Principal's Post
Dear Families,
Welcome back to the second half of the year. It's hard to believe that our Preps have been at school for two terms. They have all settled in so well!
There is much to share with our community in this newsletter so I suggest you keep reading...
Congratulations to Molly Masters who is expecting her second child later in December. Molly is away on Long Service Leave for the next two weeks and Louisa Norwell will be taking on Molly's Art and Year Six roles for the first two weeks of this term.
Our Year Five and Six students will be ramping up their work and preparations for our Mini Mission Fete to be held on Monday 24 July. Stalls will be open from approx 11am - 1.00pm. Parents are invited to come along and see this sensational student driven social justice, fundraising initiative in action. Further details regarding stalls, food and money students can bring along to spend will be sent home over the next two weeks.
Melbourne Cup Touring St James - As part of the VRC promotion,The Lexus Melbourne Cup will visit our St James community on Thursday 20 July at 9am. There will be a welcoming ceremony and cup viewing in our Community Centre. Interested parents are invited to attend the 45 minute assembly.
First Aid Training - Staff are updating our First Aid Training on Wednesday after school. All staff are trained to Level two so that we all able to look after our students when needs arise.
New Building Works - I met with our architects and MACS representative last week and am able to announce that plans for our new administration building to be constructed at the front of our property are currently with council. Stay tuned for further update in future newsletters.
Level Curriculum Newsletters - These will be published next week in the update sheet and then in future newsletters.
Masquerade Ball and Auction Fundraiser - We are all excited about this coming Saturday evening. The Year Two organising committee have put in many hours organising the evening to ensure that we all have a lovely social time enjoying each other's company.
The auction closes July 16 at 6pm.
Concert Production - Preparation for our whole school concert production is under way and students will be spending additional time rehearsing for their level item. The students will have a whole school rehearsal at Crossways in East Burwood on Tuesday 29 August and then perform on both evenings, Tuesday 29 and Wednesday 30 August. Ticket information will be made available to parents via Operoo at a date closer to the performance. Class teachers will also be communicating specific costume, prop and makeup information with parents throughout the next two months.
New Teachers EBA Award - This award was proposed by the Victorian Independent Education Union following the State government Schools agreement voted in last year and voted in by members prior to the holidays.
The main changes include: the requirement to provide Time in Lieu (TIL) to staff for any extra curricular event they attend outside of their normal teaching hours (7.6 hours per day). This involves events such as: sacramental meetings, weekend masses, Learning Conferences, School Concert nights, Twilight Sports, Information Evening Meetings, The Parish Fete and School Camps. As you can imagine, some staff will easily accumulate one week worth of Time in Lieu and other will accumulate a few days.
In anticipation of this I chose to end the school year slightly earlier than usual on Thursday 14 December (Yr 6 students will finish up on Wednesday 13 December). We will have a staff Professional Learning day on Friday 15 December and use Monday 18, Tuesday 19 and Wednesday 20 as TIL days. This means that the school will not have to replace staff much to pay back the Time in Lieu they accumulate throughout the year. Benefits of this include: less financial burden on the school because TIL is not funded by the government, less disruption to classroom teaching with emergency teachers will rarely be required to fill in for classroom teachers. This scenario has been discussed and endorsed by our School Advisory Council.
There are quite a few other implications of the new award but schools now being required to provide Time in Lieu is the main issue that will impact student learning. I am very conscious of this and have some strategic plans to minimise the impact on student learning over the next few years.
Learning Conferences - We discussed a variety of approaches to holding our Learning Conferences considering the new Time in Lieu requirements with both the staff and our School Advisory Council members.
The essential items we noted were; providing online and face to face options, providing in school and late night options, not closing the school for a whole day which some other schools have done as this inconveniences parents and their work arrangements,
providing the option of after school care for students if we finish early
Consequently, the arrangement for the end of Term three Learning Conferences will be:
Wednesday 13 September 1.30 pm - 7.30pm with an early dismissal at 1.00pm.
NAPLAN - The Year 3 and 5 NAPLAN results will be distributed to schools in the week commencing Monday 17 July. All students who participated in NAPLAN receive an individual report with their results. General information about the tests and an explanation of how to read the report will be included in the document. Year 3 and 5 parents, please look out for this information in the coming weeks.
Seasons for Growth
Seasons for Growth is an innovative, evidence-based change, loss and grief education program that draws on the metaphor of the seasons to understand the experience of grief. It builds the knowledge and skills necessary to strengthen social and emotional wellbeing following significant loss by:
- Exploring the impact of change and loss
- Learning about effective ways to respond and adapt
Participants learn that they are not alone in their experience of change, loss and grief, and are able to build their communication, decision making and problem solving skills within the context of a safe and supportive peer group learning environment.
All Seasons for Growth programs are grounded in sound, person-centred educational principles.
As such, our programs have been shown to be a very effective education intervention.
The programs do not provide counselling or psychotherapy.
School Uniform
Winter is certainly upon us and students are permitted to wear beanies, scarfs and coats outdoors. Please ensure that all clothing items worn to school are clearly labelled with their name.
Other News/Dates
- Friday 21- 26 July - Scholastic Book Fair
- Wed 26 - Fri 28 July - Year 5 Camp to Sovereign Hill
- Tues 29 & Wed 30 August - School Concert Production at Crossways in East Burwood.
Have a great week.
Dave