program for young leaders at AIA and the task of the group was to look at ways we can improve and develop vocational placement and work opportunities for our students. Jenny, Carol, Daphne and I spent time with the AIA team to provide information and answer their many challenging questions. The group had time to come up with some interesting and innovative solutions to the issues we discussed and they shared these with us. We all felt overwhelmed by the amount of time and effort that went into the exercise and look forward to working with them to implement their ideas.

You are all aware that Jenny will finish her time with us at the end of this school year. After a rigorous and thorough process the interview panel is pleased to announce that Belinda McLaughlin has won the position of Vice Principal at JCSRS starting in August 2019. Belinda is currently the ESF SEN Advisor (Kindergarten and Primary). She has been working in Special Education for the past 25 years in international and Australian schools. Belinda and her family have called Hong Kong their home for the past 14 years.

We had a small but very committed and enthusiastic group of people attend the recent PTA meeting. We are excited that we have two fundraising events coming up in April – Wear Blue for World Autism Day on 2nd and the Danceathon on the 10th. Our ESF colleagues and students in both the primary and secondary schools are on board to support us with our target to raise one million dollars for a new school bus. We are asking all our families to do the same. It’s not hard. Indeed it’s lots of fun. The leadership team at West Island School plan to dress in ABBA costumes and dance in our school hall in the afternoon after school. Why not come and join them? Also remember to pass the sponsorship form around to all your friends and work colleagues. We need your help!!!!

Teachers and therapists have now reviewed all the students IEPs and written reports that you can access via the VLE. Parent meetings are optional and are organised with teachers on a needs basis. Remember, if you have any technical problems contact us (Carol Li) for help.

Regards

Karin

Dates for your Diary

Sports Day – Thursday 14th March (parents are welcome to join us)

School camp for secondary students – 20 to 22 March

Wear Blue for World Autism Awareness Day – Tuesday 2nd April ($20 minimum donation)

Professional Development day for staff – Thursday 4th April NO SCHOOL FOR STUDENTS

Danceathon fundraising event – Wednesday 10th April

Last day of term two – Friday 12th April (school finishes at 11.30)

Siblings Day

This year siblings day will be on Thursday May 16th. Siblings day is an opportunity for secondary aged brothers and sisters to spend time (morning or afternoon) with their siblings at JCSRS, joining in fun activities and making connections with other siblings. This year we would like to invite both ESF and Non ESF secondary students to join us, if you have a child in a non ESF school who would like to participate in siblings day this year please let me know via email.

Showcase Diamond Class

All Systems go in Diamond class!

Diamond students have thoroughly enjoyed our current curriculum unit; “All systems go!” Whilst there are many different systems we use in our daily life, we have focused firstly on ‘the postal system’ and the various sequences and stages that make the complete operation function, I.e. from sending a letter and buying a stamp at a post office, to mail being sent across the world (via air mail) and then delivered by a postman to different homes and offices. When discussing the role of a postman, this led into a very interesting and unexpected discussion, which was, ‘what do postal workers look like around the world?’ Students then had a wonderful time painting uniforms on postal workers from their home country.

Diamond students are becoming familiar with post office vocabulary and had fun creating a word wall that included a bank of different postal items. Through role-play, worksheets and set texts they have gained a good understanding of the services and equipment provided by the post office. We will extend our learning by visiting a local post office to buy stamps for our letters (both written and typed in our literacy lessons) so, wait for a letter arriving at your home soon Diamond parents!

A wonderful book that demonstrates letter writing is “The Jolly Postman” by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. The story is a unique tale of how a postman delivers mail to all the fairytale characters involved and how they interact with each other. Students have enjoyed writing small messages to friends in class and posting them in a handmade mailbox that we all constructed from cardboard, tape and paint!

During art, we drew and painted scenes of the postal system and labelled each one. Using our knowledge of ordinal numbers from our previous ASDAN module, students were able to order the parts of the postal sequence from 1^st to 9^th.

Our current ASDAN module ‘Developing Numeracy Skills: Progression’ has been very engaging in learning about propositional language – this involved visiting a café near the flower market a few weeks ago to follow activities related to position, pattern and sorting. Students have documented their ASDAN math activities with written work plus using photographs from their trip.

In addition, Diamond students have enjoyed cooking lessons this term; students have used measuring cups and spoons as well as digital weighing scales to compare and estimate volume in grams, as they learn to make yummy snacks – baking Valentine cookies was our favourite!