Kalgoorlie Primary School

PO Box 5473, Dugan Street, KALGOORLIE WA 6430

T 08 9021 2513 F 08 9091 4583
E Kalgoorlie.PS@education.wa.edu.au
W www.kalgoorlieps.wa.edu.au

Dear Vanessa
Thank you for having Bec and I visit your class today to observe part of your literacy block, where students
were engaged in deconstructing and re-writing a narrative. Whilst in your classroom, we observed and
noted a number of things which we have identified under the following headings.
Learning Environment
Your classroom is welcoming, bright and organised with displays of student work celebrated. Well
done!
The arrangement of the desks in groups and area set aside for sitting on the mat is effective and
students worked well in groups. Well done on having resources such as charts and whiteboards
available on each desk.
It was pleasing to see evidence of word banking displayed in your classroom. It would be great to
see spelling errors corrected on these word banks so they can be an effective reference for students.
Your classroom has many elements reflecting excellent organisation; however evidence of an
integrated theme was lacking. We noted the beginnings of a display related to the town hall
incursion and we look forward to you building on this as the term progresses.
Lesson Content & Delivery
You quickly engaged and refocussed students after taking the roll and ensured students were
building on their prior knowledge and content delivered on Friday. Well done!
It was good to see you tease out the main ideas of the orientation and collate the responses. When
questioning the students, we noted you tried to encourage all students to respond by calling on
them, which can be effective. A few questioning techniques you may like to try to elicit responses
from the whole class would be to use wait time, and ask more open ended questions. When you
ask a question and the usual hands go up, try not to always let the same people answer. Allow for
wait time, maybe rephrase the question and encourage those quiet well behaved students to
contribute and share ideas.
Your expectations of students were clear and they engaged immediately when directed to write
their orientation. The students all were able to begin their own orientation, either independently or
with some assistance, which was excellent. Brendan, Connor and Alex were all busy, allowing you to
explicitly assist other students. As your focus was on the orientation of a narrative, could you have
provided some modelled writing or an outline of the narrative features to ensure all students
understood the purpose of the orientation.
It was excellent to see your level of differentiation across the lesson. From working in small groups
to providing Connor with a clear goal and expectation for his writing, it was impressive.
Planning
Thank you for having your planning available for us to view, the level of detail was appropriate and
we liked the focus questions. Well done!
It was good to see you include differentiation for Om, Junsy and Brendan. Was the decision to keep
Brendan in his group made because he requires less support?
Despite having no interactive board this morning, you managed well and kept students engaged.

A Family School
Independence & Respect

Behaviour Management
You have a warm and friendly manner with the students and it is obvious that you have well
developed relationships with your students already. Great job!
You have clearly established routines with your students and they are all well aware of your
expectations. To have achieved this in the first four weeks of the term is impressive.
We noted you effectively used your smile and verbal praise to acknowledge students doing the right
thing. How could you have rewarded positive behaviour with faction tokens or a trip to the Brilliant
Book?
It was good to see you single out a few students who were drifting off while on the mat by giving
them direct questions.
Thank you for having us to visit your class today. We are impressed at the excellent start you have had this
year; you appear to be very comfortable in your new role with students working very well for you. You are
a valued staff member and an important part of the KPS team. We look forward to continuing to support
your journey of success as a teacher at Kalgoorlie Primary School.

Rebecca Bope
Principal

Jon Attwell
Deputy Principal

3rd March 2015

A Family School
Independence & Respect