Week 9 News update - Mid Year reporting process...

Sharing our children's learning journey

Last week I shared some of the many ways we try to communicate with you around school life. Another important element of communication that is targeted specifically to you and your child/ren are our 'formal' reporting points at the mid and end of year around their learning journey progress and achievement. This year the way we want to do this is through a medium that helps bring alive the reality of your child/ren's learning across the curriculum. We want to share with you real authentic examples, based on developing the Key Competencies (Managing Self, Relating to Others, Participating and Contributing, Thinking, Using Language, Symbols and Texts) of how your child's learning is happening and in ways that could answer the following questions:
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• "In what ways are they applying the skills they are learning or developing?"
  
• "What passion project provoked the learning that they've done and how does that represent what they can and what they need to work on next?"
  
• “What is the real life context that the learning has demonstrated and what challenges has that given my child in their knowledge and understanding of how to apply what they know?”

The way we are going to do this is not through a written report, or through a bit of paper that ticks a National Standard box. This year, our school will be using Seesaw, a secure online learning journal where students can create and upload examples that document their learning, in real time. Your child will add things like photos, videos, worksheets, drawings and voice recordings to their Seesaw journal. It can demonstrate in real time learning that can't be summed up on a piece of paper, or given real context by ticking a box. These rich, key competency based, journal entries will be shared with you via your child's seesaw account.

Seesaw has the ability to have you sign up for a Seesaw Parent account to be notified when your child adds new content and have access to their journal. It is set up as an app on your phone and only lets you see learning entries that are posted by your child or shared with a group that your child is in - just like at school. When your child adds new work, you will receive a notification to see, hear and respond to your child’s learning item. You only have access to the work that is shared with you and all of the content is stored securely within the Waipahihi School Seesaw structure. It is not able to be shared onto an outside social media timeline. Your access to this will be set to go and shared with you early next term. These will then be used as the foundation of our learning conference opportunities that you will be able to book in across Weeks 3 & 4 of Term 3.

Please click on the link below to see a brief overview of what Seesaw is about. We will be holding a parent afternoon and evening to help and support you with this development opportunity Seesaw has a robust privacy policy (https://app.seesaw.me/about/privacy) and has committed to never share your child’s personal information or journal content. You can learn more about Seesaw by visiting (http://web.seesaw.me/).

We are looking forward to your child using Seesaw to document and share their learning this year and to develop this process with you!