Junior School, South Plympton

In this Article:

• Community Christmas Night
• Year 2 Sleepover
• Friendology Program - introducting Friend-o-Leaders
• 2024 Classes

Community Christmas Night 

Friday 24 November, 5.30pm - 7.30pm

You're invited to the South Plympton Oval to enjoy a community picnic dinner! 

Bring your picnic blankets, pillows and chairs. 

From 6pm the children will go to their class teacher who will supervise them until the conclusion of the evening. 

Each class choir group will entertain you with a selection of songs. This will be broken up by a performance and community singing led by our Senior School Worship band.

Please invite grandparents and extended family to celebrate with us as a community. 

We are also going to invite our College neighbours to showcase our College and to bless them in the lead up to Christmas. 

All Junior School students are expected to attend. 

All students will wear their school uniform with Christmas additions. Your child’s class teacher will let you know what these accessories will involve. 

Year 2 Sleepover

On Friday 27 October we had our annual Year 2 Sleepover at school! 

All students and teachers had a blast! It was such a wonderful experience for our Junior Primary students to have a night away from home, often for the first time, in a familiar location. 

This is the start of the school camp journey at Emmaus and our students do so well to be brave and confident to spend the night at school with their peers, teachers and parent volunteers. 

The Year 2s had lots of fun eating pizza, playing games and creating crafts, followed by watching a movie in their PJs. They were very brave and tried their best to get lots of sleep in their teepees. Everyone had such a fun time, connecting with each other and their teachers, as well as, using a growth mindset to try new things. 

The Year 2s will remember this momentous occasion in years to come! A special thank you to all staff and parents that were involved in making this such a smooth and successful event. 

Pearl Dragun

Year 2 Teacher

Friendology Program - Introducing Friend-o-Leaders

Over the last semester, we have been building our friendship skills using the Friendology Program. We now know that disagreements or problems between friends are called “Friendship Fires” and have learnt that we can solve a lot of friendship problems by talking it out with those involved. 

We have learnt about tools that help us visualise and give language to the feelings we experience during the ups and downs that inevitably occur in our relationships. It has been really lovely to see children embracing the lessons through role play and meaningful opportunities to practise these skills in context. 

Over time, the children have grown in confidence and skills to put-out their own friendship fires by using their knowledge of the 'four friendship facts' and 'Friend-o-cycle' to help them work through relational issues. 

To help us in the yard, our Year 6 leaders have stepped into a new role called 'Friend-o-Leaders'. Our leaders are visible and available to support our Junior School students during lunch times. They have brightly coloured vests and lanyards to help them stand out and are around when friendship fires occur, and a student needs extra help to work through it. 

It has been encouraging to see how our Friend-o-Leaders have cared for and supported our students, small and grown! We look forward to this role being passed on to the next generation of leaders each year, so that our students have extra people that they can count on to help them work through the highs and lows of their friendships!

Well done to our Friend-o-Leaders and keep up the great work!

Morgan Venter

Junior School Teacher 

Junior School Pastoral Coordinator

2024 Classes 

Your child will find out who is teaching them and which of their friends are in class with them during Week 7 prior to visiting their new class. All the children will in the next week select four 'learning friends' that they want to have in class with them. We guarantee that they will have at least one of these friends in their class.   

At home, please help your child to understand that they don’t need to have a close friend in their class. In our Friendology lessons the children all learn how to make friends and this will be a focus at the start of 2024. And we all know Friendship Fact 4 ‘Friendships change and that’s OK’. 

All classes work closely together on a daily basis and class groups, at times, mix for different lessons. We are always looking for ways to teach our children to be resilient, and class placement, and not getting what we had hoped for is an ideal opportunity to develop resilience. All of our staff are highly experienced, outstanding teachers and the children will have a great year, whichever class they are in.  

We ask that you please don’t request specific teachers, as our priority in setting classes is always on achieving the best mix of children for optimum learning to occur in our classroom.  

Liz Hinrichsen

Head of Junior School, South Plympton