From the Acting Principal,
Elissa Campbell
Term 2 seems to be moving so quickly as we near the end of week 5 and only have 4 weeks of term remaining. Our teachers are working hard to complete assessment and reporting, with reports being opened to parents on Friday 16th June and Parent Teacher Interviews in the last week of term. More information about booking these will be sent out via Compass in the near future. You may have noticed that our school community is still struggling with COVID and other illnesses that are circulating, with many students and staff being absent from school. This has led to daily changes for some classes and I thank our staff, students and casual relief staff for their support during this time, we try where possible to maintain consistency for our students. Please ensure, that if your child is absent you continue to log their absence on Compass or contact the office.
On Friday 12th May we welcomed our mum’s in for a morning tea to celebrate Mother’s Day, it was a well attended event, organised by our fantastic PFA volunteers. The food was plentiful and the coffee hot, which was appealing for many on a cold morning. The PFA will also be running a cake stall from the canteen at 3.30pm on Monday 29th May, so please come in and purchase some delicious treats. See pics in the PFA page.
It has been a pleasure to see an increase in the number of families reconnecting with our school after the two years of lockdowns we experienced. This was evident in the large number of parents who attended our Tuning into Kids/Teens session last night as part of the launch to our Branch Out program, to support student mental health. We were fortunate to have Professor Sophie Havighurst conduct a 2 hour workshop introducing parents to Tuning into Kids/Teens. The focus of the night was understanding how to best support children with dealing with big emotions by using emotion coaching. Professor Havighurst created this highly regarded and evidence based program with Ann Harley in 1999. Our teachers attended a workshop earlier in the day which was facilitated by Dr Christiane Kehoe who is the current research manager for the program. These sessions were made possible due to our role as one of two schools in a Macedon Ranges pilot mental health program for primary school aged children. We would like to thank the Macedon Ranges Shire and Liz Austin for providing us with this opportunity and know that our continued participation in the program will have a lasting impact on our students. Thanks to Kylie Minchew our Inclusion, Engagement and Wellbeing Leader for her organisation of these sessions. We will continue to communicate information about this program with our families as we continue on this journey to improved outcomes for our students.
This week is National eSmart week and our students have been participating in online learning sessions helping them to stay safe while online. These sessions have included live story book readings of ‘The Internet is a Puddle’ and ‘The Tweeting Galah’ and the 3 C’s of Cybersafety. It is never too early to start talking to your children about how to manage themselves online. Often at school we witness the outcome of online difficulties that a child has experienced at home and find it is better to have proactive conversations rather than reactive ones. I encourage all families to begin this conversation. The office of the ESafety commissioner has some fantastic resources that can support you with this.
Last week some of you may have noticed a giant crane in our school yard, as another one of our shade sails was installed over our outdoor learning space. This means that during the summer months our students have more shaded areas to learn and play in, we are still awaiting our new shade sail for Carlsruhe.
As I mentioned in our last newsletter we have commenced our enrolment period for 2024 Foundation students and we have been conducting tours for interested families, each Tuesday morning at 9.30am. We welcomed many new parents to our Foundation Information Evening last Tuesday night, where they heard from representatives from across our school community including our Year 6 School Captains, Mr Tim Bates (School Council President), Ms Courtney Lawrence (Literacy Learning Specialist/Foundation teacher), Mr Mark Condon (Numeracy Learning Specialist) and Ms Libby Cannon (Foundation teacher). If you are aware of anyone who is intending to send their child to Woodend PS next year please let them know they can book in for a tour via this link. If you are an existing parent and have a child who will be attending next year, please contact the office to collect enrolment information.
I hope you are all able to stay warm and well as winter begins to descend on us.
Acting Principal
Elissa Campbell