Staffing news

Last newsletter we shared the news of some staffing changes for next year.

We also need to share the news of the retirement of one of the longest serving teachers at SKiPPS at the end of this term. Rosie Greagg, one of the current teachers of 1/2PR, will be hanging up the whiteboard pen after 35 years at our school.

Rosie started teaching with us back in 1987 and has made a huge contribution to the education and lives of hundreds of children and colleagues in this time. Rosie has taken on many roles at our school including Leading Teacher, teaching across many different years levels and, most recently, as our incredibly passionate Philosophy curriculum leader. We will greatly miss her sense of humour, commitment to student learning and well-being and a strong understanding of what makes SKiPPS such a unique and special place.

We wish her a long and happy retirement spent watching cricket and spending time with her family.

Covid Update

You would be aware that, since the last newsletter, we have had further confirmed cases of COVID-19 amongst our students. What has changed however is the processes and timelines for how we manage these cases.

Since last Friday, if a child or staff member tests positive for COVID and has been at school during their infectious period then the following steps will be taken;

Schools will continue the process of identifying contacts of a confirmed case of COVID-19 at schools; contacts will no longer be contacted by the Department of Health with quarantine requirements. If your child is identified as a contact the school will contact you directly.
Contacts will be required to complete a standard (PCR) test within 24 hours from when they are identified by the school as a contact.
If the PCR test returns a negative result, the student can immediately return to school, with evidence of the negative result provided to the school.
It is strongly recommended that contacts complete five days of rapid antigen tests in the morning before they attend school.
You will be able to obtain these testing kits from testing centres from Monday 22 November if your child is required to complete a standard PCR test.
Face masks will now only be required by staff, visitors and Grades 3 to 6 students in an indoor space within a primary school (or schools which have primary students such as P-12 school).

We had a great opportunity to road-test these new processes over the weekend when we had a further confirmed case in our year 5/6 classes. Rather than having to isolate for 14 days as they had previously, it was great that the students and teachers could be back in many cases having missed no school at all upon their return of the negative PCR test.

This new system promises to be far less disruptive for teaching, school events and families as we approach the end of the school year.

Student Well Being in 2022

The importance of continually supporting student well being is imperative for student engagement and learning. Next year there will be further opportunities to support student well being through involvement with the Alfred Hospital and the CASEA team of psychologists, psychiatrists, nurses, occupational therapists and social workers.

CASEA is a Victoria-wide program, funded to provide mental health services in primary school settings. The program works with primary schools to identify and intervene with children at risk of, or experiencing, mental health difficulties. These concerns can include difficulties with emotions, behaviour and/or socialising. The CASEA team also aims to increase mental health awareness and understanding in school communities and facilitate relationships between schools and mental health services.

The CASEA model offers multiple interventions for the school community. One component of the model is to provide support and education to the key adults caring for and supporting children. This includes parents, carers, teachers, well-being staff and ES staff. This approach is based on evidence that providing mental health intervention to the adults with whom the children spend the majority of their time with, is the most effective way to assist children to develop healthy mental health. The second component is to provide support through a group program for children and their families in Foundation – year 3, who are identified to be at risk of developing or experiencing mental health difficulties. The CASEA program will run in terms 1 & 2 on Tuesdays.

What does CASEA offer for children and families?:

Screening for mental health difficulties for prep to grade 3 children through a questionnaire for both parents and teachers
Meetings with families who are identified by the screening tool and the school, to assess need for service involvement
An 8 week group intervention for children and parents from the identified cohort to work on parent/child relationships, emotion regulation, making and keeping friends
Short-term support from a CASEA clinician, which can include facilitating referrals to other services, including community agencies and CYMHS if necessary

Your child in Foundation to Year 2 has been given an information sheet regarding this program. Please complete the questionnaire and return to school.

Mango Fundraiser

Earlier in the year many families got involved with our Mango Fundraiser and placed orders for trays of mangoes to be delivered straight from the growers and also allowing the school to raise funds for our wonderful emerging classroom libraries.

We are happy to announce that the mangoes will arrive at school next Wednesday (1st December). We will send further information to the families that placed orders around collection arrangements.

Curriculum Day - Monday 29th November

Our school will be using our final curriculum day of the year on Monday 29th November.

Teachers will use this time to collaborate together to finalise and analyse assessment data to help us make accurate judgements of student performance and progress after such a challenging year.

These discussions will allow us to start writing accurate end of year reports to parents and set important academic goals for the rest of the year and 2022.

Students will not be required at school on this day and we will work with TheirCare to provide a full day childcare program for families on the Monday.

2022 Class placements

As we plan ahead for 2022, this week we started the transition program for next year.

As well as welcoming our 54 new Foundation enrolments into school on Tuesday, our existing students in years 1-5 got to work in their 2022 learning spaces with the children who will be their classmates next year.

We have started the process of creating groups for next year and try to achieve a perfect balance of gender, personalities and strengths within each class to allow for the best possible learning to take place. Each child has written a list of four friends they would like to be in a class with next year and we aim to ensure each child has at least one person from this list.

The groups they worked with this week will not necessarily be their 2022 classes and we will run further sessions this Tuesday (30th November) and the following Tuesday (7th December) to help us get these groups right.

Details of your child's 2022 class and teacher will be sent home with them on Thursday 16th December.

Occasionally parents have requests for class placements for the following year. Whilst we are unable to accept requests for a particular teacher, we are happy to try and accommodate reasonable requests.

If you have a request, please email me at neil.scott@education.vic.gov.au

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