Principal Team's Report

Aerobics at the Nationals

It's an exciting weekend coming up with our aerobics team competing at the National Championships on the Gold Coast. We wish the team all the best as they represent the school at the competition for the very first time. 

2022 Parent/Caregiver/Guardian Opinion Survey

On Wednesday you should have received an invitation via Compass to participate in the annual survey.  We would appreciate input from as many parents, caregivers and guardians as possible. 

• The survey will be conducted online and should take 20 minutes to complete. 
• The survey can be completed on any internet-enabled device (iPad, Desktop or Laptop, Smartphone) and is compatible with most browsers.
• The survey will be open from Monday 15 August to Friday 16th September. 
• The survey is available in English and 10 other languages including Arabic, Vietnamese, Simplified Chinese, Chin (Hakha), Hindi, Japanese, Greek, Turkish, Somali and Punjabi.

Please be assured that your responses are completely confidential. The survey is conducted anonymously, and it is important to us that you complete the survey as honestly as possible. 

Please follow the instructions below to complete the survey.  NOTE: Only one parent/caregiver/guardian from your family is invited to complete the survey.

To complete the survey, simply:

1. Click on the link below, or copy and paste the text into your browser. 
   This link will take you directly to the survey. 
   https://www.orima.com.au/parent
    
2. Select the School and Campus name below.
   School Name: Pakenham Springs Primary School
   Campus Name: Pakenham Springs Primary School
    
3. Enter the School PIN below.
   PIN: 644230

When complete, please click on the tick button at the end of the survey to submit your answers.  Please note that the survey will time out after 60 minutes of inactivity.

Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships Program

This program was born after the Royal Commission into the tragic death of Luke Batty in 2014. It was a recommendation from the Royal Commission that all schools teach Respectful Relationships Education (RRE) through a Whole School Approach, to support students to recognise and regulate emotions, develop empathy for others and establish and build a framework for positive relationships. 

The Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships teaching and learning materials have been developed to support schools to deliver the curriculum and are mandated to be taught in all Victorian government schools.  At PSPS, we have been covering many topics through The Resilience Project.  We will now be completing professional learning to better implement RRE education into our teaching and learning programs to ensure our students have an education that gives them the best start to a happy, healthy and prosperous life. This approach leads to positive change in students’ academic outcomes, their wellbeing, classroom behaviour, and relationships between teachers and students. RRE's goal is to see changes in attitudes and behaviour that can be achieved when positive attitudes, behaviours and gender equality are lived across the school community. Together, we can lead the way in creating genuine and lasting change so every child has the opportunity to achieve their full potential.

The classroom program will focus on 8 key areas:

• Emotional Literacy: This helps students develop the ability to be aware of, understand and use vocabulary about the emotional state of themselves and others with competence.
• Personal Strengths: Students develop a vocabulary to help them recognise and understand various strengths and positive qualities in themselves and others. They identify the strengths they admire in others and those they need to draw on to engage with the challenges and opportunities that life presents.
• Positive Coping: Students develop language around coping, critically reflect on their coping strategies and extend their repertoire of positive coping strategies.
• Problem-solving: Students learn a range of problem-solving techniques that can be applied when confronting personal, social and ethical dilemmas. They engage in applied learning tasks in which they apply their problem-solving skills to be realistic.
• Stress management: This teaches students to learn a range of problem-solving skills through applied learning tasks, so that they are able to cope with challenges as they arise.
• Help-seeking: Help-seeking is a coping strategy that involves seeking technical, instrumental, social or emotional support from other people.
• Gender and identity: These are age-appropriate learning activities that assist students to understand and critique the influence of gender norms on attitudes and behaviours (see the clip linked below for an example of a discussion prompt).
• Positive gender relationships: This teaches students to build positive relationships between and within genders, and the importance of accepting difference and diversity.

Respectful Relationships takes a whole-school approach, recognising that schools are a place of learning, a workplace and a key part of local communities. It embeds a culture of respect and equality across our entire school community, from our classrooms to staffrooms, sporting fields, fetes and social events.

Year 3 Camp

Our Year 3 staff and students had a wonderful time on the first-ever Springers Year 3 camp.  The students were offered this camp as part of the state government's Positive Start program and although extremely cold, they enjoyed all the activities on offer.  See more on our Springers in Action page.

COVID Safety Measures

COVIDSafe measures have changed but important practices will continue to be in place across all Victorian government schools to ensure every possible effort is made to ensure staff and students are safe and that schools remain open.

The COVIDSafe measures focus on the 3Vs: Ventilation, Vaccination and Vital COVIDSafe steps.

A combination of strategies remains necessary to minimise transmission risk. No single strategy completely reduces risk and not every measure will be possible in all educational settings. Where some controls are not feasible, others should be enhanced where possible. 

Year 4 Camp - Phillip Island

We wish our year 4's a wonderful and safe time at camp next week at Phillip Island.  It has been wonderful to see students enjoying camps and excursions again. 

The PSPS Leadership Team