Wellbeing and Community Engagement
Patrick Halpin
Assistant Principal
We are here for the students
Our Student Support Group meetings for Term 4 are now complete. Student Support Groups provide parents, teachers and integration aides with an opportunity to come together to discuss the progress of students who require an extra level of support to reach their full potential. It is a real pleasure to work with such a talented and dedicated team of people who personify our key value – we are here for the students. I’m sure the parents who attended over the past few weeks will agree that our Inclusion Team is one of the best!
The Year 2 PLC were very impressed by the attitudes of their students who slept in the school hall last week. The staff were all a bit sleepy on Friday morning when I arrived at school, while the students enjoyed the fantastic breakfast service on offer. There were a range of cereal options on the menu along with juice to set everybody up for the day of fun activities.
The Year 2 Sleepover is an important part of our spiral approach to school camps. It is often the first opportunity the students have to spend a night away from their parents and helps to prepare the students for upcoming camps which will involve overnight stays further afield.
The Preps and Year 1s are preparing for their upcoming camp experiences: Preps will have breakfast together and the Year 1s will have a movie night.
We thrive in a team culture
All of the students and staff came together on Monday, November 5th to mark World Teachers’ Day. The theme of the event was, ‘A Day at the Races,’ and the teachers were challenged to take responsible risks by engaging in a range of team events. Stacey led the Education Support Staff to pull everything together, exhibiting another one of our key values.
Good luck to the Energy Breakthrough Challenge Team who will head to Maryborough next weekend. The team will race their human-powered vehicle around Lake Victoria against approximately 6,000 other school students from across the state.
We are leaders in education
Our School Review is now almost complete. We had our final panel day on Monday, November 12th. Our reviewer addressed School Council on Monday evening and spoke very highly of the great learning and teaching she observed throughout the four days she spent at Kingswood. The reviewer instructed the panel to ensure that all of the staff were congratulated for the positive learning environment they have created for each and every student, the evidence-based, high-impact teaching strategies she observed and the diligent and professional manner in which the staff undertake their work. We look forward to receiving her report in a couple of weeks. This will then be used to prepare our four-year School Strategic Plan and our Annual Implementation Plan for 2019.
We are safe, friendly and organised
Our incoming Prep students and their parents experienced this value in action over the past fortnight through the Prep Transition sessions. The Prep Professional Learning Community for 2019 have been blown away by the confident, resilient and excited children that have arrived to begin their Primary School journey. As we know, all children will display different characteristics at these times. The Year 6 students have represented the school excellently, as they assist in the classrooms, engaging the students in activities and supporting the teachers to organise the classrooms before and after each session. There are 3 more sessions remaining – 2 afternoon sessions in November and one half day in December.
We engage our community
This week, many of our families celebrated Diwali and I would like to acknowledge the work of a group of very committed parents and grandparents who have organised and run lunchtime events all this week to raise the global citizenship of our students.
Building cultural knowledge of our friends and neighbours is of great importance in our society and I was delighted to see so many students get involved through attendance at our arts and crafts sessions, dressing up in traditional dress, learning how to dance Bollywood style, creating Rangoli as a welcome to visitors and joining the whole school for our picnic on the oval. Special thanks go to the Ainslie Lewis, parent of Madeleine and Isla from Years 4 and 1, who came to teach the Bollywood dance class at lunchtime on Wednesday (we are looking forward to doing a Bollywood dance at Shake and Wake) and to Shanta Chandrasegran. Shanta has two grandchildren at Kingswood – Suriya in Year 2 and Sarenya in Prep. What a great community feel this event brought to Kingswood. Well done, everybody.
As our school community grows, we have identified a need to evaluate the benefit of our school assemblies. The School Improvement Team will be discussing the plan for 2019 over the next few weeks and would appreciate your input.
A Little Ray of Giving
Kingswood Primary School will again this year be a drop off point for gifts for the A little Ray of Giving initiative. Ray White Dingley Village will collect all the gifts donated, and deliver them to The Salvation Army.
Over 898,000 children across Australia won’t receive a gift this Christmas. Drop a present under our Christmas Tree and we will make sure it is delivered to a deserving family in our community. Please attach a tag to the gift indicating the age and gender the gift is most suited to. Gifts will be collected Tuesday 11th December, to be delivered to The Salvation Army the following day.