Assistant Principal's Report

Term 4 is already proving to be a busy term as we plan for excursions, incursions, special days such as our Italian Cultural Day and Respectful Relationship Celebration week, camps and the list goes on and on.

I have been very impressed with the way the students have begun Term 4. Visiting the Year 4 classrooms this week, it was wonderful to hear about how they have worked hard to ensure that they are inclusive of others in their play, willing to play other games and utilise other areas of the school. They happily shared with me all the strategies they have implemented and trialled since the middle of Term 3 and what they have learnt throughout this process. This has led to happier students and allowed them to have more time playing rather than managing conflict and disagreements. A big thank you to our staff who have worked with our students and supported them both in and out of the classroom. The whole school strategies and processes implemented are working!

Please note:

• There is a Prep Incursion on Monday in the hall, Team Kids will begin their day in the hall and then move across to the SLC building from 8.15am
• The new start time of 2.45pm for our Assemblies

Staff Professional Development

Evidence that learning is a lifelong process, our teachers engage in weekly professional learning sessions.

On Tuesday 17th October, Hero Headquarters delivered an online and practical component of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) to our whole staff. 

We employed Hero HQ to deliver this vitally important first aid course to us because their goal is to change the way we think about first aid and make sure that if the day comes for us to save a life, we can do it without hesitation. 

This course has given us confidence to perform CPR to an unconscious, unresponsive person. It is always a valuable learning experience but something we hope we never have to use in real life!

Wellbeing 

Fostering Emotional Literacy in Young Children: Labelling Emotions

Emotional literacy is our ability to understand and express different emotions. This ensures that we are able to recognise our own feelings and our ability to manage them. When we have a strong foundation in emotional literacy, we are able to cope with different life situations such as managing conflict, making friends, coping in difficult situations and being resilient when dealing with change. This needs to be explicitly taught.

A critical importance in a child’s emotional development is the building of vocabulary to describe feelings. The larger a child’s emotional vocabulary, the better they can communicate with others about their feelings.

Adults can play a major role in a child’s ability to identify, understand and express emotions in a healthy way. The following strategies are key in fostering emotional literacy in young children:

Express your own feelings – adults can model by talking out loud about their feelings as they experience them throughout the day.

Label Children’s Feelings – build a child’s vocabulary by labelling children’s feelings. Attending to a child’s emotional moment and labelling their feelings for them.

Play Games, Sing Songs and Read Stories with New Feeling Words – adapting songs such as ‘If you’re happy and you know it’ with ‘If you are frustrated and you know it, take a breath’ and playing games such as ‘feelings charades’ by acting out a feeling or emotion (use face and body language) and let others guess what that feeling/emotion is.

Please make the time to view the outstanding work and display from our Visual Art Program now on show in the Office foyer area.

Georgia Despotellis

Assistant Principal