Message from the Principal
Welcome to Week 2 Term 1
Welcome to our second newsletter of the year.
Thank you to all those families who attended our Information sessions on Wednesday evening. The school was abuzz with excited chatter and laughter! We hope you found the sessions helpful and informative. A copy of the information that was presented will be shared via CareMonkey. Please see class teachers if any clarification is required.
I was privileged to present our 2020 school leaders with their Grade 6 jackets this week. We spoke about how these jackets are a symbol of their leadership in the school and the wider community and that they should always be worn with pride.
Important dates
There will be an opportunity for an individual 'Meet and Greet' with your child's class teacher on Wednesday 12 February. Please book online at https://www.schoolinterviews.com.au/ using the code t5gxe to make an appointment. This is a valuable time where you can talk about your child, letting the class teacher know about their strengths and areas for growth.
Making New Friends
I would like to share this article from Michael Grose, founder of Parenting Ideas, and one of Australia’s leading parenting educators.
As a parent there is a great deal you can do to help your child adjust socially at the start of the school year. Here are some tips to help.
Encourage your child to be open to new friendships
An open, friendly attitude is a child or young person’s best social asset. Students who open to forming new friendships are more likely to succeed than those who seek solitude, who are critical and who limit themselves to just one or two familiar faces. Encourage your child or young person to seek out new friendships, even though they may feel uncomfortable or strange at first.
Encourage healthy relationships
Do all you can to encourage healthy relationships based on respect and common courtesy. Generally, when a relationship is healthy a child feels safe, valued and able to speak up. Unhealthy relationships, such as cliques, are restrictive, one-sided and are full of gossip and criticism.
Encourage inclusiveness
Studies have shown inclusiveness to be one of the prime social skills shared by socially successful students. Encourage your child or young person to include others in games, conversations, team activities and other group activities. Inclusiveness is not just a wonderful friendship skill, it’s strong leadership attribute as well.
Encourage friendships with both genders
If you are in a co-education environment encourage your child to form friendships with both boys and girls. This is particularly valid if your child has siblings of their own gender, or don’t have siblings. It’s through these early relationships that we gain the confidence to mix with different genders in the later years. Forming friends across genders helps to break down the mystique that sometimes forms, when a child has little contact with the ‘other’ gender.
Stay in touch with former classmates and school friends
Encourage your child to maintain friendships with former classmates and groups outside of school as this helps to insulate against unfriendly behaviour that they may experience with their close social circle.
Provide social scripts
Your child may benefit from being provided with some social scripts that they can use in common social situations such as meeting a new friend, joining in a game or asking someone else for help. Boys, in particular, can benefit when given the words to use in a variety of different social situations.
Forming new friendships can take time
Meeting new students and forming new friendships can be anxiety-inducing. If this is the case for your child, then it helps to acknowledge their feelings of discomfort, but also remind them that these feelings will pass. As well discuss the fact that feeling comfortable with new friends often takes time, particularly if your child by nature is reserved or slow to warm up in social situations.
Helping kids work through friendships can be tricky for a parent as you don’t have a great deal of control over what happens at school. However, with empathy, patience, encouragement and a supportive attitude you can do a great deal to help your child make a smooth social transition.
Reminders
REPORTING ABSENCE FROM SCHOOL: Thank you to those who let us know when their child will be absent from school. It is legal requirement that parents inform their child's school, via phone or email every time students are going to be away. E: office@spclayton.catholic.edu.au
Ph: 03 9544 3032
We require this notification as early as possible to ensure we comply with our mandatory reporting procedures. If we do not receive communication from you in time, we will contact you so that we can inform their teacher and support you in any way required. We do require an understanding of the reason for their absence as well as the probable timeframe they will be away.
APPROPRIATE CLOTHING: We ask you to please dress your children in layers when they come to school. We appreciate some mornings have been cool this week but it then warms up. Some children are dressed in long pants and jackets which results in them feeling very uncomfortable and sometimes developing heat rash.
BORROWING UNIFORMS: There are times when students need to borrow items of clothing from the school after illness / toileting accidents. We would appreciate that any clothes borrowed from school be washed and returned to the office as soon as possible so we can maintain our spare uniform supply. Thank you!
CAREMONKEY: Please ensure that you have created a CareMonkey profile for each of your children attending the school. As we spoke about at the information sessions this is a very important communication tool for the school. If parents are having trouble the helpline is 8566 7727 or speak to Bec in office.
I wish you all a good week.
Sharon Daujat
Principal