Staffing for 2023

I am pleased to be able to share with you our classroom structures and teachers for 2023, as well as some recent news regarding some staff changes.

We have been informed that Brent Smith will not return to LPPS in 2023. We wish Brent the very best in his new position.
Haley Rusch will be leaving LPPS at the end of 2022 after receiving a promotion to a Learning Specialist role at Wesburn Primary School. Congratulations Haley and all the best!

These changes require us to fill some classroom teaching positions in our school. These positions are currently advertised on Recruitment Online. Once confirmed families will be informed via Compass.

2023 Classes and teachers

Prep – Lara Mackie

1/2T – Marissa Tomlinson

1/2C – Kasey Bishop/New Recruit

3/4C – Jacinta Kemp/Brydie Tatterson

3/4F – Jessica Freeman

5/6C – Ala Lorenc/Emily Rae

5/6 – New recruit

2022 Reflection

Last night it was an absolute joy to see so many of our families turn out for our annual Christmas Concert to celebrate another successful school year and partake in some Christmas festivities.

Last week as we rode along the Warburton trail on our Year 3-6 bike ride, I couldn’t help but think to myself how fortunate we are as a school community. It was wonderful to have students, school staff, parents and siblings, all taking part and pushing themselves to achieve something that for some of us (me included!) was a little bit tricky. What a great lesson in persistence, teamwork and striving for your personal best.

The bike ride was just one of our many events this year -

Family Fun afternoon
Disco
Grandparents Day
Mothers/Fathers day events
Wombat Stew performance
Open mornings
Election BBQ/Country Garden BBQ
Colour Run
Film festival
Launch Cup

Our fantastic Parents and Friends group was up and running again thanks to Super Jess and her team of helpers running:

Socks and scrunchies day
Cookies and Crazy hair day
Branded burgers lunch
PJ day
Footy colours

But it hasn’t all just been fun times and special events, we have also had a strong focus on teaching and learning with our school review occurring in Term Three, the introduction of VCOP and the big writes in our Writing programs and the further strengthening of our curriculum programs. Our Intervention programs have also continued and supported a handful of our students in their learning.

In conjunction to this our work in SWPB (School-wide positive behaviour) has continued, CARER groups began and have really taken off with a clear focus each session, our assemblies have brought us together, as have our processes around Individual Education Plans and Student Support Group meetings. Our students jumped at the chance to contribute to our school in varied ways with our chooks named big winners at the Melbourne Show, our veggie patch looking invigorated by Liam and some of us becoming pretty cluey in a game of chess.

We enjoyed the Alpha Show, an indigenous dance performance, swimming program, a number and scope of sporting activities and two great camps.

Our buildings and grounds continue to be a focus, however we are thrilled with our down ball court area, completed with funds raised by our P and F over many years and the great work of Bronwyn and Paul in setting up the surrounding garden.

This really just touches on the surface on what has been achieved in 2022, however I wanted to thank you all for your commitment to our school and for being partners with us in educating your children. Bring on 2023!

We thank Matilda and Emil for their service to our school as School Captains during 2022. They have done an excellent job running assemblies, doing morning announcements and representing our school. As the year draws to a close the process of nominating new school captains has taken place with speeches and a student/staff vote taking place over the last couple of weeks. I’m very proud to announce our School Captains for 2023 are Myah C and Dash D.

Both Myah and Dash spoke with passion about our school, their excitement at the prospect of holding a leadership role and the ‘difference’ they intended to make if successful. It is wonderful to have them on board.

Our other captains and leadership roles will be announced at assembly this week, so please make sure you come along to the GP room this Friday for a 9am start.

Reminder: Pupil Free Day

There is a Pupil Free Day on Tuesday 20th December.

The final day of 2022 for all children is Monday 19th December, with the day concluding at 1:30PM.

‘Meet your 2023 Teacher’ Morning

On Tuesday 13th of December, we will be having our whole school transition day, where our students meet their new class and their class teacher for 2023 from 9:30am until 1:10pm. This date is also the state-wide transition day for Year 6 to Year 7.

This excerpt below is from a book ‘10 Steps to develop great learners: Visible learning for parents’ by John Hattie and Kyle Hattie. Each newsletter I would like to share a little bit with you about how you can support your children to be great learners.

Mindframe Two: I make reasonable demands and am highly responsive to my child

The research over the past 40 years has made an important distinction between three methods of parenting – permissive, authoritarian and authoritative. A parent is rarely only one of three, but many parents do have a dominant set of strategies they apply – and more importantly, the child is aware of which set the parent applies. Permissive parenting gives much leeway to the child, allows then free rein, and ignores a lot of misbehaviour. Authoritarian, or bossy, parenting engages ‘I am right, you are the child’, sees the child as not able to make good decisions, and engages in verbal hostility and sometimes corporal punishment. Authoritative, or reasoning parenting creates warmth and involvement, engages in appropriate reasoning and listening to the child and creates a climate of trust and fairness. We are sure you can guess which method wins the race!

There are two issues to consider here: one minor, the other more serious. First it is easy to confuse the terms authoritarian and authoritative because they sound so alike. For this reason, we prefer the term reasoning parenting to authoritative. The second and more serious issue is that the evidence for the reasoning parent being the most desirable is not as big an effect as would be expected. However, when you add being a ‘listening parent’ to that of being a ‘reasoning parent’, the positive effects go up considerably.

The desired reasoning and listening strategies relate to developing the child’s autonomy and the skills of relating to others, and promoting competence. This is called ‘self-determination’ theory and has been well and widely researched as a desirable set of attributes in our Western world. A key to this development of self-determination is for parents to know the right time to deliver the right amount of the right messages to build the child’s confidence and skills to be a learner. It is never one size fits all. And the best answer is always considering what the right message, amount and timing are from the world view of the child. Put yourselves in your child’s shoes, learn t walk around in these shoes, and then imagine what the child is thinking, whether they have the skills and confidence, and what they would likely do. Then go back into your parent shoes and modify the message – recall you are meant to be a better thinker than your child, so think, react and repurpose your message and give them food for thought.

Thanks everyone and see you around our place!

Birthdays

A child’s birthday is a very special occasion and every fortnight we will share this celebration. Happy Birthday to the following students who celebrated their special day for July.

December