COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: WORKING WITH PARENTS & CARERS Enhancing collaborative partnerships with parents continues to be emphasised throughout the Primary School. In 2018, Parent/Teacher Exchanges and Interviews moved to a more user-friendly online version. Parents are encouraged to use the online form to share information around their students’ learning habits, strengths, areas of concern and interests, and then complete the Report Guiding Questions to allow teachers to be more responsive to individual families. These forms are stored on the data management system to document as students move through the Primary School. Parents and caregivers provide critical foundations in social and emotional learning. Building on this at school requires positive and effective partnerships between the home and school settings. Defining more clearly our intentions around this partnership with input from the Parents and Friends Association of the School continues to serve the best interest of our students, and in particular, strengthens their well-being and holistic development. Emerging from our connections with the Parents and Friends Association this year we have refined our intentions and resulting actions to provide access to parents and carers to the learning programme, proactively strengthened networking and support opportunities for parents and carers, draw on the expertise of parents and carers, and define effective means for constructive feedback and consultation. Reaching out beyond our School community throughout the year we continued to build on longestablished partnerships with local, national and international community groups as well as broadening these in response to student’s actioning their learning through the programme of inquiry. In furthering our partnerships with the broader community, our youngest students became connected with Jindalee Aged Care in Narrabundah in an effort to further support our children in becoming active citizens within our community through engagement with our elders in aged care, by visiting the centre to share in their learning and to simply spend time with one another. And following on from last year, we produced our second ‘Giving Bach’ CD in partnership with Musicia Viva providing the opportunity for other schools to participate in musical incursions lead by expert musicians.
CGS CARE & HOLIDAY CARE PROGRAMMES CGS Care also continues as an increasingly vital component of the School’s operations and support for families. In 2018, the evolution of the Holiday Care Programme continued to offer a more extensive in-depth learning opportunity saw additional offerings in jewellery making, coding, chess, cooking, gymnastics, dance, sculpture, science and a variety of sports camps. Additionally, the Horizons package of Holiday Care Programme continued to develop and provide further vibrancy to the regular CGS Care Programme, with offerings now extended to students beyond the Primary years and into the Senior years of schooling. Rosalie Reeves Head of Primary School
14 | CGS | Annual Report 2018