5-8 Community News

Dear Parents and Caregivers,

We, along with the teachers of the 5-8 community, wanted to show our appreciation for making the time and effort to attend your child's TA. Luckily, there are still four weeks of this term remaining, so if you haven't got around to booking one, please email your child's TA.

A few reminders:

Please encourage your child to bring and wear their hats to, and whilst at school. It is still quite warm outside. Our Hat Policy states that students must wear their hats until Anzac Day, which is at the beginning of Term 2 this year.

Having our students 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. 

Again throughout the past fortnight, there continues to be a strong focus on having 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 this term, students will familiarise themselves with the Zones of Regulation. As staff, we 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.

The week's focus in 'The Resilience Project' (TRP) has been around 'Character Strengths' with students identifying their strengths, unpacking these strengths and then applying each strength to their own context. These strengths can be found here. Ongoing conversations at home in relation to this topic is a positive way to consolidate this learning by promoting your child/s strengths.

Please consistently check in with your children about their use of 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 your child is being bullied online, please report it to your child's TA and to the E-Safety Commissioner. The following 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 of supporting your children.
• Ensure that the 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 is important that students are getting 8-10 hours of sleep and are heading to bed at a reasonable time and without any technology around. Devices should 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 during the day as they are in our care.

Corey Carver and Anthony Poppa

Years 5-8 Community Leaders

6-8 Partnerships

The Partnerships students have continued on with their theme of ‘Migration and Movement’. Last week, the students familiarised themselves with a variety of traditional Indigenous foods: bush tomato, onion, wattle-seed and lemongrass. They even planted a number of these traditional plants in their school garden. Kangaroo, one of the oldest meats in Australia, was commonly used post/prior to English settlement. The students used a variety of these ingredients to cook their own Indigenous style food

This week the students used a variety of English settlement ingredients to make a traditional settlement food, damper. 

Years 5-8 English

The 5 to 8 community have continued to read and comprehend their novels. The Year 7 group are reading "The Giver" and are interpreting the key characters and themes from the novel. The Year 6 students are reading "The Magician's Nephew" and are answering various questions to improve their reading comprehension. 

House Colours Day in Years 5-8 TA

The Year 8 leaders led a number of initiatives on House Colors Day. One of those was a Years 5 to 8 game of Octopus on the oval during TA time. With over 230 students participating, it was busy, but a lot of fun.