Principal's Message

At Wembley Primary School, we acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which our school sits, the Woi-wurrung and Boonwurrung people of the South-Eastern Kulin Nation. 

We celebrate and respect the oldest continuing culture and recognise the importance of education in truth telling, equity and justice.

We pay our respects to Elders past and present and recognise and value the learning that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, colleagues and community bring into our schools.  

Week 5-6 Update

Unbelievable - we've reached the midpoint of our first term! School has continued to feel calm and orderly, with students noticeably engaged in school life. A BIG congratulations is also due to our Prep students, families and teachers - Week 6 marks their first full week at school, as they use the Wednesdays of Weeks 1-5 for student assessments. Well done everyone! 

Wembley held school photos this week, with the company AdvancedLife. The photography company are available for make up photos at their studios on the upcoming school holiday break, to cater for any absences that occurred on Monday. All photos will then be processed once the final students have been photographed. Please contact AdvancedLife directly to schedule make up photos if necessary. Please find contact information here (https://www.advancedlife.com.au/contact.php) as well as photo ordering information and scheduling attached for your convenience. 

Students in Year 3 and Year 5 have been busy preparing for their NAPLAN assessments which commence next week. Teachers have been working through some general revision with our students, as well as refreshing their understanding of general 'test literacy' - ie: understanding how to navigate the test platforms, and how the questions might be presented. By the end of this week all students will have experienced a complete practise under test conditions, so that they are familiar with this environment. We wish all of our students and teachers the best of luck for next week: our value of resilience will be called upon by many next week! 

Our Year 6 leaders were lucky enough to participate in the GRIP leadership conference on Tuesday 4th March. Two of our captains have written up their experience - which can be found on the Student Celebrations page. Thank you to Harri and Jade for doing this. 

Speaking of leadership, our students are learning about democracy firsthand as they get involved in our Junior School Council (JSC). Students are engaging in this process by nominating themselves or a friend, and developing persuasive speeches - hoping to be successfully elected. I've overheard many a lesson this week, discussing persuasive techniques!

We shared via Sentral email that we have been making efforts towards streamlining our communication, and have begun trialling the Newsfeed Stream/Function on the Sentral app for general reminders and informal updates. We encourage all parents to download the app (https://www.sentral.com.au/parents) and enable push notifications in order to take advantage of this function. Please see the Sentral email for our full rationale. 

A highlight for staff this past fortnight was our Curriculum Day; these pupil-free days are highly valuable and provide uninterrupted opportunities for professional development and learning for our staff. This Curriculum Day focussed on the redevelopment of our Learning Cycle, in conjunction with the newly released Victorian Teaching and Learning Model, from the Department of Education. In addition, we launched the implementation of a new formative assessment tool for staff, Maestro Analytics, which will enable opportunities for more targeted differentiation, greater student agency over their learning and over time, more instantaneous reporting to families. 

~ Katie McClue: Acting Principal ~

Wellbeing Update

As part of our efforts to continue to strengthen our approach to supporting student wellbeing and behaviour, we have finalised a number of our student spaces dedicated to this improvement strategy. Last week saw the 'All are Welcome' Common Room come to life: this space is on the western end of the BER building and provides a safe and calm space for students at numerous points in the school day. The space has been cleaned out and tidied, with our Art and Diversity and Inclusion captains designing the signage, which encompasses aboriginal themes, as well as some nods to LGBTQIA+ inclusion. The Common Room hosts 'Welcome to Wembley' club in the morning, a supervised period between 8:35am - 8:55am, when the first school bell rings. The club is designed to support those students who find the daily transition between home and school difficult, for numerous reasons, and provides a quiet space for them to engage in activities such as: colouring, reading or collaborative activities - for example games or jigsaw puzzles. At play times, the Common Room acts as an extension to Quiet Club for our older students. Quiet Club provides a daily alternative to being outside in the yard for students; activities range from playing card/board games, to building marble runs, to colouring, or building Lego or simply talking to the teacher on duty. 

Finally, the Wellbeing arm of our Leadership Team has been busy refining our 'Wellbeing Room' (interim name - see note below). This room is purposefully designed to provide a supervised break-out space for students working with our Educational Support Staff throughout the day, and also at break times, where leaders and teachers support students working through our Wembley Repair Process, if or when something has gone wrong. 

Students are invited into this space when an inappropriate behaviour has occurred and they are supported by a member of staff to work through our Repair Process by identifying and discussing: 

1. What happened
2. What they were thinking and feeling
3. Who was affected and how they might feel 
4. The natural consequences of their actions 
5. How they could make it better
6. What they could do next time
7. What else might help them 

Students are then supported to develop Step 5 - How they might make it better. This might involve developing an apology, or developing an action plan to fix something physical or even how they might contribute to making a school space safer. 

Some of the Supportive Posters we use to scaffold the Repair Process with our students: 

Note: The name for our room is currently the 'Wellbeing Room' but we would like to consider a name that has a connection to our Aboriginal culture - the school has reached out to a number of organisations in order to seek consultation about this, but we haven't yet been able to establish a successful partnership. If anyone in our parent community is well-placed to assist us with this, we would really appreciate you making contact with us.

School Council Elections Outcome

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone in the community for taking the time to vote for our new School Councillors, but in particular we would like to thank those who stood for election. 

Congratulations to the successful candidates: 

• Russel Hunt - re-elected 
• Paul Meissner - re-elected
• Eddie Attard - newly elected

The new School Council commences on Monday March 17th, and consists of: 

Within our first Council Meeting on March 17th, all Office Bearing positions will be automatically re-set and we re-engage in a nomination and election process. 

All of our School Council members are developing a short blurb and providing a photo that we will publish on the school website, so that all of our community members know who we are. We hope that this will further the approachability of our council members and enable lines of communication between parents and the school. We will let you know when this is complete. 

General Reminders