The start of a new school term at Penrith PS, and the long-awaited interactive whiteboard (IWB) has arrived!

Welcome Penrith PS to the 21st century!

In a new message from Michelle Du Ross-Smith, the next meeting for the PSP Regional Initiative IWB Middle Years is on Monday 15th June at 4pm at the Gallery, Mt Druitt Office.

The agenda for the meeting is to discuss how schools are going with their action plans and how have they collected data for the action research question “Does the use of Interactive Whiteboards in the classroom assist with student engagement in their education and therefore improve students’ numeracy, literacy and IT skills?”

Schools may like to share how they have been able to change the teaching pedagogy in the middle years to engage students as active learners through the use of interactive whiteboards. Could you please bring a copy of the schools action plan for the PSP initiative with you. As discusse at the previous meeting it is a requirement that School Plans incorporate the PSP IWB Middle Years Project.

Have Professional Development ideas suggested at previous meeting for staff been utilised or do schools need support to do this? Ideas from last meeting included:

* team teaching with staff members
* visits across project schools, visits to other best-practice schools
* focus on Quality Teaching elements such as higher-order thinking
* sharing resources, websites, creating a blog
* linking with the IWB Primary Project schools on TaLe.

As a network we need to discuss the interim report due to Equity on Friday Week 9, 26th June, relating to project targets and financial accountability requirements. A reminder funds are to be used for the professional development and relief of staff to participate in the project. Resources for the project may be purchased if they total less than 20% of the total allocation.

If you have anything else you would like to discuss at the meeting please let me know and Michelle can add it to the agenda. Please indicate if you will be attending this meeting by Friday 5th June via email or phone.