St Augustine's College Kyabram

5-8 Community News

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

 

Welcome back to Term 4 and to face-to-face learning, most importantly five days a week! We need to continue to work together to have our students return to school. At any stage where you feel your child is finding the transition difficult, please get into contact with their TA so we can support them further.  

 

Having our children attend TA on time is ever so important. TA commences at 8.50am and concludes at 9.10am.  TA enables students to feel a sense of inclusion amongst their community which will foster opportunities for them to further develop long-lasting relationships with their peers and teachers. 

 

It has been pleasing watching the students return to school and particularly eager to have conversations with their peers and teachers. We welcome back our TA conversations which will occur in Week 6. You can request a booking via PAM and these sessions will occur over Zoom. We really value the opportunity to have a conversation with you about your child's progression.

 

Again, throughout the past fortnight, there continues to be a strong focus on having our students label their emotions. We know the transition from home to school is at times daunting and we value the opportunity for our students to return to school, feeling even more supported. 

 

Across the term, students will familiarise themselves with the Zones of Regulation. Staff encourage students to label their emotions and for students to find and use strategies to support them when they find themselves in one of the four zones. Please use this visual to support your child's wellbeing if needed as it will be consistently referred to in the classroom spaces.

 

Please consistently check in with your children about their use of their technology and personal devices. At the moment, apps such as SnapChat, Instagram, and Discord are posing some challenges at home which are then being brought into the school grounds. If you feel your child is being bullied online, please report it to your child's TA and to the eSafety Commissioner. These two websites provide instructions about how to report online abuse.

 https://www.esafety.gov.au/key-issues/esafety-guide 

https://submit.esafety.gov.au/Produce/wizard/ca3acccd-07bf-4a12-9c0e-f93e50a46ab6?portal=1

 

Here are some strategies you might like to use.

Mr. Poppa's top tips for creating safer spaces for young people online:

  • As trusted adults, let’s moderate, safeguard, and support young people online at all times. This looks like setting up a learning space where you can monitor the children's phone/iPad screen.
  • Ensure that students' emails are used for school purposes only. Conversations, which use explicit language, should not be permitted on any email address.
  • Enable young people to control and edit their own privacy settings quickly and easily. Discuss what is appropriate to share online and what isn't.
  • Make terms, conditions and rules of engagement upfront, transparent, and easy for them to understand. Setting boundaries with your child is really important. For teenagers using their devices in their room, the door open policy is a good one.
  • Refer to our school-wide SOLE matrices as a means for supporting your children.
  • Ensure that children have had enough time to rest from being in front of their screens. Set some times that are appropriate where your children are not on their screens.  It's important that students are getting 8-10 hours of sleep and are heading to bed at a reasonable time and without any technology around, which can be stored away from the child's bed.

This slideshow can help support any of the troubles you may have: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1tRqyXTglZq3-nqCo06SlRHy7p7lfMCMb-s54xy9Gvn4/edit#slide=id.gcdfaed6094_0_20

 

Just in case you had forgotten, once students are on the school grounds, legally they are not allowed to leave the school environment as they are in our care.

 

Anthony Poppa and Corey Carver

5-8 Community Leaders

Years 5 and 6 PBL

Since returning from remote learning the Years 5 and 6 students have been busy completing their assessment task to finish our healthy eating unit. Students were required to create their own food product that met the recommended healthy eating guidelines which they had been analysing over the past four weeks. Their food package design had to include a range of different elements including brand and product name, nutrition label, ingredients list, net weight and nutritional claim. The final products have been outstanding and the 5/6 students should be proud of their work throughout this unit. 

6-8 Partnerships Small Business Study

As part of the business and economics unit of work, the 6-8 Partnerships for the Future class have commenced making their products to sell. The aim is to create various products that are marketable, a need/want in a household and priced at a level that will allow our students to purchase. Students also need to consider carefully the costing around their materials and then what the profit will be once sold. 

 

Items include decorated phone cases, framed photos, candles, play dough and stress balls . The market day will be in Week 9. More details to come on this.