wellbeing

=**Wellbeing**= Our staff came up with a number of wellbeing concepts drawn out by our vist to the zoo and connceting to our school values of respect, teamwork, leadership and academic rigour. We also connected to our motto "A place to grow and thrive."

We have started to investigate what we believe and what we say and look at the physical connection or manefestation. Do we do what we sya we do? Watch this space for our investigation into: Most staff noticed and took a photo of the old style cage for animals (which we were told is now a historic building) and used this as an analogy for schools. Schools traditionally favoured the 'factory style' environment where the set up around the 'sage on the stage' being the teacher rather than centred around the needs of the child, similarly zoos were also set up around the needs of the zoo keepers and entertainment of zoo goers - what made it easier to see the animal, easier to feed the animal. A key word which kept coming up during the day was **'motivation'** - the zoo keepers find out what motivates the animal - and just like us they are motivated by many different things. As educators we also understand the importance of knowing what motivates our students as learners and the way we do this is by getting to know our students - really well!! We can't have an **inclusive** school enivironment if we do not know our students - because if we don't know our students needs, wants and what gets them excited about learning then we cannot truly personalise the learning experience for them. Without a **personalised learning journey** students become the recipients of information - which is often meaningless as it comes without a context and a sense of wanting to know. Inquiry is the vehicle for student engagement both **cognitively and socially** - through inquiring into what interests us personally we are able to engage on an intellectual level through investigating, hypothesising, trialling and evaluating to make meaning. We are also able to share or test our thoughts with others thus socially constructing our learning within a group and adding to collective knowledge and understanding of a subject, topic or issue. Just as in the real world academics, scientists, inventors test and discuss their ideas and hyoptheses and add to a collective body of knowledge for all of us. The zoo keepers identified for us the different set ups of animal communities from the all inclusive, distributive leadership style of the meer cats to the authoritative leadership of babboons. We were able to reflect on this and think about the pros and cons of each style. Many of us felt that in a school a meer cat style was preferable for many reasons - sharing learning and mentoring others came up but also looknig out for each other and having a shared sense of responsibility for all the kids in our school. Another parallel with the zoo was the community building and partnerships - zoos have changed from being a source of entertainment for visitors to a focus on education and conservation - they seek out partnerhips with community groups to educate and share their messages on conservation and activley work within the community. At Derrimut PS we also have a focus on community building and partnerships - our students live in the world and have a voice which want to be heard and a massive contribution to be able to make a difference. We connect in many different ways with our community from working with local businesses and having parents invovled in parent forums for different issues to asking local experts to work with us. We also have partnerhips with zoos to help us answer our questions about our global world but also our immediate environment - our school. Kate
 * 1) Inclusivity for all
 * 2) Engagement (cognitive and social)
 * 3) Leadership and student voice
 * 4) Community building and partnerships