Wellbeing and Community Engagement

Patrick Halpin

Wellbeing and Community Engagement

THRASS Parent Information Sessions

Thank you to the parents who attended the THRASS Parent Information Sessions this week and to Ms. Verity Sheppard who demonstrated to parents how they can support their children at home with their handwriting, reading and spelling. Feedback was very positive and parents were inspired to practise THRASS-ing out words with their children. The sessions were the result of a request made by a parent of a child in Year 1. If there are specific programs that you would like to learn more about, please let me know.

Snapshot Surveys

We received a small number of responses (17) on the Get Active in August Wellbeing Morning that the Wellbeing Sub Committee hosted last month. It was really great to see so many children and their families participating in skipping and hula hooping on the basketball courts, dancing in the hall and running on the oval.

The dancing in the hall was lots of fun. Many articles I have read emphasise the benefits of dance. According to livestrong.com, dancing regularly can:

Improve physical health
Help children improve their social and communication skills, learn how to work as part of a team, develop a greater sense of trust and cooperation and make new friends
Help to spark creativity in young children and help them to develop an appreciation for the arts
Improve self-esteem

Dance has also been reported to improve memory and cognitive functioning and prepare our bodies for learning as a result of the sensorimotor input received.

All year levels were represented by at least one respondent to our survey. When asked “Which activities do you think we should keep next time?”, 100% of the respondents selected Dance, 89% want to see Sports, 78% want Hula Hoops and 67% would like to see Skipping. 80% of respondents would like to see Meditation introduced.

The question regarding how often we should run a Wellbeing Morning showed clearly that there is interest in having at least one event every term, with almost half requesting one per month.

The strong feedback was supported in the comments:

We didn’t attend the morning as we had all been unwell. But we were upset we missed the morning. Great idea!
Football and Soccer
My child really enjoyed having Mr. Bennett running with the kids on the oval.
The event was expected to run until 8:45am. It would be great if it could go on a bit longer for the first bell. We aimed to get there by 8:15am but with 2 kids and a baby, we only got there at 8:35am. The kids and I enjoyed it. Thanks for organising.
We know how hard the teachers already work, so we are not expecting weekly sessions, but the dancing fun in the gym would be great
It was a great morning – thank you.

The Wellbeing Sub Committee are grateful to those parents who took the time to respond and are considering how we can engage as many students and their families as possible through Wellbeing Morning activities. Watch out for more information to follow.

Father’s Day Breakfast

The Parent Club considered the feedback received on the Mother’s Day activities when planning for the fathers. The hall was packed with dads and drandfathers last week for the breakfast and the students were very excited about the presents that they purchased.

We hope all of the dads had a fantastic Father’s Day.

Engagement in Kingswood

We would like to gather your feedback on engagement at Kingswood Primary School. As the purpose of these surveys is to increase community engagement, we would love as many responses as possible. Please complete the survey and encourage all of your family and friends to do the same.

Previous Snapshot Surveys

If you are interested in completing past questionnaires, please follow these links:

Let me know if there are any topics that you would like to see a survey on by clicking here.