Principals` Message
Week 8 news
At assembly on Tuesday we were all treated to some beautiful singing of the song ‘Do, Re, Me’ by our wonderful Foundation students. In Performing Arts they have been learning about music and singing with Bree and it was fabulous to have a supportive audience to listen to their performance. All students enjoyed the performance as did our crowd of parents and carers! The confidence of the Foundation students in performing is tremendous and it is great to see how far they have come in their learning across the year. Well done to our Foundation students and Bree.
A very exciting event will be taking place this week for some of our Year 3-4 students. Earlier in the year all year 3-4 students participated in the Berthe Mouchette Poetry Competition and on Tuesday the finalists have been invited to a special awards ceremony by Alliance Française at St Kilda Town Hall. Congratulations to our finalists and well done to all students who participated. We are proud of you all.
As we approach the end of 2023 we have been looking ahead and planning the upcoming 2024 school year. One important item for our parents and carers to be aware of are our pupil free days for next year. Our school council approved pupil free dates for 2024 are:
- Monday 29th January
- Tuesday 30th January
- Wednesday 8th May
- Friday 16th August
There will also be a pupil free professional practice day on Monday 4th November. These days are important for staff to undertake professional learning, planning for lessons and work on our school priorities.
Throughout 2023 one of our school goals has been working on improving our school wide student wellbeing approach. This is important work to help all students feel supported and positive when they are at school, to be able to regulate when they are experiencing strong emotions and to have access to a range of strategies to support their wellbeing. This important work will be continuing into 2024, building on work that has commenced this year. Some of the actions planned to take place are:
- In 2024 we will be partnering with Department of Education to implement the School Wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS) program, which aims to promote and reinforce positive student behaviours across school.
- We will continue to teach the Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships (RRRR) curriculum, which helps develop students’ social, emotional and positive relationship skills. It also promotes positive social and emotional skills and positive gender norms and relationships.
- We will continue to promote our school values of Courage, Empathy and Respect, and further work these into school life.
- We will keep reinforcing and reminding students of our 4+2 Agreements of agreed behaviours to create calm and orderly school environment.
- We will continue to develop and implement consistent classroom expectations, processes and boundaries which help students to feel secure.
- We have appointed a new staff member who will work with staff and families on the new Disability Inclusion program and continue the work started in the Mental Health in Primary Schools program
We expect this work to have a positive impact on our students wellbeing across the year as we continue to teach and reinforce this learning.
Lately the weather has been improving and it has been good to see our families staying afterschool for children to play together in the playground. We welcome families and students enjoying our facilities afterhours and making the most of being part of our school. Importantly I need to ask families to supervise their children actively when they are in the yard. We have our OSHC program with Big Childcare running each morning and afternoon, and lately there has been some confusion about supervision of children who are not in the OSHC program but who are joining in activities after hours. Big Childcare can only supervise children booked for the service each day, so families please need to make sure they are watching their children each day.
-Nathan Moore & Andrea Hennessey