Mr. Carlyle's Message

Hello families and welcome to this week’s newsletter.

I hope your family has enjoyed a settled return to the school year. Visiting classrooms thus far, it's been apparent that across the school the start has been smooth. The teaching of routines and expectations that make our learning environments safe and successful, is underway and going well. If you feel like your child hasn’t made a settled start to the year, now is the time to reach out to their classroom teacher and get their perspective on how the year has started. 

I would like to take this opportunity to formally welcome our new staff for 2024. Mr. Liam Ross and Mrs. Rachael Baker.  We welcome them with open arms into the Ballan community. 

Communication with School

I wanted to focus this week’s message on contact and communication with school. Positive relationships between school and home are a key to the success of all of our students. It’s been great in the return to school seeing parents coming on-site to drop off students and collect them at the end of the day. Classrooms open from 8:45am and instruction commences at 9:00am. In this time parents are welcome to visit classrooms with their children but be mindful that at this time teacher’s supervision responsibility commences and thus whilst they can have very brief conversations it isn’t the time to be expecting them to be available for a lengthy conversation. If you need to speak to your child’s teacher, raise with them the issue you need to speak to them about, and make a time outside of their hours of supervision to have this chat. 

If at any time during the year your child needs additional settling to start the day beyond the beginning of instruction time, it may be appropriate to stay for a few additional minutes to assist with settling. In this time, it is important to bear in mind that this cannot cause disruption to the learning of students commencing. Where possible school staff will always attempt to assist with any unsettled students once instruction time has commenced. 

Families are welcome to come onsite prior to the end of the day to wait to collect students. If you are doing this there are a few things to be mindful of.

• Please do not use the student toilets. Students will still be using these and it isn’t appropriate for parents to be accessing these.  If you need to use bathroom facilities, we will happily accommodate this by providing access to our staff bathrooms. Ask for access to these at the office. 
• Please make sure your presence on school grounds isn’t a distraction to students finishing the day. Each day from 3:05pm onwards students are required to reset classroom spaces ready for the next day of learning. Particularly in the early years of the school this can be like herding cats! Please don't look in through windows and draw students' attention away from teachers managing a calm and orderly finish to the day. 
• As the students exit at the end of the day this is a chance to have a brief chat with teachers or schedule an appointment if you need more of their time. On Tuesday and Wednesday nights teachers have meetings which commence at 3:30pm. 

Xuno is the platform we use for online communication between teachers and families. This isn’t to remove face to face interactions but complement them as we appreciate for many families getting into to school for visits can be difficult. This can be useful to contact teachers as the need arises and likewise, teachers will use this to reach out to families when necessary.

Whatever the mode of communication you engage in with teachers, it is expected communication will be respectful and courteous. If you are making contact regarding an issue raised at home by students, it is particularly important to bear in mind you’re unlikely to have all of the information on hand. When a student comes home flustered and upset about something that's happened at school be it in the classroom or from the yard, a relay of that to their family, is often fuelled with a lot of emotion and quite often doesn’t represent what’s taken place. 

A reminder that communicating your child's absence should be done via the school office. 

The Parents Victoria resource 'Think Wait Communicate' provides further guidance around appropriately raising concerns with school staff Tip-sheet-think-wait-communicate.pdf (parentsvictoria.asn.au)

Open Afternoon

A reminder that next Thursday 15th Feb is our Open Afternoon and we’re excited to see families interacting with teachers and visiting their child’s classroom.  There will be a sausage sizzle, ice cream truck and coffee van onsite.  At around 4:30pm we’ll wrap up the night with a few announcements and reminders from our school leaders. We look forward to seeing you there.  

Uniforms

It is great to see our new uniform getting rolled out across the school.  I feel it is important to remind families that throughout the year we are very flexible with having a mix of new and old uniform choices, as we transition to the new uniform by years end. 

• If you have not yet picked up your child's free school polo don't stress, sizes 8 and under are currently in stock, with the larger sizes being available by the end of February. 
• We are still on track for jumpers, rugby tops and additional shirt stock to be available by the end of February. 
• All uniform options will be available via Beleza in Ballarat. 

Bus Service

A reminder that the school has two bus services operating between Mt. Wallace and Greendale.  The services are currently unusually low on student numbers, and we may lose the service all together should the need not be there.   If you would like further information on the bus services, routes and eligibility, please contact the school office. 

Healthy Lunch Box Choices and Nude Food

Please help reduce waste in our school by packing 'Nude Food' (food without excess packaging) and whole foods or unprocessed foods in your child's lunch box.  Click here for further resources and 'Healthy Lunch Box' suggestions or to download the Pick and Mix poster for the fridge!