eNews #4: Show us the data!                                                                   7 May

School is a very strange place without all our students. As professionals, we have been both excited and challenged by the ways we are now working together and with your children. Like many other schools, we use data to inform our planning, teaching and learning. So we’ve had to shift our data focus to what we can see and use.

In previous eNews publications, I outlined some of the ways we are collecting wellbeing and engagement data. Our teachers are checking every child’s engagement through online resources, Sentral mailbox messaging, phone calls and in Webex class meetings. Over the last two weeks, we’ve started reviewing some other school wide data. We are still learning as we go!

Our model for Learning from Home is based on multiple platforms, so there are inherent back-ups if something unexpectedly fails. The LPS website and Sentral are our two main parent communication tools. Various other LFH resources provide further information on student learning. All our parents and students need to be able to access the program to use it, so how are things going in terms of access?

Quite simply, LPS parents are doing an incredible job of supporting their children and our teachers to maintain their connections to learning and each other.

Victorian schools have had websites with analytics for over a decade but I’ve never seen anything like our April data: the LPS website had over 75,000 page views in seventeen days! Can you see when LFH started?

Access has gone way beyond our physical neighbourhood area. Some of our families have been unable to return to Australia yet and are accessing the website from overseas. We are also sending pdf copies of LFH - in multiple languages - by email to some families who are in countries where western websites have been blocked (yes, really, and we are thrilled to be able to support those children in this way). As a result of our communications, we have students joining in Webex class meetings from other countries, as well as new students who've never been into their LPS classrooms. We also note almost 16% of visitors are using a mobile device to access the website.

The ‘most popular pages’ was fascinating, as it provides insights on how different levels of the school are using the LFH pages. The Home Page recorded 30,008 hits as our Landing Page, and our Webex @ LPS page also received lots of visitors:

                                            (Only April data available yet)

We are delighted so many of you have visited our LFH for Parents pages, which included eNews #1 & 2 at that time. The ‘(not set)’ page reflects total visits to our Covid-19 and LFH articles in Recent News on the home page, which preceded our password-protected LFH pages.

We’ve been chasing up parents who still haven’t activated Sentral, and there are six of these families remaining. Sentral is our back up if the website or school email have any issues. We can quickly email LFH programs, and answer your questions via Sentral messaging and the parent portal – if you have activated your account! Our new families were on Sentral in a flash.

Then the data just gets better. Congratulations LPS families and take a bow parents! Did you know that Laburnum PS had Story Box Library's third highest number of story views in the whole of Australia for April 2020, during the first two weeks of LFH? Our students read or heard 4593 stories in those two weeks, and that’s only using Story Box Library! Thanks Mandy Ryan for finding this great online resource for our students.

When you add our other online reading resources used across the school in different levels, including Epic! (as previously discussed), Sunshine Online, Libby and Audible, as well as real books, our students are definitely still engaged with many texts. And they are having fun exploring. In the Senior School this week, teachers were discussing ways to direct students’ curiosity into the search functions of these programs for some self-directed text choices, just like in an actual library.

If you would like your child to capture their reading efforts, please register for the Premier’s Reading Challenge. Thank you to Glenda Kelly, who liaised with DET in requesting an option for our students to join the Challenge during remote learning. As a result of Glenda’s persistence, the Challenge can now be accessed by individual families in all schools as ‘Home-Based Readers’. Your child’s LFH page next week has all the details.

In Mathematics, our teachers continue to focus on the areas outlined in eNews # 2. Prep - Year 2 LFH Maths is focused on the key foundational skills, with an emphasis on practical counting and measurement tasks. Years 3 - 6 teachers are using Essential Assessment, as they would at school, to pre-test students. Once tested, My Numeracy then enables students to progress through each Victorian curriculum area of Mathematics, automatically differentiating the online curriculum based on the student’s pre-test results. Basically, your child’s answers in their pre-test are used to provide a program that addresses the next steps in their learning. We are using this to differentiate learning for middle and senior school students during remote learning.

However, teachers have noticed some unusual results for a small number of students, who are unexpectedly surging ahead in their pre-test results. The LFH pages have stressed the importance of one of our school values, integrity, in these assessments. If someone else does the pre-test, helps, or corrects the child’s answers, or if the child uses a calculator, the program generated will not match their real needs. We use pre-tests to determine those next steps in learning, so please ensure they are completed as intended and directed by the teacher. Mistakes and errors indicate misunderstandings to teachers, so we need to preserve these within the assessments.

This week, our staff Consultative Committee has reviewed Webex class meetings data to date, including student attendance and the feedback we’ve received from parents and teachers. Teachers have also had access to professional learning and recommendations from DET VSV - Virtual School Victoria (formerly Distance Education Branch), around online sessions and sequencing remote learning. We're delighted that our LFH program is so well-aligned with that used by teachers who use remote learning all the time. VSV have been honing these practices for over one hundred years in Victoria. Importantly, our challenges are the same ones they try to navigate daily. It was reassuring when VSV was honest about not having have 'magic answers' for these.

As a result of all considerations, we plan to continue to offer the recommended 30 minute maximum Webex sessions and keep the same schedule, groups (and passwords) until the end of May. By then, we should know more about whether DET remote learning is definitely continuing through June, as was planned up to this point.

Next week, Webex meetings will be expanded to include Literacy Intervention sessions with our new ‘Intervention Team’, for students in the Literacy Intervention program. The eight teachers involved will email those students' parents with their meeting details this week. The sessions will be on the same day and time for the remainder of Term 2, during remote learning. Specialist teachers will also still visit some class Webex meetings. Again, we have shared this model of maximising and targeting our resources with other DET schools.

Please understand we have very little ‘wriggle room’ in Kathy Verbi’s expanding timetable. As we are a big school, we have almost 160 types of Webex meetings scheduled next week, involving students, teachers, leadership, education support staff and the whole staff. There are up to 95 of these meetings each day, every day. Parents may now appreciate why we've implemented a staged response to LFH and kept a watchful eye on the capacity of our technology.

As we can't fit all these individual Webex meetings on our website calendar, we are grouping together just the class and intervention meetings there. The calendar should be updated over the next few days. Your email invitations will still provide the most relevant information for your children's sessions.

Although we know the Webex passwords are complex, this is a safety feature! You can copy and paste these easily, or add them all to a screen 'sticky note' for quick access, using your PC's Sticky Notes program. Most importantly, LPS has not yet had to deal with any security concerns because we are taking online safety so seriously.

As well, Kathy and Jo have been mapping a schedule of Student Support Group meetings via Webex, which will start in Week 6. Again, these need to work around the existing commitments of teachers, so those parents involved will receive details by email.

Our teachers have found the Learning to Learn via Webex matrix extremely useful with their classes. They are asking for your help to create a ‘class environment’ in these sessions. As parents, you can assist your child to be ‘on time and ready to learn’, just like at school, by:

• Starting to log in five minutes before the meeting time
• Making sure they are dressed for class meetings (no pyjamas please, and that includes parents! )
• Ensuring they eat breakfast before or after the meeting (not during)
• Staying a discrete distance from the camera as parents (think classroom, not Gogglebox!)
• Understanding that everyone can see what’s in everyone else’s screen span simultaneously when on grid view, even if your child is not speaking
• Keeping toys, pets, toddlers and other distractions out of the meeting, purely because this is taking time away from the focus of these meetings.

Our Parents Group has, as always, been proactive in considering how they can support the school community. In particular, if there are any families needing additional support that we have not already assisted (or known about), please let me know. Parents Group is willing to provide practical help, such as food hampers. A parent has also emailed us today about another organisation doing this (thanks S!). The links on the Covid-19 Resources for Parents page also offer some suggestions around family and personal wellbeing.

Finally, what can you do at a time when so much is beyond our control? Focus on what we can do. Here are some suggestions that you might like to consider:

1. Download the COVIDSafe app, so contact tracing can be faster and help contain any outbreak.
2. Get tested for Covid-19  if you have any symptoms, even mild ones. We need to add to the knowledge base about this virus. I was in the only car in the Box Hill Central carpark 'queue' on Saturday and very proud of how our health system organised the pop up testing site for such a seamless experience. And yes, my test was negative.
3. Download the Coronavirus Australia App, which has all the info you need about testing centres, symptoms, etc.
4. Spoil the mums in your family on Sunday. They have been working overtime and doing an amazing job of holding everything together. We are fortunate to have so many brilliant mums at LPS, so have a wonderful Mother's Day everyone!
   We also extend special Mother's Day wishes to three of our teachers who have welcomed new babies this week: Kylie Raymer (Finn), Eden Ralph (Eoghan) and Dani Phillips, who has bucked the trend with the arrival of her daughter (Chloe). All are well and happy.

Kim