A message from Tami-Jo

The students have settled so well in the last couple of weeks. The yard is a joy to be in!

Our focus with staff at the beginning of the school year was to ensure that all staff, both new and old, were equipped with the professional learning and resources to enact the DCC philosophy of inclusion and excellence. We spent two days in professional learning and planning in order to cater for the needs of your child. The teachers have been working hard at building relationships with your child and setting up routines and structures that will support your child to make new friendships, show growth in their learning, feel safe and heard. 

It is important to remember that we have over 1000 students in our playground now. There are going to be incidents and altercations with others. Please be positive with your language. Not all incidents and altercations are bullying, most are accidents and unfortunately the case when there are so many people sharing a space. The students are learning to reconnect, solve conflict, ask for help and show stamina and perseverance. As parents and teachers, we cannot control everything that happens to them or around them. But we can work with them to build their toolbox of strategies to assist them with what they can control, which is how they react to a situation. This may be around conflict resolution, asking for help or looking at all perspectives. It is important to build resilience within your child. This does not mean accepting bad behaviour, but it does mean developing an understanding of how to manage situations. This is the best gift you can give a child. Their skills develop as they practice them and get older, and it means they grow in confidence about how to manage situations that affect them.  It lowers anxiety because they know how to get help when they need it and are also able to manage many social situations independently. 

Opening of Wadjil and Waa

On Monday 14th of February, Sarah Connolly, the member for Tarneit opened our new buildings. Sarah, some DET representatives, the school council and the architects had a tour of the buildings and new playgrounds and had the ceremonious cutting of the ribbon to open the buildings. She then addressed the new Year 7 students and shared with them how excited she was for them in their pioneering journey as the first DCC Year 7 students. Our choir did an amazing job, singing an indigenous song to open the ceremony. Thank you to Alison for her work in preparing them. 

School Council Elections

Nominations are open for those who would like to be a part of our school council. Forms may be obtained from the office and must be lodged back at the office by 4pm on the 23rdth of February. 

Traffic Concerns

Traffic is still a huge concern here at DCC. At the front of the school, we have our stop and drop zone in order to keep traffic moving. If you would like to park your car and walk your child to class, please park away from that zone. The community centre at the back is a convenient place to drop your child if they are situated in Waa or Wadjil. We also encourage the students in Waa and Wadjil to park their bikes in the back bike shed as well. Doing u turns into oncoming traffic during pick and drop off is also problematic as it has been holding up traffic and we have had some near misses with hitting other cars. Please be respectful to the school and to those who live in the area and do not park or wait across driveways; our neighbours and us need to have access to the driveway at all times. We are not parking inspectors or traffic control officers but work very hard to try and keep our school safe for your children. We desperately need your support to ensure their safety. It requires everyone to be vigilant, respectful and show integrity at all times so we can work together as a community to keep our children safe. 

Curriculum Information Night

We will be releasing videos presented by the teachers on March 2nd that give an overview of the curriculum, routines and structure for your child for the year. 

Open Classrooms/School Picnic

We will be holding an open classrooms afternoon where you can wander through the classrooms and have a look at your child’s classroom and the new buildings from 4.30-5.30pm on Wednesday 9th of March. A family picnic will follow on the oval from 5.30-6.30pm. This is a wonderful opportunity to meet your child’s teacher and catch up in a relaxed setting. We do encourage you however to make a time to meet with the teacher at another date if you have several things to discuss or you can always communicate via Compass. 

You will be required to sign in via the QR code on the afternoon and show your vaccination status if you enter any buildings. 

Parent Help for Reading

In the coming weeks I will be calling for parent volunteers to assist with hearing students read during the day. We need 50 parents a day to assist us to hear all students read every day. We know that practice assists children to further develop their reading skills. You do not require any special skills besides the desire to help and the ability to show interest when a young person is reading to you. We do not require you to come everyday but if you could offer some time during the week, we may be able to reach our target of all DCC students being listened to  everyday. I will send out a compass post very soon asking for volunteers. It may mean you help in your child’s classroom or in another classroom. We want to give all the students in our school the opportunity to have extra practice with their reading. We know it is an ambitious target, but we hope that our DCC community supports us to achieve this goal. Please let your classroom teachers know asap whether you would be available to help us.

https://forms.gle/7jhGpJt83iFbCD3E9

Uniform

There are separate items for primary and secondary.Please ensure that your child is wearing the correct uniform for the primary or secondary and are not mixing and matching.There is some leeway for the current year 7 students to be wearing primary uniform in the change over to the secondary uniform.Primary students are not to wear the puffer jackets as they are part of the secondary uniform and it is a point of difference for the secondary students. The summer dress however is a Prep-Year 9 dress so can be work throughout their schooling. Please support us and work with us to ensure that your child is wearing the correct uniform.All students in P-Year 7 must be wearing a hat at lunchtime to be out in the yard.Caps are not sufficient, they must be wearing a navy sunsmart bucket hat.This is an OHS requirement. 

Swimming Trials

Thank you to all those families who brought their children to try out for the DCC swim team. I was impressed by the students’ have a go attitude and how some persevered in what was a challenging task for them. A shout out to Neville and Thea for volunteering their time to organise this event. 

NAPLAN

Our Year 3, 5 and 7 students will be participating in NAPLAN next term. The teachers will be preparing the students all term around different types of questions and how to take a test. We encourage that all students read as their homework tasks this term and discuss their books with their families. This is an invaluable opportunity for them to practice for NAPLAN but is also an essential skill across all learning areas. 

Canteen

We have had a number of children bringing a $50 note to the canteen and buying food for their friends. We ask that you monitor what money your child brings to school and alert us if they are bringing a large amount of money so we can help them manage it if need be.

I look forward to seeing you all at the Family Picnic Night on the 9th March. 

Tami-Jo