Messages

Dear Families,

Thankyou for the overwhelming feedback about how the revised model of remote learning is benefitting your child's learning. No model perfectly suits everyone but we have endeavoured to replicate a school day to ensure continuity of learning and a better transition for when we are allowed back at school.

Yesterday, it was announced that schools will remain in remote learning for the remainder of Term Three without a confirmed return date. I have great confidence in our students, staff and parents to work together in remote learning. However, I continue to be concerned about the impact the lockdowns may be having on our students and families.  I hope that those in need of support are seeking assistance.

Thank you to our Year 1 staff member, Sarah Jones, for a fantastic dance session last Thursday afternoon. The students who attended looked like they had a great time.

Congratulations

Congratulations to Carmen and Kingsley on the birth this morning of their baby girl, Matilda Stella Hill. Both are well and we look forward to seeing them all at some stage.

Family Footy Quiz

This afternoon at 5pm, families are invited to take part in our Family Footy Quiz hosted by Paul Mapley. Onsite staff have had a lot of fun during lunch time trialling the Kahoot quiz! 

The Zoom link to join the quiz has been published onto DOJO.

Happy Father's Day to all dads and father figures in our community.

Wellbeing

Accomplishment + Optimism 

Project Smarts

By using the following process you will be project smart, to create higher quality outcomes:

• Defining - describe what the topic is about in your own words.
• Organising - use idea maps and thinking tools to make connections.
• Analysing - any messages in the information you collected?
• Comparing - how does it compare to other things you know about the topic?
• Concluding - what are your final thoughts about the topic? Any predictions?
• Presenting - your research looks stylish and logical.

Tips for Parenting Anxious Kids

Reassure your child that worry is normal:

• Let your child know that it is normal to get worried from time to time and that you also have worries.
• Remind your child that anxiety is not dangerous, it is just a feeling that people have.
• Explain how you can calm yourself down when feeling worried by talking to someone or finding a distraction that works for you.
• Role Model to your children how you calm yourself down when feeling worried.

Support your child through reflective listening:

• Give your child emotional support by effective listening, this involves really hearing and understanding their worry, how it is making them feel and how it is impacting them
• Research shows that helping your child to label an emotion is proven to lessen the stress response and decrease anxiety
• Reflective listening involves listening to your child without jumping in giving advice, being judgement or emotional and trying to problem solve
• Keep your own emotions in check, this is about the child and how they are feeling
• Reflect back by summarising both their worry and the emotion, eg. “You had a bad day and you are feeling upset with your friends”
• Once you reflect back to your child they are likely to share more
• When all feelings are expressed it is then time to help your child to problem solve.

Encourage your child to share feelings and worries:

• Chat regularly one on one with your child
• Assist children to open up if they appear worried, you can say “I noticed you seem worried” this may help to get a conversation started.
• If they have many worries, you can ask “What is worrying you the most”
• When your child talks about how they are feeling, use the reflective listening technique as described last week. This includes not jumping in trying to problem solve before listening to the worry.

Helping your child to problem solve:

• Problem solving comes after reflective listening, helping your child to problem solve gives them a lifelong skill
• Ask them questions like “What could you do?”, “What would happen if you…?
• If there is not a specific problem, your child has general worries, assist them to identify a coping strategy
• Give lots of positive praise when your child tries to solve a problem
• If we jump in and solve a problem for our child, we are taking away an opportunity for our child to build resilience
• Every time your child solves a problem (with your assistance if needed) their confidence builds and they form a belief that they can handle problems by the self

Help your child recognise anxious thoughts:

• Teach your child that we have thoughts all the time, some are helpful and some are not helpful
• Thoughts don’t always come true
• Help your child challenge anxious thoughts with facts and evidence eg. We know that monsters are not real
• Remind your child of when they have had that anxious thought before and how things worked out

Nourish Yourself:

• I know a lot of us are really time poor; however, it is really important to take time out to allow us to be able to manage the job of parenting in a calmer and happier way.  Take five minutes to sit down and have a cup of tea, read for ten minutes, listen to a podcast while taking a short break. Find whatever works for you to replenish yourself. Short breaks throughout the day can have a huge impact on your day and your children’s day.
• Try to keep your anxiety in check around your children. I know this is not always possible; however, anxiety is very catchy: anxious parents can create anxious kids.

Keep Camera On

In a virtual classroom, some students may prefer not to be seen (maybe they’re still in pyjamas or sitting in bed), so they turn off their webcams. But there are several reasons why leaving webcams on is beneficial.

For starters, in a virtual classroom, students may feel a sense of disconnectedness that they don’t feel in a physical classroom. When all students allow themselves to be seen and heard, however, using their webcams and microphones, they help simulate a physical classroom environment. This minimizes the feeling of disconnectedness.

In the physical classroom, teachers can read students’ body language and observe their behaviours, so they get a sense of who’s paying attention, or who’s struggling. This body language also gives teachers feedback on their lessons. Is it interesting and engaging? Is it at the appropriate skill level? These observations are more difficult to make online, and nearly impossible when students’ cameras are off. In fact, without seeing their faces in real-time, teachers don’t even know if students are really there.

Teachers, therefore, will request all students to keep their webcams on, as everyone in the virtual classroom will benefit.

Wellbeing Day

Next Wednesday, the 8th of September will be a special Wellbeing Day. Students will check in with their classroom teacher in the morning, then they will have access to many different activities ranging from meditations, sporting activities and yoga. Many of the sections have been made by students, we even have a little step back in time that we are sure the students will love. The activities will be optional so you can do as much as you wish. Thank you to the students who have already sent in videos. 

Book Week Incursion Reports

Cardytoons Report by Eliza 

Last week on the 26th of August, students had the opportunity to attend an incursion with Cardytoons on how to draw cartoon characters. The incursion was fantastic and we were able to learn how to draw cartoon characters and our favourite book or movie characters. We also learnt little drawing tricks that can help you learn to draw something. This incursion was a fantastic opportunity to learn to draw something new! 

My favourite part of Book Week was certainly this incursion and being able to still dress up even though we were online. 

Overall, book week was awesome and a big thankyou to Miss Cox for organizing it all!

Here’s some illustrations from the incursion that you might like to draw at home. 

Bigger Better Brighter by Isaac

On Tuesday, there was a livestream performance for Book Week. The theme was Old Worlds, New Worlds, Other Worlds. It was about a girl named Marley who one day felt like she had lost something. Over the course of the performance she found her interest, creativity and hope through the help of characters from Australian books such as ‘How to make a bird and Ellies Dragon’. She looked in yesterday, today and tomorrow. She originally didn’t want to go tomorrow and when she did it was filled with holes. She learnt not to worry about tomorrow but to instead look forward to it and she found what she was looking for. 

It was a great performance and thank you to Miss Cox for organising this for us.

Premiers’ Reading Challenge

72 students are taking part in the Premiers’ Reading Challenge this year. 

Congratulations to the 28 students who have completed the challenge. 

The challenge will end on the 17th September 2021, so remember to get reading, log your books and finish the challenge on time. 

With two weeks left to go we have collectively read 1,409 books!

Here are some book reviews from our students below:

Remote Learning Work

2E are learning to write procedures. On Tuesday we made fairy bread and then wrote a procedure about it. It was great fun!

We also designed and wrote procedure posters about washing your hands.

Year 4

In Reading, we've been learning to identify causes and effects within texts.

In Religion / PSEL, students have written a prayer of Gratitude for a special person in their life.

In Year 1 we have been learning to:

Make text to world connections when reading.

Make our sentences more interesting by using adverbs in our writing. 

Recognise, describe and order Australian coins according to their value.

Footy Colours Day 

Today we celebrated Footy Colours virtually with students wearing their favourite footy colours or guernsey. 

On Footy Colours Day we would normally ask for a gold coin donation for charity. As we are not together onsite this year, we are asking if you are in a position to, please make a donation of any amount through our fundraising page 

https://curecancer.grassrootz.com/the-buddy-box/galilee-primary-school

We are trying to fundraise money to help Cure Cancer to provide some special Buddy Boxes to support children undergoing cancer treatment. 

It only takes a minute and any money you can give (no matter how large or small) will go a long way to helping us reach our target. This page will be active for the rest of the term so feel free to pass on the link to interested family and friends.

Thank you so much for the donations so far, you've been very generous.

NAPLAN

Last Tuesday we were given access to the 2021 NAPLAN results represented in the table below. It was recently communicated that Victorian year 3 & 5 students achieved higher NAPLAN results than all other Australian states and territories. Below our results are compared to other Victorian schools. We are above the state mean in all areas except Spelling (Year 3). 

It is rewarding to see such outstanding results in Writing, following the introduction (although interrupted) of Big Write and VCOP.

We are currently scanning individual student results and preparing to email them home to families of Year 3 & 5 students, by Tuesday September 7.

Please be careful when reading your child's results as they may not be the most accurate measure of progress as stated by ACARA: "While NAPLAN results can be compared nationally between all students and over time, a student’s experience on the day of the test may affect their performance."

Victoria has spent significantly more time in remote learning than other students across Australia which may impact upon individual results. NAPLAN can present data on individual students that does not accurately reflect progress.  If you have any concerns, please consult your child's teacher to see if the results are verified with other more relevant assessments and testing.

Please see the attachment below from ACARA, that explains NAPLAN testing.

PSW Uniforms

A reminder to check the Parent Calendar (http://www.gsmelbournesth.catholic.edu.au/page/179/Calendar) often for important dates.

Best wishes,

Simon Millar (Principal)