Wellbeing Report 

Hi everyone,

Welcome back Amy Cleary.  While Amy has been on leave, we have missed her wonderful presence and her incredible knowledge and skills. I know many of her past students are thrilled to have her back. Amy is a classroom teacher, and she is our school’s Mental Health Wellbeing Leader. If you didn’t know, Amy works closely with all staff to implement whole school wellbeing programs, improve student engagement, connectedness and she strives to create safe and inclusive learning environments around the school.  Amy also works 1-1 and with groups of students to help them work through their problems and then come up with solutions and a better understanding of themselves and their peers. 

The Wellbeing Team are on before and after school duty and we can help with any questions or queries you may have. We can help with any parenting worries or support your family with home or family concerns.

This term, we are continuing to support our students with their worries, friendships and other challenges they may experience across their day.  We work together with the classroom teachers to support children’s transition into the school day as well as be in the classroom for other learning challenges. We offer activity clubs everyday at lunchtime which are always popular, especially when student’s friends are absent. 

The Wellbeing Team are happy to take donations including arts and craft items, wool, Lego, jigsaw puzzles, board games and books.  We are always looking for things to help support our activity clubs that we run at lunchtimes. 

We also accept school uniform donations from families. Some uniform is used to change children. Currently, we are in desperate need of spare black tracksuit pants sizes from 5-8, socks and boys’ and girls’ underwear.  All parents need to do is drop the bags off at the office and we will collect them.

With this wet weather, staff continually find jumpers and hoodies around the school grounds. It really helps us when clothing is labelled with your child’s full name. Many items have student initials marked on them and having a school of 430+ students, it’s impossible for staff to identify the owner.  Lost property is located near the Prep entry door (opposite the German room). All lost property found across the school makes it way here. If your child has lost something, please pop down and take a look. 

Across the week we have several opportunities for students to feel supported with their friendships whether it’s during break times out in the yard/electives or speaking to our welfare team.  If you have any questions or are looking for tips, please speak to staff. We really hope your children come home from school happy to talk and share their day with you. 

For any enquiries, please email the Wellbeing Team at-

Amy.Cleary@education.vic.gov.au

Sally.Marshall@education.vic.gov.au

elizabeth.martin3@education.vic.gov.au

Andre.Campbell@education.vic.gov.au

Attendance and Absences

When your child is going to be away parents and carers need to notify the school through COMPASS. This really helps us as we can communicate effectively with all relevant staff early in the school day. Thank you to all our parents for accurately indicating the reason for your child’s absence.  We need to know clearly the explanation, whether its illness related/appointment, a family holiday or parent choice.

In the mornings, staff are on duty from 8:30am at the kiss and drop.  Many children love the opportunity for a quick play or to find their friends to chat before the bell goes.  At 8:50am the attendance rolls are marked, junior school students change their readers, and the older students participate in warm up learning-based activities to help switch their brain onto learning. 

For families having difficult mornings that is contributing to their child’s attendance, please speak to your child’s teacher and/or the Wellbeing Team.   We are on duty in the kiss and drop at school drop off time as well as after school.  We are here to help you and your child, and we know many local services, and we have capacity to link you in if this is something you are looking for.   

Attendance Data-It’s Cool to be at School!

This past fortnight we have celebrated 12 out of 12 students who came to school on their special day. When your child comes to school and it’s their birthday, we are bringing the buzz to make their day even more special.  When they arrive at school in the mornings, we are presenting them with a special birthday sticker badge.  I must say the kids are really loving this!

Over the time a child attends school, having 1- or 2-days absence does not seem like much but it does add up and can impact on missed learning opportunities.

Playtime- Listening and Asking Good Questions

Teaching children the art of active listening is such a valuable skill. Part of being interesting is showing interest in what others have to say. You show interest mainly by listening and asking good questions.  A good question is one which makes it more likely that the other person will give a nice long answer rather than a simple and short response. Stress that listening is important but that it’s important to do things which convince the listener that you are listening.

Think of an open question, e.g “What did you do on the weekend?” A question like this allows for an interesting answer: “We rode our bikes on Saturday and then we went to my Aunty’s house and had dinner there”.

On the other hand, a closed question, such as “Did you have a nice weekend?” only allows for a brief answer: “Yes, I did”.

Ask your child how they have managed challenges this week and discuss the decisions they made-did it help them or hurt them?

Remember, kids love listening to your stories about how you tackled problems with your friends or out in the yard.  We may not always think of sharing our experiences, but kids really "lock into" our lessons learned.  They love seeing their parent more human as they can really gravitate and learn from your own solutions to friendship problem.  As always, if you need any support around friendship issues, please come in and see me.

Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD)

Every year, all schools in Australia participate in the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD). The NCCD process requires schools to identify information already available in the school about supports provided to students with disability. These relate to legislative requirements under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and the Disability Standards for Education 2005, in line with the NCCD guidelines (2019).

Information provided about students to the Australian Government for the NCCD includes:

• Category of disability: physical, cognitive, sensory or social/emotional level of adjustment provided.

• Support provided within quality differentiated teaching practice, supplementary, substantial or extensive.

This information assists schools to consider how they can strengthen the support of students with disability in schools and develop shared practices to improve educational outcomes for students with disability.

The NCCD provides state and federal governments with the information they need to plan more broadly for the support of students with disability.

The NCCD will have no direct impact on your child, and your child will not be involved in any testing process. 

 The school will provide data to the Australian Government in such a way that no individual student will be able to be identified – the privacy and confidentiality of all students is ensured. All information is protected by privacy laws that regulate the collection, storage and disclosure of personal information. To find out more about these matters, please refer to the Australian Government’s Privacy Policy (https://www.education.gov.au/privacy-policy). Further information about the NCCD can be found on the NCCD Portal (https://www.nccd.edu.au).

Head Lice 

This fortnight, we have had only 1 report of live head lice in the school. We ask parents to work with us to keep our reports low and to continue to treat and monitor your children’s hair. Please notify the office or tell your child’s teacher when you treat your child so lice alert notes can be issued on COMPASS.  Reminder-any child found with live lice will be excluded from school until they are treated. 

Activities Breaktimes

During winter, our activities at recess and lunchtime are still going strong. For children who can’t go outside for any health reason, we do offer supervision at our activity clubs.  Students enjoy doing puzzles together with their friends and helping other students make some wonderful creations.  In wool craft, students can make snowflakes, turtles, pom poms, cats’ eyes and they can learn early crotchet skills. In craft club, students have been making diamond art stickers and bookmarks.  Lego Club is always popular, and the children work well together on their designs. 

If families have any wool or crochet hooks, they are no longer using then please donate these items. It will really help our students if they can practice their skills. To inspire students, we often play You Tube clips showing kids how small skills can be built on for them to make other craft masterpieces. 

RU Ok Day activities

During lunch time the Wellbeing team have been preparing for RU Ok day on the 10th of September by asking the children to make posters about being there for a friend. The children learn what it is to be a good friend and they learn the body language of others who may not be feeling great, the RU Ok Day posters encourage them to step up and ask if their friends need any support. The posters are displayed outside the science room where craft club is held.

Second hand uniform

Available, contact the Wellbeing team to access second hand uniform.

Breakfast Club

Now serving canned spaghetti!

If you would like your child to make use of our yummy breakfast foods, send them to school that bit earlier so they will have time to eat and enjoy their food. We serve toast until the music is playing for the start of the school day. Please remind your child that if they want to have something to eat before school that they need to head straight down to the German Room. While the music for the bell is playing there are only fruit cups and milk drinks available. Breakfast club has been very popular with over 100 students attending. Recently we had freshly baked banana bread kindly provided by a school parent, the kids love these extra treats and we will always welcome any special food that parents would like to donate to add to our breakfast options.

Chaplaincy

During my recent Chaplaincy catch ups I have been encouraging students with a number of things including: friendship skills, resilience building, self esteem by replacing negative self thoughts with positive ones and simply but very importantly getting outside for walks, frisbee throwing and foam plane flying. The students have really appreciated the time I have spent with them and I enjoy planning our sessions with bright, colourful and engaging content. If you feel your child might need that extra emotional support during school hours please contact Sally via email 

sally.marshall@education.vic.gov.au

or by phone call 5964 7258. I’m available on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday each week.