Dear parents, carers and friends of EEPS,

The term is moving along and there is an incredibly positive, enthusiastic and respectful feel in the school. I would like to thank all members of our special EEPS school community for this, well done everyone!

Up and Running

It was great that some of our musical offerings have started already. Our highly successful Strings program started up last week, now involving our Year 5 students as well it runs across the year. We have held our percussion ensemble auditions and the choir is ready to go once Mr Day returns from Long Service Leave over the next two weeks.

We have also started our Literacy Support program and for the first time, we will be able to commence a limited Numeracy Support program starting this week. In addition to this we will be starting some social skills groups to complement our other wellbeing initiatives. However, I would like to remind parents, especially our new ones, that the main source of teaching and support remains the classroom teacher. As a school we work incredibly hard and diligently at developing teachers’ capacity to teach and support all learners in their classroom. I sometimes like to say that ‘teaching to the point of need is in our DNA’.

Sad News

At the beginning of the term, I received news that Ian Lingard, a past parent and School Council Treasurer, had passed away after a long cancer battle. Some of our established families may remember Ian. He was an incredibly conscientious and involved School Council member, who stayed connected with the school even after his children had left. I have expressed my heartfelt sympathies to his family.

New Website

Whilst taking a little while in the making, we launched our new website on Friday. Our aim was to refresh and to update both the contents and photos. This is obviously something that we will continue to do but please remember that, as a school, we are not a business and do not have positions such as ‘content creators’ or ‘website managers’!

Cyber Safety

At assembly on Monday, our Technology Leaders, Morgan and Anni, spoke clearly about the dangers of the digital world and the need for us to be cautious at all times. They even made a short skit which was watched by the students yesterday. As an educator and parent, I can’t stress enough the importance of active monitoring and supervision of your children’s technology usage and the necessity of having regular conversations around this, as you would with all other aspects of growing up.

Prep Information Night

On Tuesday night we had a very successful Prep Information Night. I would like to thank all the parents who attended, Robyn one of our parents and the teachers who made themselves available. This year, for the first time, we had a parent speak as well as a short montage from a few Year 1 students who are obviously experts on Prep!

Open Afternoon and Meet the Teacher

Please remember that we have our Term 1 open afternoon and informal ‘meet the teacher’ next Tuesday 18th February, 2:40-4:50 pm. If you are able, then please call in and see your child’s classroom and hopefully ‘put a name to a face’.

OSHC Holiday Program Investigation

For those who missed my Compass newsfeed last week here it is again:

School Council is currently investigating establishing a school holiday program delivered by an external provider. As a part of this we would like to gauge the interest in our school community. If you have any interest in using a proposed holiday service, we would be most appreciative if you could complete a short and simple survey, by next Friday 14th February.

https://forms.gle/RmhBrkuc8PpKnd6WA

If you haven’t completed the survey, then please take a moment to. I would also like to remind our school community, that this is a significant development for the school and there are a number of steps that we need to go through. We are still in the decision phase so it would be the middle of the year, winter break, that we hopefully would be able to commence.

Positive Rewards Focus PBAs

At our first assembly I did spell out the expectations of the students in regards to how they interact with each other and their teachers. During Term 4 last year teachers experimented with PBAs, Behaviour Positive Acknowledgements, which came home as a chronicle email through Compass. These were very well received so we are continuing this practice this year, please look at for these and be sure to have a conversation with your child if they receive one. These PBAs are in addition to our other methods of acknowledgment and reward. This year we are also working with a positive values matrix that will complement our EEPS Framework.

Compass Permissions

Please look out for the Compass email regarding start of year permissions, the use of digital devices and the taking and using of photographs. Whilst we realise that there are a few things to read through we appreciate your efforts and involvement to help make the processes as smooth as possible. There has been a new photograph permission policy implemented by the Department, so our EEPS policy is directly taken from this one.

Reminders

A couple of reminders:

The Somers School Camp forms and payments are due by next Monday, 17th Feb
There is a Parent Helper course next Monday 17th February at 7.00 pm

Lastly, good luck to all our Year 3-6 students who are trialling for the EEPS swimming team this Thursday.

Have a great week of Learning and Growing Together.

Kind regards

Warren Lloyd

Principal