A Message from Hannah & Keir
Wellbeing Roles
This year at BNWPS, we have been working on evolving and refining our approach to student wellbeing and welfare. One exciting element of this evolution has been releasing Deb Robins from the classroom for one day each week in a Wellbeing leadership role.
Deb’s role focuses on implementing and reviewing our school wide approaches to the teaching and learning of Wellbeing. Examples of this would be the Respectful Relationships program, Body Safe Australia and Friendship Saver.
This week, for clarity of communication and continuity of information, we have also made the decision to allocate and divide the wellbeing support of particular year levels between Hannah and Keir.
Going forward, Hannah will be supporting the wellbeing of students in our Junior and Senior sections of the school.
Keir will be supporting the wellbeing of students in the Foundation and Middle school.
This component of wellbeing will cover areas such as ILPs, SSGs, Mental Health referrals, assessments and any other meetings or conversations that focus on the wellbeing of students in those year levels.
Initially, this might mean that (for students in years 1, 2, 5 and 6!) Hannah might attend the SSG instead of Keir, and if parents or carers call the front office to speak about a wellbeing circumstance or concern, they will be connected with the appropriate leader.
The day-to-day responding to student welfare or behaviour concerns will continue to be managed by Hannah and Keir no matter which year level a student is from.
Our intention is to make communication and enactment of wellbeing processes as clear, organised and straightforward as possible.
As has always been the case, if you have an immediate or urgent concern or request, you are very welcome to speak with either of us - we work very closely together and share as much information between us as possible.
If you have any questions about this evolved approach, please do not hesitate to ask.
Values Awards & Shining Stars
Parents and carers may have noticed a small change to our Shining Star awards this term, with a revamped design that incorporates our school’s new values. During our school review last year, one of the main priorities for our four year plan was to incorporate the new vision and values throughout every aspect of our schooling experience.
Our values are shared, part of our identity and integral in guiding all community members when taking action and making decisions. However, anyone who was part of our school when we had 8 different values would understand that values can easily become an abstract concept, rather than a lived experience. By highlighting our new values through the Shining Star awards on a weekly basis, we can help our whole community build a shared understanding of what it means to be authentic, respectful, connected and creative.
The Shining Star awards will still focus on the wonderful behaviours, attributes, choices, actions and academics that they always have at BNWPS - they will just be linked to a value!. At assembly last week we had some wonderful examples of a ‘Connection Shining Star’ for articulating the connection between tens and units in a double digit number, or a ‘Creativity Shining Star’ for coming up with an engaging, zippy ‘sizzling start’ in a letter to persuade the Coke company not to use plastic bottles. The possibilities are just as great as they were with our older Shining Star awards - this time, they are just linked to a value.
Beanies for Every Head
Clothes have two main functions: protection (from the sun, heat/cold, chemicals, dangers, etc) and identification (job, rank, religious, cultural or social group and historically gender and class).
Our school has championed everyone’s freedom of expression for over twenty years. Yet despite having a uniform that is not compulsory, we tend to see two moments in time when the majority of our students are desperately keen to wear a uniform; as they transition from kindergarten and as they reach grade 6 and get their special hoodies - both moments are full of pride. It’s not just the kids who are proud to be part of this school. Just as we see kids in high school still wearing their BNW hoodie, we regularly see staff wearing their staff jumpers on weekends and in the holidays. There is pride in all of us, being here.
Our incredible Community Events Team (CET) have jumped on this idea of the pride we feel in being part of this very special community and have created a piece of ‘uniform’ fit for every head. Our Brunswick North West beanies, complete with embroidered splodge is an opportunity for anybody (small or grown, current or past, student or family) to wear their connection to our school community with pride.
Community Forum - Guided Play
We have our next Community Forum tomorrow night, where we will be unpacking the school’s approach to Guided Play. Guided Play is facilitated by our teachers in F-2 as a method of explicitly teaching personal and social learning skills, as well as introducing and unpacking key Inquiry concepts. In 2021, the Education Dept recommended that schools adopt an approach to Play as a response to the experiences our younger students missed out on due to the pandemic. At BNWPS, the benefits of Guided Play were numerous, significant and observed by teachers very early on.
If you have any questions about Guided Play that you would like answered in the forum, please use the following link;
If you are wanting to attend the Guided Play Forum, please use the following link;
Community Forum - Guided Play
Tuesday, May 31 · 6:00 pm
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/cmd-nhjh-aje
Conference & Collective PP day
Just a reminder that next Thursday and Friday (9th and 10th June) are student free days at BNWPS. OSHC will be open for interested families, but staff shortages in the OSHC program are indicating that we may have a limited number of places available.
As previously communicated, these days are set aside for our collective professional practice day and for our 2022 Staff Conference.
Our staff conference this year will be using the lens of our four values to focus on what skills and how we respectfully communicate with each other and members of the community. We will also be taking a deep dive into the new BNWPS model of inquiry and plan for inquiry into term three and beyond.
Monday 13th June is the Queen’s Birthday public holiday. No students are required at school on this day either and no full day OSHC service will be available as it is a public holiday.
Ride & Stride
Thank you to all the parents and carers who responded to our Ride and Stride survey! Your answers will help shape the program to suit our community and our students. This week will mark the start of our partnership with TagOn. Towards the end of this week your child/children will receive a small ‘token’ in their house colour. The token will be used to ‘tag on’ when they arrive at school each day.
Each time a student tags on at school, they are asked how they traveled to school (car / bike / walk / public transport) and the data is collected for our school’s use. More importantly, parents and carers can request to be notified the instant your children tag on, which we know can be an obstacle for parents wanting their children to take active transport to school but are not yet ready for their child to own a mobile phone.
More information about the TagOn program will be shared with families later this week, along with instructions on how to register the token at home.