Assistant Principal's Report

Mother’s Day Lunch

After an amazing breakfast, Stephanie Sim and I attended the Mother’s Day Lunch on Friday 10th May. It was fantastic to see so many of our mothers and special people in attendance. I would like to thank Jess and her team for putting on such a great event, in an amazing location and with fantastic food. I have thoroughly enjoyed hearing about all the ways our mums were spoilt and how they spent Mother’s Day!

Year 1 Wellbeing Incursion – Perky Panda Asks Are You Ok?

To compliment the work our Wellbeing Leader, Labreni Pappas and our Social Worker, Lauren Jordan are facilitating with the Year 1 classes, the students participated in an engaging incursion yesterday, Perky Panda Asks Are You Ok? Maria La Selva is a passionate educator and author. Her incursion was engaging and more importantly, reiterated some very important wellbeing messages, as well as providing our students with more strategies to utilise. This compliments the work our school does in this very important wellbeing space as well as reinforces my wellbeing messages in my newsletter articles.

The school has purchased the books. The books will be used in wellbeing lessons to reinforce the important message of helping others with kindness and showing compassion. In the books Perky Panda cleverly demonstrates how practicing mindfulness techniques can positively assist in regulating emotions. 

Please see more information about the incursion in this edition of the newsletter as well as what our students had to say!

Staff Update

In our last newsletter, Rohan announced the appointment of Labreni Pappas as our Learning Specialist for Wellbeing. This will see Labreni out of the art room on Friday to fulfill her wellbeing commitment. Kayleigh Atkinson has taken on the role of the art teacher for our Year 5 and Year 2 cohorts.

Illness

With Winter around the corner, we have seen an increase in cold and flus over the last couple of weeks. If your child is unwell, seek medical attention, limit contact with others and stay at home until symptoms have passed. Good general hygiene remains the best defence against infection. Please encourage your children to regularly wash their hands and cover their nose and mouth if sneezing and coughing.

Wellbeing – Help Seeking

Help Seeking is about communicating an issue or challenge to obtain support, advice or help. It is a positive coping strategy. Seeking help is important because it can foster children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing.

Some ways to develop help seeking behaviours include:

• Create an environment where help seeking is encouraged and valued
• Support children’s social and emotional learning and to help them understand and name their emotions
• Be a positive role model and demonstrate help seeking, e.g. saying out loud, “I’m not sure how to solve this problem so I’m going to ask for help.”
• Provide encouragement and positive feedback for help seeking, e.g. “I can see that you are really upset. I am so glad you came to talk to me about it.”
• Talk to children about the benefits of asking for help
• Read stories that show children getting support from others, such as from family members, doctors, other children, etc

Here is an activity for Year 3 and 4 students:

Please see link to access activities for students in other year levels.

parents-wellbeing-activities-primary.pdf (education.vic.gov.au)

Georgia Despotellis

Assistant Principal