Message from the Principal 

NATIONAL SORRY DAY

On Monday this week, two of our Year 6 Action Team Leaders participated in a National Sorry Day Healing Ceremony organised by Banyule City Council and Wurundjeri Elders. It was also GREAT to see another one of our school families there as well.

The event honours the resilience of First Nations people and communities affected by the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. Our school attended as part of the reflection on truth telling, healing, and respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. 

DISTRICT CROSS COUNTRY

Congratulations to all students who represented our school at the District Cross Country last Thursday. For our school, the main purpose of a sporting event such as this is the experience and challenge it brings. Just getting to this level is an achievement. It is also a wonderful opportunity and outlet for students to demonstrate their athletic ability whilst also learning about the highs and lows of competition in a healthy and supportive way.

Good luck to those students who achieved results in the top 10, which means they progress into the next level of competition which is Division.

Thank you to Jordan Daley for his passion and commitment to sport at our school and across the District. It is great to have staff like this who are so dedicated to all students, those achieving at very high levels and those that just want to have a go. 

SWPBS & OUR CANTEEN

As part of our School Wide Positive Behaviour System, we are focusing on being connected, safe and responsible as we line up at the canteen at lunchtimes. As you can imagine, our canteen window service is very popular and the line can be quite long. Our Year 6 leaders who help at the window will be handing out lots of Gazillions to those students demonstrating our values and expected behaviours. Our Action Teams will also be assisting with this as well.

Thank you to Miriam and all of our parent and carer helpers who work to keep our canteen running.

HILATS – BEING OPEN TO THE NEW

As we continue our focus on “Being Open to the New”, we thought we would share a little about how we plan this across our school. You can see from the picture, that we start with a single lesson session on introducing what the specific high impact learner agency trait is, in this case “Being Open to the New”. 

In the following week, the focus moves to understanding what this HILAT can look like in a specific curriculum area e.g. Writing. This focus is also continued during the 15-minute agency time each morning through a specific sequence of learning activities. By the third week in, the rubric is explored in more detail and then another curriculum area explored the week after.

This sequence has been developed by one of our Learning Specialists Krysten O’Leary and a team of staff from across each area of the school. You can see how deliberate and layered this approach. This enables deeper learning and time for our students to both grow and embed each trait.

I am very excited by this work and will continue to bring you along the journey as well. In this way, the language we are using at school can also be shared at home which makes the learning even more powerful! 

James Penson,

Principal.