Assistant Principal
Patrick Halpin
Assistant Principal
I hope everybody is feeling good after our amazing Family Fun Night last night, it was organised through a whole community effort by Parent Club, our School Captains, SRC, EarlyAct Club, Wellbeing Subcommittee and Special Celebrations Working Party. I was absolutely blown away by the efforts of each member of the team and am grateful to each and every one of you for your time and energy. We would be grateful if you could provide feedback using this form so we can keep improving.
I also want to thank Rotary Club of Dingley Village for their support with this school event. I have been lucky to have attended several Rotary meetings over the past year and to get to know the dedicated and committed members. If anybody is interested in getting involved, please don’t hesitate to make contact via their website.
Smiles for Miles
The Kingswood Community all came together to raise funds for children living in drought affected areas of Australia. Students, staff, parents and other community members decorated smiles and we lined up around the school yard.
Our smile measured 230m in length and raised $1,182.20 to provide educational packs for students who are less fortunate than we are.
Have a look at the video and see how many times you spot Mr. Cox!
Special Celebrations Working Party
Several events have been marked by the SCWP since the beginning of the school year. The team decorated the hall for Chinese New Year, worked alongside all the other groups to celebrate Purim and other cultural events at our Family Fun Night and welcomed Irish Dancers to assembly for St. Patrick’s Day
I would also like to thank those of you who wished a Lá Fhéile Pádraig Shona Dom over the past week or so – I even had a special delivery of home-made soda bread on Monday morning!!
PIVOT Surveys
Our students from Years 1 through to 6 have been participating in a survey designed to provide the teachers with direct feedback from their students. All of the data will be collated by an external organisation and each teacher will be provided with an individualised report. We will also receive whole school data on what our students are saying in relation to five areas:
- Know students and how they learn
- Know the content and how to teach it
- Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning
- Create and maintain safe and supportive learning environments
- Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning
Our numbers as a school have been around 4 out of 5 in previous surveys, which were carried out in Term 3 and Term 4 last year so we’ll see if we have improved much since then.
Teachers will present their individualised results to their students and an action plan for improving the educational experience of our students will be drawn up. This is a very interesting space for us as it aligns perfectly with our School Strategic Plan and our Annual Implementation Plan goals of building student-teacher relationships and increasing the opportunities for our students to provide feedback (student voice) to their teachers.
Parent Information Sessions
We have received confirmation in the past few days that Rotary are eager to fund three Parent Information Sessions throughout 2019. I have been in contact with an organisation who are available to run 1 hour sessions on Family wellbeing, Uncovering child anxiety and depression, Raising a resilient child, Tools for anti-bullying and Raising a leader. The first session will be held in Term 2 (date to be confirmed) and, following that session, we will survey parents to ascertain the most popular topics for the sessions in terms 3 and 4. Please keep an eye on Compass for more details.
Michael Carr-Gregg Presentation, Patterson Lakes Primary School
It was great to see lots of parents from Kingswood attend this presentation in February. Michael had lots of tips for parents, which he summarised in some key reminders. I’ll include these in future newsletter articles.
March Reading
This month’s reading is on the ‘Gift of coping’.
As children grow up, they experience natural consequences to their actions and behaviours. This is a really important aspect of their development and should be protected and encouraged. This enables them to learn from their mistakes and deal with similar situations in the future in a more reflective manner.
Very often, parents come to seek advice on supporting their children through difficult times. A very common approach used by parents is to always be positive and to use praise and rewards to motivate their children. While it is imperative that a child’s successes are celebrated, it is important not to over-reward very basic activities – putting your bowl in the sink after dinner may be cause for celebration for a 5 year old but by the time they are 8, this should be an expectation. This allows parents to celebrate other, more age appropriate skills that their children are practising and developing. If I get 15 chances a day to earn some iPad time, I’m going to ignore 14 of the requests made by my parents and carry through on the easiest one. I would encourage all parents to reflect on how much, how often and how intensively you reward your children with tangible objects throughout your week and identify ways in making that praise and those rewards more meaningful and genuine.