Wellbeing

Welcome to Term 1 of 2023! 

It has been an absolute pleasure welcoming all of our fantastic students for 2023. Seeing everyone on Monday last week was truly wonderful. The preps also made a fantastic start to their school journey - it is a big milestone and can be very emotional for everyone, so a huge well done to all our students, families and staff at school for making the day so smooth! 

If you need any support from us at school - please reach out. You can obviously contact your child's class teacher or sector leader, but I am also always here on behalf of the wellbeing team in school. My email address is Lindsey.Delooze@Education.vic.gov.au

We know that sometimes children may have had a tricky night, a challenging morning or a difficult weekend and this may mean that they just need an extra bit of TLC at school. If this is the case please just drop an email to school to let us know. 

Breakfast club

We are starting to prepare for re-opening our brilliant breakfast club. Over the next couple of weeks I will be training up a new team of student volunteers and starting to recruit further adult volunteers. If you have availability to help out then please let me know. We have a great team of volunteers but could just do with a couple of extra hands on Tuesday,  Wednesday or Thursday mornings. With the school day changing, breakfast club will look a little bit different. We will still be serving from the eating area in school but we will have a stall set up as all food will be prepared in the staffroom. We are hoping to have our opening in week 5 (Tuesday 21st February). Once we open, food will be served on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. 

Wellbeing dogs

Last year saw us have a highly successful start for Ginny and River, our wonderful wellbeing dogs, into the school community. We are so excited to welcome them both back this year. Over the next few weeks we will start preparing all the students for their return. This will include lessons around the three key rules and how we behave in the classroom when Ginny or River are there. 

Last year, I sent out the survey about student needs regarding dogs. If you have previously filled this in and nothing has changed, then you do not need to fill it out again. If something has changed for your child you can choose to fill the survey in again, or you can let me know via email. 

If you have a child who is new to Prep or new to school, please complete the survey by Friday 17th February. Here is the link: https://forms.gle/xhZkDHFaUJwHEzUK7

Disability Inclusion Reform

As some of you may be aware, the Victorian Government are currently rolling out new funding guidance for children who may require additional support, titled Disability Inclusion (DI). 

Here is a short snapshot of where we are at as a school right now: 

If a child is currently funded through the Program for Students with a Disability (PSD funding) their funding will continue for the 2023 school year, until we run a Disability Inclusion Profile (DIP) meeting. 

Wembley Primary School's DI rollout begins in 2024. DIP's can take place anytime within the next 3 years. As a school we have chosen to participate in a practise DIP meeting this year whilst we progress towards the formal rollout next year. We are currently awaiting a date for this from the regional DI team. Once we have completed the DIP practise meeting, we will then begin working towards transitioning children currently PSD funded into the new DI process. 

Disability Inclusion Profile meetings can be run for children who may not have previously been eligible for funding through the PSD funding. There is still a list of criteria that children will need to meet to be eligible for an application towards this process. We will need to gather evidence of all the strategies and supports that have been in place for more than 10 weeks. If there are children who, as a school, we believe we can put an application in for, such as students with Individual Education Plan's (IEPs), we will be in touch as we progress through this rollout throughout the year. 

School Wide Positive Behaviour Support - SWPBS

Last year we completed the process of re-adjusting our school values with input from students, parents and staff members. 

The four new values have been launched with every class as part of their first 15 days, for the year. You can learn more about the first 15 days in the 'learning and teaching' newsletter tab. 

Our Wembley PS Values are: 

• Empathy
• Inclusion
• Resilience
• Respect

At the end of 2022 we ran a competition for students to design the new mascots to accompany each value. We had some excellent entries and we loved looking through the wonderful designs. In the end, the winning designs were created by Alana in 6C, who also happens to be one of our year 6 art captains. The designs are beautiful and Alana has worked really hard over the school holidays in refining the pictures ready for use on posters and signage around school. 

Pictured Values Mascots - Empathy, Inclusion, Resilience and Respect. 

On Wednesday 8 February, we will be facilitating a staff meeting to share the focus of SWPBS for 2023 and to begin the next step in our process. 

Our main aim is embed the purpose and ethos of our school values across the school, through lessons, connections to student reward systems, such as house points, both in the classroom and in the yard, and through ongoing student leadership opportunities. Watch this space!