Hello IFS Community and welcome to 2015! I am new to IFS this year and am part of the Stage 5 team. Our students are a credit to parents and carers as both staff and students have made me feel very welcome. Although my teaching area is English my focus has always been helping students develop in every facet of life to become creative, social, responsible and outstanding global citizens.
So far I am very impressed with the unique learning environment that is IFS. I have been team teaching Science, Maths and PDHPE and am pleased with the effort the students make in their work, their engagement, creativity and collaboration. We will be ensuring these skills are developed further this year through an exciting program of learning opportunities that we have planned. Of course I don’t know all the students well yet but am working on getting to know them and their interests, strengths and weaknesses.
Stage 5 students completed an introductory task for me in the first week. This was a letter, which gave students the opportunity to tell me about their lives. I also use this as an initial diagnostic assessment to gauge their competency in vocabulary, spelling, punctuation and grammar skills. Most students embraced this first task for the year with enthusiasm and I have been impressed with how many of them wrote about their appreciation at being able to attend IFS.
As an introduction to this task I told them a little about myself and will share some of that with you too. I live in the country locally with a bit of menagerie. I have 2 adult daughters and have been teaching in high colleges for 5 years. I have been interested in the philosophy and ideas of IFS and have visited many times. I have only just become interested in football and am hoping the students will educate me about football! I have always been interested in and enjoyed watching tennis.
I am looking forward to working with the students and meeting parents and caregivers through out the year.
Lorraine Hawdon
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