Assistant Principal's Report 

Welcome to 2020!

It is fantastic to be back to kick off another great year at GRPS and I'm thrilled to be working alongside Mrs Rouda to continue the fantastic work that the teachers, students and parents have been building over the past couple of years. This year we have a large group of teachers working on promoting wellbeing programs across the school and embedding these into our daily practice and culture. I'm most excited about working with the Year 5 & 6 students early this term on their thoughts and perceptions of the school and how we can work together to improve the wellbeing of our entire school community. 

School Wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS)

Over the last two years, we have created a real buzz around the development of the school values to ensure they are part of everyday life and are meaningful to students, staff and the community. Our GRPS school values are: We are respectful, responsible, learners. When walking around the school, the values and our mascot 'Ryrie the dog' are everywhere to be seen! They are emblazened on posters that outline the expected behaviours that relate to each area of the school and are even on our teacher yard duty hi-viz vests.  This year we have made further tweaks to our behaviour matrix and have intertwined character strengths into the language of each expectation. 

This is an example of one of the many posters around the school that include the expected behaviours that demonstrate each of our values, and that now also include a character strength. Here is an example of one of the expected behaviours and how we use this language with students. 

We are RESPECTFUL

When we: Use kindness and include everyone

Over the year, all students will delve into each of these behaviour expectations and discuss as a class why it is important and what it would look, sound and feel like. Further activities would then follow about the particular character strength that is incorporated into the behaviour expectation. In this example it is kindness. Students are also acknowledged by staff when they demonstrate this behaviour expectation by receiving a 'Respectful' Value Card. The student adds this card to an individual and class reward system. The important part of this interaction is that the student is explicitly told that they were observed being kind by including a peer into a particular activity or game, and that they showed kindness by doing so. The student might have been explaining the rules of the game or they may have asked a student to join in. By explicitly pointing out the behaviour, the character strengths of kindness and value of respect is either taught, promoted and most importantly acknowledged. Next week, look out for an article about how reward systems are set up in classrooms.

Second Hand Uniform

Thank you to Felicity Hearnden for organising our second hand uniform this year. She has done a brilliant job of sorting through the mountains of uniform we have collected. If you are in need of any second hand uniform, Felicity is setting up a stall on both of the Parent/Teacher Interview nights on Tuesday 11th and 18th February, from 3:30 - 6:00pm. The stall will be around the Office/Library area and will be free of charge, however we would appreciate a small donation to put back into spare uniforms for those unexpected accidents and muddy days on the oval.