Patrick Halpin

Wellbeing and Community Engagement

As I reflect back on Term 3, I realise that the students, parents and staff in Kingswood Primary School have a lot to be proud of. In July (and throughout the term), we had a plethora of sporting events, choir performances at assembly, Student Led Conferences, the Ned show and resilience building events in collaboration with St. Mark’s and Dingley Primary. The Preps celebrated their 100th day at Kingswood in August and we had camps and excursions all through the month. Our STEAM Conference attracted hundreds of teachers from across the state and the country to learn about how to best teach and integrate Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics into their curricula.

Our NAPLAN results were published later in the month, placing Kingswood among the ‘high performing schools’ in all four areas assessed.

Karen Boyes, who is our Habits of Mind coach, visited us for a week to share best practice and support the work we are doing. Students from Cheltenham Secondary College completed their Community Service Placement over several weeks.

Kingswood celebrated difference and learned about how we can support people who are undergoing treatment for cancer via a puppet show run by Camp Quality. This was followed by a fundraiser in the form of Beanie Day. It was great to work with other schools and kinders across Dingley Village to support such a great cause.

The Wellbeing Team organised our ‘Get Active in August’ morning and the Parent Club held their annual Father’s Day Breakfast with bacon and egg rolls!

The last few weeks have seen a THRASS Information Session for Parents, 6 performances of Beauty and the Beast, a Charlotte’s Web themed day in the Grade 3/4 classrooms and a Makey Makey Expo in the 5/6s. The Preps showcased the toys they made from recycled materials, which demonstrate the forces of push, pull and twist. They also enjoyed watching Charlotte’s Web, this was a reward to the Prep classes for handing in the most Cash Raffle sheets. The PLAY Leaders celebrated their hard work with a party and the whole school came out in their footy colours on the last day of term.

As well as all of these events, the staff have been attending professional learning sessions both on site and off and have been examining the recently published Victorian Curriculum, with a view to revising the end of year reports.

I think it’s safe to say that we are all ready for a nice restful holiday. The whole team at Kingswood Primary School wish you all the very best over the next fortnight. Please keep safe and we’ll look forward to hearing about your adventures on Monday, October 9th for Term 4.

I wonder what next term will hold…

Staff Celebrations

We would like to take this opportunity to wish Mrs. Maddison Rowles all the very best as she begins her maternity leave. Sarah Jones-Hill will replace Mrs. Rowles in 5/6R for Term 4. We look forward to meeting baby Rowles very soon!

Snapshot Surveys

We received 50 responses to the survey on Engagement in Kingswood. There was an even spread across the school with each year level represented by between 8 and 17 respondents.

The levels of engagement were generally good as illustrated by the table, below. However, given that over 80% of respondents would like to be at a 4 or 5, we still have work to do in order to find ways and means of increasing the levels of engagement of our families.

Over three-quarters of respondents reported that time is a barrier in their engagement followed by Personal/Family Challenges (47%) and Other (24%). Many of the comments included the challenges when there are younger (kinder aged) children in the family and for parents who work full time. We are very grateful to parents who can support the school by responding to these surveys and comment on policies, etc. and, while we would love to see more people attend our events, responding to surveys and policies when they are sent out to parents is a great way for everybody to engage with the school from a distance.

There were also some comments on the staff, leadership and other groups within the school failing to make parents feel welcome and valued. I would like to assure everybody that the school values parental engagement – it is one of our 5 values. If we can help to build those relationships, I would love to hear from you so we can improve.

One suggestion made was, “I would like a reference material on website re how to sign up to help at canteen, classroom, etc. ideally an online roster I could view and book myself in when I am available. I am unable to commit to a regular time.” We will continue to work with the website developers and with Compass to establish a way of building that into the infrastructure. In the meantime, you can contact Kristie, Alba, Sonia and your child’s class teacher about adding your name to their mailing list so if they require one-off support on a particular week, you will be informed. I will also work on having some directions posted on the website for parents to refer to.

Compass, the school newsletter, staff, Parent Club and the range of events were all reported to be the ‘most engaging aspects of Kingswood’ by at least 50% of the respondents. The comments were generally positive but one parent complained that the question was ‘not ideally worded.’ Again, I would love to learn more in order to make our surveys more appropriate so if that person would be interested in sharing their knowledge or knows where I can access good training, I would be very interested in hearing from them.

Other comments included:

Maybe get involved with more community groups
Perhaps all communication should be checked for clarity by a central point.
A central notice board would be useful for parents who are not on electronic mailing lists, Compass or Facebook.

I am very grateful to every person who took the time to complete this survey and will continue to work on increasing the levels of engagement of everybody who would like to be involved more. We completely understand the challenges that parents face and are willing to work with you to ensure the best outcome for every member of our school community. If anybody would like to see results in more details, including a complete list of comments, I would be happy to go through the information with you.

Beauty and the Beast

I am sure everybody will agree that last week’s performances were fantastic. One person commented to me as he left that it was, “better than the Palais.” We would like your feedback on the production so please forward this link to everybody you know who attended one (or more) performance.

Previous Snapshot Surveys

If you are interested in completing past questionnaires, please follow these links:

Let me know if there are any topics that you would like to see a survey on by clicking here.

HOM Awards

Habits of Mind Prep - Year 2

Habits of Mind Year 3 - 6

Rubiks Club Awards