Carlton North Primary School

Message from the Principal Team

Principals' Update

Education Week

This year, Education Week runs from Sunday 14th to Saturday 20th May. The theme is Active Learners: Move, Make, Motivate, celebrating the many ways students learn, through physical activity, hands on learning and student voice.

 

CNPS will be celebrating Education Week through classroom activities. To find out more, visit the Education Week 2023 website. 

 

Wild Action Science Incursion - Year 1/2

On Tuesday, our Year 1/2 students attended a very exciting incursion with native Australian animals that are endangered and threatened species. This session was very engaging and took many of our students (and staff) out of our comfort zones as we were able to touch animals such as frogs, snakes, lizards, birds, and mammals, including a very large koala named Billy.

 

 

Foundation Special Person’s Morning Activities (for Mother’s Day) - Tomorrow

We look forward to our Foundation students pampering and spoiling the Special People in their lives to celebrate Mother’s Day on Sunday 14 May. We will share photos of the event on Seesaw and in our Week 4 newsletter. Watch this space for extreme cuteness!

 

IDAHOBIT Day Wednesday 17 May - Let’s Get Rainbow

International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexism and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT) discrimination is held annually on Wednesday, 17 May. This year marks the anniversary of the day in 1990 when the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from the Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems. IDAHOBIT is a chance for schools to celebrate Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer and Questioning (LGBTIQ+) equality and to raise awareness of the discrimination LGBTIQ+ people still face.

 

Why IDAHOBIT is still important today?

  • 68% of LGBTQIA+ employees in Australia are not out to everyone at work. (Out at Work, 2018).
  • 2 in 3 LGBTQIA+ youth experience abuse due to their identity.
  • 35% of LGBTQIA+ Australians have experienced verbal abuse in the past 12 months.

 

On Wednesday, our staff will be wearing rainbow, and we will be encouraging our students to do the same.

 

COVID Cases

We have seen an increase in COVID cases across the school. We would like to remind all families to please be mindful of COVID symptoms. If your child shows any symptoms or is unwell, please conduct a Rapid Antigen Test and keep them at home. If your child does test positive for COVID please notify the school so that we can watch vigilantly for symptoms within your child’s class.

 

We have reminded our staff to turn up the air purifiers in all learning spaces and offices. We also have plenty of RATs for those families who need to test family members.

 

Please note if there is a COVID case in the family, family members can continue to go to work and school if they are testing negative on a RAT.

 

National Walk Safely to School Day - Friday 19 May

National Walk Safely to School Day (WSTSD) is an annual event when all Primary School children are encouraged to walk and commute safely to school. It is a Community Event seeking to promote Road Safety, Health, Public Transport and the Environment.

 

The objectives of WSTSD are:

  • To encourage parents and carers to walk to school with primary school age children and reinforce safe pedestrian behaviour.
  • To promote the health benefits of walking and help create regular walking habits at an early age.
  • To ensure that children up to 10 years old hold an adult's hand when crossing the road.
  • To help children develop the vital road-crossing skills they will need as they become mature pedestrians.
  • To reduce the car dependency habits that are being created at an early age and which will be difficult to change as children become adults.
  • To promote the use of Public Transport.
  • To reduce the level of air pollution created by motor vehicles.
  • To reduce the level of traffic congestion.

Staff Professional Learning

Trish is currently attending the annual Business Managers Conference today and tomorrow. She will then head off to Portugal on Saturday to attend the Educational Global Education Union Conference. This year the conference has a focus on Education Support staff. Trish will be representing Education Support members of the Vic AEU. The Vic AEU approached Trish to attend this conference and has sponsored her attendance. We wish Trish safe travels and look forward to hearing about her learnings and experience at the conference.

 

Today our SWPBS/RR Team Emily, Billy, Jesse and Rachel attended the Schoolwide Positive Behaviour Showcase Day. This was a fantastic opportunity to see what other schools in our region are doing in the SWPBS space. We also had the opportunity to network with schools and look forward to scheduling school visits. Several schools would like to come and see what we are doing in the Wellbeing space at CNPS.

 

Yesterday afternoon our staff attended a professional learning session on wellbeing. This session was conducted by staff from the Career Start Team at Regional Office. The session had a focus on setting boundaries both at work and at home. We have a strong focus on both student and staff wellbeing within our 2023 Annual Implementation Plan as we are mindful of post COVID impacts on everyone's wellbeing.

 

Focus on Learning - Mathematics

As a result of our recent professional learning with Maths Consultant, Michael Minas, our staff will be implementing more open-ended problem solving within our Maths sessions with a short, initial focus on 'productive struggle' time. When students labour and struggle but continue to try  to make sense of a problem, they are engaging in productive struggle. Research in this area confirms that productive struggle is fundamental to successful mathematics learning. Struggle provides students with opportunities to grapple with important mathematical ideas and can be viewed as a natural part of learning mathematics.

 

Our students are well prepared for this productive struggle time as they are preloaded with a toolkit of strategies on how they could approach solving the problem prior to being given the task. They are also provided access to enabling and extending prompts to assist them.

 

Below is an example of a problem the Year 1/2 students tackled this week. 

Enabling and Extending Prompts

ENB: I only brought 10 counters to the classroom

EXT: What happens if I took more than 2 trips? How many could I have taken each trip? 

 

A Message About Hats

The average UV index has now lowered enough for students to go outside without hats. Our students are no longer required to wear hats for the remainder of this term. However, sunsmart practice is always recommended.

                                                                               

Principal Team

Rachel Corben and Jane Bilby