Mr Irwin's Message

Hello families and welcome to this week’s newsletter. I know you’ll be waiting an update as to whether students return to school on Wednesday, this will be sent separately via email this afternoon so stay tuned for this. In the meantime there’s some really positive news to bring you about what’s been happening at school so let’s get into it.

NAIDOC Week

NAIDOC Week is an opportunity for all Australians to come together and celebrate the rich history, diverse cultures and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the oldest continuing cultures on the planet.

Last week Junior School students explored the Indigenous map of Australia. Students focused on the area around Teesdale and identified Wudawurrung Country on the map. Students are beginning to understand how an Acknowledgement of Country, which is done at events such as assembly, shows respect to the Wudawurrung people as traditional owners. They also identified places on Country that are important to them such as Turtle Bend and the Shelford River.

Teesdale PS would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land in which we learn and teach, the Wathaurong people of the Kulin nation. We pay respect to Elders past, present and emerging.

Our learning as a school will continue throughout Term 3.

Curriculum Day

To further support our understanding in this really important area on August 27th staff will use our final Curriculum Day to complete Cultural Understanding and Safety Training. The purpose of the Cultural Understanding and Safety Training is to increase understanding of Koorie culture, history and experience to ensure a strong foundation for culturally inclusive schools and practices.

Community OSHC will provide care on this day for families requiring it. Bookings can be made through the COMMOSHC website.

Student Led Conferences

Student Led Conferences will take place later in Term 3, with a date to be determined once we have greater certainty around our capacity to have families attend on site.

The purpose of these conferences will be for students to share work samples from their term 3 learning pack, similar to the pack that went home in term 1. They aren’t designed to meet and discuss your child’s academic report. If you want to discuss your child’s semester one report you were prompted to make contact with your child’s teacher and schedule a time to do this. This offer is still open for the next few weeks and could be done remotely if need be.

COLA

Over the holidays you may have seen our Covered Outdoor Learning Area, or COLA being built. This will be a fantastic facility for us for many years to provide shade and shelter for recess times, outdoor curriculum activities and whole school events. I’m very grateful to School Council for their support in organising this build over the past 18 months.

Weekends

Over the holidays and recent weekends we have unfortunately had a lot of silly behaviour in the school yard. It is a privilege to have access to the school grounds on the weekends for use. Please speak with your children about using our grounds safely and respectfully if they are here on the weekends and to report any unsafe behaviour they see so I can follow it up. It would be nice to return to school on Monday without having to pickup rubbish, broken glass and pack up equipment moved around to make bike ramps. If this behaviour continues I will unfortunately have to close to school grounds for community use on the weekends.

Take care over the next few days families and stay tuned in for an announcement this afternoon via email regarding updates to remote learning.

Bye for now.

Sam

OSHC News

Healthy Lunch Box Choices

For more information go to: https://heas.health.vic.gov.au/schools/healthy-lunchboxes