Principals' News 

Principal News 04/04/2025

Dear Banyan Fields Primary School Community,

Welcome to Term Two. We trust you all had a lovely Easter break and spent quality time with your friends and family. During our first week of term, we held a special whole school Anzac assembly. Our school leaders ran this service, under the guidance of Emma Wilkinson, and all students from Foundation to Year 6 learnt about the importance of Anzac day and respectfully acknowledged the service of all who have fought and continue to fight for Australia. The school captains and vice captains also represented Banyan Fields Primary School at the Seaford RSL Anzac Day ceremony on Friday morning.

Inside Our School - A Peek Into PLC Work 

What is a PLC? 

A Professional Learning Community (PLC) is a group of teachers who work closely together to improve how we teach and support students. We meet regularly to share ideas, learn from each other, and make sure we are using the best research-based strategies across all classrooms. The first goal we are working towards this year is to create classrooms that are using positive behaviour strategies based on the latest research to support students' learning and wellbeing.

This Fortnight’s Focus: 

Our staff have been working together in our PLC to focus on positive behaviour management strategies. This week we reviewed Functions of Behaviour. Sometimes, when a student shows certain types of behaviour, it is their way of trying to meet a need. In schools, we often talk about the "functions" of behaviour. This simply means the reason why a student is acting in a certain way.

Why This Matters: 

When we take the time to understand the reasons behind student behaviour, we can put the right supports and strategies in place. This leads to calmer, happier classrooms where every student can focus on learning, feel safe, and experience success.

Our next steps: 

For our next meeting, we will be further exploring the functions of behaviour, gathering data, and beginning to analyse this information.

Swimming 

Our Year 3 students are currently participating in a six-lesson swimming program at Paul Sadler Swim Centre. Next month, our Year 5 students will participate in the same program, with our Year 1 and 2 students to undertake swimming lessons in Term Three. 

Whole School Events 

We have some exciting whole-school events coming up in the coming weeks: 

Mothers’ Day: Friday 9th May, we will be acknowledging all the Mothers and special people with a Mother’s Day breakfast and stall for students to purchase small items.

Book Fair: May 12th-16th, our annual Book Fair will take place each day. Families will be able to purchase books during this week. 

Grandparents' Morning Tea: Wednesday, 14th May. There will also be a Grandparents' Morning Tea

Democratic Sausage Sizzle 

Thank you to all of our community members who have signed up to support our sausage sizzle on Saturday, May 3rd. We expect to be set up and ready to go by 9am and will continue until we have run out of sausages, customers or steam - whichever comes first! We will also have a range of drinks on sale so please support us if you are around the school on Saturday.

Late Arrivals 

Students arriving at school after 8:45am should visit the school office for a late pass. This ensures that they are marked present for the day so parents/carers do not receive an absence notification. We appreciate your support.

Patrick Halpin - Principal 

Jacqui Sampson - Assistant Principal 

Jennifer Churcher - Assistant Principal 

Sharleen Nason - Assistant Principal