Wow, how did we get to the end of Term 3 already!

2020 has certainly been an unusual, unprecedented and challenging year for everyone.

Here at school there have been a number of changes that we have had to adapt to throughout the year and every decision made has been with the health, safety and wellbeing of our students and staff in mind and with the aim of keeping everyone safe.

Schools must continue to enforce social/physical distancing with parents being back onsite and we encourage and thank all parents/carers when you are onsite with being respectful of this requirement, when you are in the yard and in classrooms.

Behaviour Code review 2020

Throughout this year staff and students have had ongoing discussions regarding our behaviour expectations.

We started the year talking with staff and then students around behaviours in line with; ‘High expectations, no excuses and zero tolerance’ for certain behaviours.

Students at all year levels helped to determine what this means and looks like in the classroom and at yard playtimes.

Staff have also had lengthy discussions about how these expectations complement our School Values of – Good Manners, Friendliness, Persistence/Resilience, Courage, Tolerance and Compassion to ensure that our values are embedded in our high expectations of student behaviour choices.

We have been tracking student ‘call outs to office data’ since 2017. At this time, we also implemented our Interception room and classes doing Interception exercises which are similar to mindfulness – breathing/stretching etc to help us identify how our body is feeling and letting us know when we are having a change in how our body feels and how these impact on our feelings and reactions as a strategy to help students build self-regulation skills and strategies.

The following graph for office call outs for Term 3 Week 7 over the past 3 years illustrates the positive changes of a significant decrease of ‘office call outs’ and in particular this year.

Less students being called out for time in the office equals students in class doing the right thing, following our school values and most importantly - learning.

This is a positive outcome that is a result of our ongoing Play is the Way approach, linked with our implementation of Interception as a school wide approach and our high expectations of student behaviour. We continue to see a significant decrease in students having to be called to come to the office, and when they are we work with families to develop plans to support them to build self-regulation, learning resilience and strategies that will enable them to engage in learning in the classroom.

Term 4 Events

We want to include as many parents/carers in the important end of year events that are important milestones with every school family.

This week schools have had confirmation from the Department for Education in consultation with SA Health that end of year events can go ahead, but with specific requirements in line with COVID Physical/Social distancing requirements.

This requires parents/carers to play your part and support us with the restrictions that we need to abide by and we thank you in advance for this. Please note that if the situation changes in South Australia and in line with SA Health and the Department guidelines we may need to change arrangements accordingly to ensure health and safety for all.

This is great news that end of year events can go ahead with parents/carers attending but we need to plan for this within the current COVID physical distancing requirements. Due to these requirements certain events will look different to previous years in line with the following guidelines that we are required to enforce:–

All schools must implement RSVP options to ensure compliance with parent/carer attendance and numbers and for COVID tracking. We will notify families of how to do this closer to the range of events.
Outdoor events – Social/physical distancing must be adhered to and enforced at all events. There is a limit on numbers of attendees and RSVPs will be required to ensure numbers are adhered to – this may mean that family numbers are limited for attendance. It will also mean we need to explore alternatives about how we host our End of Year Concert arrangements to comply with this as well as making it a positive experience for all that attend.
Indoor events must comply with the physical distancing of minimum of 1.5m per adult within the indoor space. Again, we must use RSVP options to ensure compliance. Schools need to calculate the number of adults that can attend within the seating space and comply with physical distancing guidelines. This may mean restrictions to the number of family members who can attend.
Colour Explosion Run Fundraising event on Friday 6th November (week 4 Term 4) this can now go ahead with parents observing physical/social distancing as advised by the school (parents are not able to participate) – we will advise of Physical/social distancing requirements closer to the day. Parents will be required to abide by the school rules regarding this.
Graduation for our Senior Students we will be working to plan differently to past years and to ensure we are COVID compliant in an indoor space but still make sure our Senior Students get to experience this important milestone in their Primary School life. We will keep parents informed as we work out the best options for this. Parents/carers will need to RSVP and attendance will be limited due to physical distancing requirements/numbers.
Hackham Has Talent – on the last day of Term 4, again we will need to have RSVP and limited to the parents of students whom are presenting and a couple of Governing Council members who do the farewell presents to staff who are leaving/retiring. In this space we have a maximum capacity of 40 parents in the seating space.

The school staff, in consultation with Governing Council and the Department for Education Guidelines will discuss all of the options for the main end of year events to ensure that the parents/carers who can attend are able to. We will advise parents/carers via a range of communication channels once we have finalised arrangements for the upcoming events.

As stated above, please be mindful that due to COVID restrictions that extended families may not be able to attend as they have in the past.

We appreciate your support with the different options that will still ensure that our students and parents can participate, but in somewhat very different ways that we have had the opportunity to host these events previous to the COVID world.

We will notify our community of particular restrictions and how to RSVP to certain events as they get closer.

We wish all families a safe and happy holiday break and look forward to a wonderful Term 4.

Ms Sally Slattery, Principal

Sports Day at Hackham East Primary School