Welcome Back to 2023

It has been such a great start to the year and there seems to be a very positive ‘vibe’ around the school when I do my daily walk arounds. Whilst there are always teething problems with some students needing support to transition back to school. I have seen many happy and excited students arriving to school who are clearly thrilled to be back with their friends.

We welcome new staff to our school as they take the reins in their classrooms. I have been so impressed with how quickly these teachers have embraced the ‘Warrandyte way’ and demonstrated a strong capacity to build positive relationships with their students and the staff. Ersie, James, Maria and Mollie have all felt very welcomed by our families and staff.

For me, it will be my 3rd year here and I am looking forward to continuing the work towards making our school the best that it can be. We are growing, evolving and thriving all at the same time. It seems, that no matter what comes our way we have the capacity to endure it and rise above it and this makes me feel confident that as a community we can continue this important journey. The wellbeing and academic progress of our students should be and always will be the central purpose for anything we do here.

As always, we have hit the ground running and next week we have the Swimming Carnival for Grades 3 – 6 on Tuesday, 7th from 10am-12:30pm. Unfortunately, we have been told we will be sharing the pool with another school this year. This was disappointing news that was received only a couple of weeks ago and as you can imagine, Sally tried very hard to rectify this. Unfortunately, Aquarena were not willing to change the situation. I personally think that perhaps they are trying to recoup the large losses they would have endured during the pandemic. We still have the big hill for our students to occupy but there will be some changes to how we operate the day as a result of two schools doing their thing at once.

We will be welcoming our new Preps officially on Monday as they attend their first day of school. This is a huge moment in the life of a child and we feel very privileged that the families of our newest students have chosen to join our great community. We have given the classroom in the Stone Building a bit of a facelift in the holidays and it is looking amazing.

We are changing up a few things this year with the hope that it improves communication and provides for a more consistent approach to how we do things here.

Weekly Classroom Overviews

Starting next week, each Friday you will receive a Compass message from your classroom teacher with an attached class overview and schedule for the following week. This approach has been put into place to improve communication between home and school about what happens in your child/rens classrooms and allows for families to have access to this information ahead of time. We believe this will help those students who like to know ahead of time what is happening and/or be able to prepare for any changes coming up.

The layout of the weekly program will look the same schoolwide, but the contents and scheduling will differ according to each class. You will also be able to see when there are Specialist classes each week. Schools are very busy places and there are many moving parts to co-ordinate. This means that the timetable for Specialists often changes to allow for special events, programs, incursions, planning days and camps. By implementing this new protocol you will be able to track changes to your child/rens classroom schedules. Below is a worked example of what each teacher will send out via Compass.

You will see that the information provided for each lesson is limited to the Learning Intention and the Focus of the task. However, it is important to know that the weekly snapshot you receive is not the planner that teachers refer to in their lessons. Rather there are a series of planners that are used each term and each week that contain far more detail and records a wide range of resources and information that the teacher requires to run a lesson successfully. Small groups, scaffolds, success criteria, extension tasks, curriculum outlines and high impact teaching strategies to be used form the basis for a much more complex planner.

A great deal of time is spent planning in teams each week. In fact, I can only ask my staff to provide this information to you because I feel confident they will be able to provide you with authentic and accurate information about what is happening in your child/ren’s classroom. A final note to make is that the planner cannot be set in concrete. There will be times when lessons are changed or swapped last minute for a range of reasons that cannot be predicted. The information we provide on Friday’s is in the spirit of trying to help you as much as we can within the limitations of the daily operations of a school. As best as they can, the teachers will provide information about scheduling updates.

Lunchtime Clubs for 2023

We have tried a couple of times to get lunchtime clubs up and running in the past but this year the Specialists and teachers are rallying the troops and we are able to provide lunchtime activities each day so that students who need a break from the yard have a place to go or to provide some extracurricular activities outside of class time. With the growth of the school, we have more teachers to share the yard duty load. We want to translate that extra resource into things that benefit our students.

Mondays -

Auslan Club (optional activity open to all students)

Tuesdays –

State Schools Spec Choir rehearsal 1.40pm (compulsory for 20 selected Year 4 - 6 students)
Library Lunchtime – Library is open for any students to come and read, draw, colour in or play passive games.

Wednesdays –

Music and Moovers Club (optional lunchtime activity based on student interest with different topics offered throughout the year eg boom whackers, musical theatre, recorder ensemble, tap dancing) – all age groups welcome
Inter School sports Practice for 5/6 students

Thursdays –

State Schools Spectacular (compulsory for 16 Year 5 & 6 students only)
Library Lunchtime – Library is open for any students to come and read, draw, colour in or play passive games.

Friday

Library Lunchtime – Library is open for any students to come and read, draw, colour in or play passive games.

Having teachers in these rooms or activities also provides students who need support to build peer friendships and interact positively with each other in a safe and engaging environment.

Monday Assembly Changes

We are also making some changes to our Assembly routines. To give parents a chance to see their child receive an award we will let our parents know if their child is up for an award. Families will be notified either Thursday or early Friday if their child is receiving an award the following Monday. We will allow a week’s grace to get into this routine embedded and aim to be able to provide you with this information from the Week 3 assembly (13th Feb).

Assemblies will now have weekly class items to celebrate what is happening in the classroom and to just generally have some fun and engage with their peers via an informal environment. Classes can do songs, dance, short act plays, science experiment, excursion/curriculum reflections or whatever they can think up with their teacher. Below is the list of which classes are presenting a class item in Term 1. I am looking forward to seeing what the classes come up with.

Term 1	Class
Week 3 (13th Feb)	1/2K
Week 4	6N
Week 5	4/5G
Week 6	3J
Week 7	½
Week 8	4/5R
Week 9	1/2E
Week 10	All classes give a reflection of the term.

Parent Helpers

As a staff we have begun a conversation about how we can best offer opportunities for parents to participate in classrooms more as we move further away from having to consider Covid-19. We are setting up protocols and systems to begin to offer these chances to our parents. The relationship between home and school is known to be one of the biggest contributing factors in the academic and social success of students. Our teachers are very keen to have you participate in reading, lessons, events, excursions or even lunchtime clubs so watch this space as we will soon be able to communicate the ways you can help in your child/rens classrooms this year.

Shade Structure Construction

We have finally been given a start date for the insalation of the the Shade area that was part of the government's Covid initiative to have outdoor classroom space. This structure will begin construction on this coming Monday and is expected to be complete by the end of the week. The site area will be closed off to students and workers have agreed to wait until all our Prep students are inside for their first day of school before they begin.

That's it for now but there will more information coming about other improvements we are working on. Unfortunately, the Melbourne cold weather has turned on us again but I hope you enjoy your weekend.

Take Care,

Nieta

Dates to Remember