From the Principal

Term 2, Week 6

Our Family Fun Fair held on Saturday 28th June was a huge success due to our wonderful community commitment to this major fundraising event. Our students really enjoyed contributing and had a lot of fun along with parents running the sideshows and activities. Congratulations to Room 10 who raised $300 which was the most raised out of the six primary classes. The $4000:00 that was raised will go towards our new Audio visual system. On behalf of our school community I would like to thank the tireless work of the Fundraising committee for this outstanding effort. Students also enjoyed dressing up as their favourite children’s character last Friday to raise $230 for Variety Children’s Charity. A highlight of the day was a visit form the Wiggles in the Big Red Car. Thank you to Mark Katnich and his Big Bash crew for talking to students about this worthy cause.

This term teachers are writing Mid- Year student reports which will go home to parents in week 10 of this term. These reports are a summary of each child’s achievement so far this year and outlines areas for improvement. At West Beach Primary School teachers have agreed to forego one fifty minutes session of preparation time that they are entitled to each week and bank this, as time to support report writing. This will mean that classes may have a Temporary Relief Teacher for a few days over the next 3 weeks. Most teachers will try to minimize disruption by having the same relief teacher if possible. The TRT is able to continue the learning program that has been planned by the class teacher. Thank you for your understanding in regard to this. Please remember that if you have any questions about your child’s progress that you can make a time to meet with your child’s teacher at anytime throughout the year.

To enable everyone to feel safe in our community and to support the embedding of our school values, staff and the Education Committee (sub-committee of the Governing Council) have reviewed our Behaviour Education Policy. The reviewed policy is attached to this newsletter.

At West Beach Primary School we believe that appropriate behaviour is learned through explicit teaching and modeling across all aspects of the school experience.  We strive to achieve this in partnership with parents, caregivers and the school community as we know a collaborative approach achieves the best behavioural outcomes. 

Restorative Practice underpins the ethos of our school. The aspects of fair

process, teaching students to accept responsibility, reducing hurt and harm and restoring relationships are used in our behaviour education and conflict resolution processes. The questions that we are ask students are:

What happened?

Who has been affected and how?

What can you do to make things better?

This process also includes helping students to identify and practice more appropriate strategies for future situations and understanding that there is a consequence for making inappropriate behaviour choices and that these choices have an impact on others.

What is a Growth Mindset?

At West Beach Primary we believe that of the most important components of any child becoming a successful learner for life is the mindset they bring to their learning. There has been considerable research in recent years, led by Professor Carol Dweck from Stanford University about the role of Fixed and Growth Mindsets in learning.

In brief, students and adults with a Fixed Mindset believe in fixed or static intelligence, that you have a certain ability or intelligence that is fixed and this cannot be improved. This impacts on students’ learning as it is often accompanied by other unproductive attitudes. Students with a fixed mindset often have a desire to look smart and think that mistakes mean they lack ability, that their intelligence should on its own allow them to succeed and anything less makes them inadequate. This also flows on to a belief that having to put in effort, or work hard means that you have low intelligence and they regard as inferior others who do put a lot of effort into their learning. When these students get to a point in their development where they have to put effort into understanding, and it does not come easily, they give up. When these students do make mistakes they are not prepared to try and fix them, to put in the effort required to do better or to understand. These attitudes and inbuilt beliefs do not help students become successful learners for the long term. We see students who avoid challenges, give up easily, see effort as fruitless or worse, ignore useful negative feedback and feel threatened by the success of others. As a result they plateau early and achieve less than their full potential and are burdened with a restrictive view of their abilities for life.

Students with a Growth Mindset believe that their abilities can be developed and so they are more willing to put effort into learning. They consequently are better prepared to take on challenges, to put effort into learning, understanding that this is required to become better and to learn from mistakes that they make. This desire to learn leads to a tendency to embrace challenges, persist in the face of setbacks, see effort as the way to achieve mastery and understanding, learn from criticism and find lessons and inspiration in the success of others. As a result they reach even higher levels of achievement and a greater sense of free will.