INITIATIVES AT GOLD CREEK SCHOOL

Welcome to the initiatives page for Gold Creek School. This part of our web site will feature what is new and innovative about our school.

STUDENT SERVICES

Gold Creek School provides an alternative model to the traditional welfare team, by providing a holistic approach to Student Support. The Student Services team operate a range of services to support students and families, to help remove the barriers to learning.

The team includes;
Pastoral Care Coordinator (Executive Teacher)
School Counsellor
Youth Support Worker
Special Needs Executive Teacher
Case Management Executive
Deputy Principals of both the Middle and Senior Schools
Careers and Work Experience Teacher
Chaplain

This holistic approach recognises that the provision of student services often involves teaching and welfare professionals from different delivery areas, rather than just providing pastoral care that takes a single track. The team has adopted a ‘systems’ approach that brings together careers and work experience, the school counsellors, youth worker, special needs, pastoral care executive teacher and the deputy principals of both the Middle and Senior Schools located in one dedicated Student Services area. The team offers counselling and mediation as well as actively pursuing ways to further develop the school's links with the Gungahlin Community including the Gungahlin Youth Centre, Gungahlin Police and agencies to ensure students and family are supported.

To complement this innovative model, Gold Creek School supported its implementation with a whole school (K-10) social and emotional learning (SEL) program across the school aimed at explicitly teaching and modelling social and emotional skills and developing empathy and acceptance.

Student Services model also supports the embedding of restorative practices across the school as a practice and in repairing the harm to relationships that occurs after incidents occur as well as the use of circle time in classrooms as a pedagogical tool in debriefing, curriculum delivery and building relationships.

The role of Student Services is a proactive one in terms of providing support to students and linking them with appropriate agencies and programs, whilst this is related to behaviour management, behaviour management is not the role of Student Services and we have Year Coordinators, Executive Teachers and Deputies to work with students, staff and parents within our processes and structures to manage behaviour.

Students and families can seek support from Student Services by contacting the Front Office on 62051814 or by sending an e-mail to studentsupport@goldcreek.act.edu.au .

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DESIGNING OUR OWN IWB's

Mr. Chris Brown, one of our Science teachers, has completed work on an ultra cheap pen and location system to make our existing White Boards Interactive. Chis has taken this initiative to support improved teaching and learning across Gold Creek School. Our school is very proud of Chris's efforts and hope to deploy some of these as soon as possible. If you are interested in Chris's work you can contact him at: Chris.Brown@ed.act.edu.au

BECOMING A SUSTAINABLE SCHOOL

Thanks to the work of students and staff our Primary Site has achieved Sustainable School status and our Senior Site is not far behind. Our principal, Ms. Sue Jose has been approached by students who want to be a part of the Gold Creek "Clean Team". This class group will be responsible for undertaking the additional tasks necessary to keep our school looking a good as possible. Mr. Archibald's class 7KA, have negotiated with Ms. White, the waste wise co-ordinator, to be allowed to set up the red recycling bins on the Senior Site. These students will also provide feedback on how effectively the bins are being utilised. As a part of a SOSE assignement several Year 9 students prepared a petition asking for support for reducing our school's environmental impact. This petition was signed by almost 400 students and members of our community and was presented to the Minister for Education in the ACT Mr. Andrew Barr. Mr. Barr made a committment to the students to return to Gold Creek School to see how their project was progressing.

ENVIRONMENT ACTIVITIES AT GOLD CREEK SCHOOL

As a service to our community, Gold Creek School will feature a series of tips and hints to enable us all to reduce our impact on our environment. The first is shown below with more to be added every week.

Household Tips

• Each load in the dryer generates more than 3 kg of greenhouse gases. Drying clothes on the line produces no greenhouse gases.
• You can save water and energy by running your washing machine or dryer only with full loads.
• Using a cold wash can save up to 4Kg. of greenhouse gas per load.
• Using energy and water saving star ratings to guide your appliance purchases can save you money on water and electricity bills and help save the environment.
• A water-efficient washing machine can use up to 2/3 less water than an inefficient model.
• Greywater from the bath and shower or laundry rinse water is the best to reuse in the garden, as kitchen water contains fats and oils that do not break down easily.
• On average, a two to three pereson household produces 121 litres of greywater per day from the laundry.
• Recycled bath, shower and laundry waste water (greywater) can be used to water the lawn and garden but should not be used on edible plants and vegetables.
• With a greywater diversion device you can let the wash cycle go down the drain, then turn the diverter to direct the better quality rinse water into your garden. Any work done on your drainage system must be carried out by a licenced plumber.
• It's best to use a biodegradable detergent that has a neutral pH and is free of salt, phosphorous, boron and chlorine, especially if you reuse your laundry greywater in the garden.
• Untreated greywater should not be stored for more than 24 hours as it may produce offensive odours due to the growth of micro-organisms.

ACT WATERWATCH NEWSLETTER

To view the latest waterwatch newsletter click on the link here.

REFRESHER COURSE IN RIPARIAN ASSESSMENT AND MACRO-INVERTIBRATES

If you would like to participate in a refresher course for identifying bugs and grubs in your local waterway this October, click here.

NEW STUDENT ABSENCES NOTIFICATION PROGRAM

As of term 2, 2008 the school will be implementing a new absences program. This will be an SMS/E-mail program that allow us to notify parents / guardians of their students unexplained absences each morning and afternoon as required. To learn more about this initiative and to provide necessary data, click here.

SOCIAL & EMOTIONAL LEARNING (SEL) INITIATIVE

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children develop awareness and management of their emotions, set and achieve important personal and academic goals, use social-awareness and interpersonal skills to establish and maintain positive relationships, and demonstrate decision making and responsible behaviours to achieve school and life success.

 The first major curriculum component of the SEL initiative is a purchased program called Second Step. The Second Step curriculum is designed to develop students’ social and emotional competence. A set of concepts spiral throughout the grade levels and are taught at a minimum of one lesson a week over the course of each year. The program instruction particularly emphasises students taking responsibility for their actions and being honest, recognising their own and others’ feelings, and communicating in respectful and assertive ways to solve problems.

 The Second Step program focuses three main strands. These emphasise essential competencies of empathy, impulse control, problem solving, and management of difficult emotional states, such as anger. The program promotes interaction within classrooms and playgrounds. The pedagogy required of teachers in implementing Second Step is consistent with recent approaches promoted in the A.C.T.

 The program also includes a six-session parent workshop in which parents practice the skills children acquire in Second Step and learn how to reinforce them with their children at home. It is possible for the school counsellor to run this adjunct program with a selected volunteer parent group, simultaneously with the Second Step classroom curriculum. In the implementation schedule developed for Gold Creek School, this would begin in 2008.

 2007 - Partial Implementation

 2008 - Full Implementation

 For more information about the Second Step program go to:
www.cfchildren.org/cfc/ssf/ssindex/

Contact officers for the SEL intiative at Gold Creek School are:

Ms. Priscilla Nesbitt School Leader B for our Middle School

Ms. Kate Smith and Mr. Tony Merritt, School Leader C's on our Primary Site