Wellbeing

Welcome to Term 3

We hope that everyone managed a restful holidays and we are all so excited to see our lovely young people ready for a wonderful second half of the year. 

During the holiday Science works had a number of great activities on. One in particular was some research between Deakin University and IPAN around the level of exercise that children do linked to spatial awareness, safety and memory. It was really interesting seeing the activities in action, especially considering the links between how much children walk/bike/scoot to school and how this effects working memory and the ability to do tasks such as origami. We know it is not always easy to walk into school each day (depending on work commitments, how far you live from the school etc), but we would love for all of our families to commit to making one change for this term. This could be parking the car a couple of blocks away one day a week to walk a little further. Or if you already walk every day, could you set off 5 minutes earlier to do one extra loop around school before coming through the gates? Small changes can make a big impact! 

As ever if you need any support this term, please reach out to your class teacher. 

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Anti-Racism

We would like to take some time to advise you that from Term 3 onwards, we will commence a body of work within the school as part of developing a proactive approach to responding to, and providing education around racism. 

As a school we already have many structures in place that support ideas of inclusivity, such as our School Values, our implementation of the School Wide Positive Behaviour Support framework (SWPBS) and our implementation of the Department of Education’s social and emotional curriculum, the RRRR Program (Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships). However, these measures do not provide specific or targeted education about racial concepts, beyond promoting respect for diversity and difference. 

Research indicates that effective education about racial concepts, and how to respond to racism, requires active modeling and explicit teaching, an approach that moves beyond simply holding conversations about race and/or celebrating different cultures. 

Many of you may be wondering why we believe that this work needs to be undertaken? We have experienced a small number of incidents where students have used racially influenced language in a derogatory manner. In following these situations up, a commonality was that the students involved had little understanding of the significance, or impact of their actions, or the language they had chosen to use. It is important to understand that this isn’t an experience exclusive to Wembley Primary School, and in fact the National Anti-Racism Scoping Report (2022) found that such experiences sadly appear to be on the rise. This has signaled to us that we need to take further steps in ensuring that all our children have the opportunity to make well-informed, empowered choices - choices that are safe and demonstrate respect for people of all backgrounds. The opportunity to do so comes from effective education and rich conversations at both school and home. 

It is likely that everyone has had an experience of interacting with racism in some way, or an opinion about it; furthermore, it is likely that we all have different understandings. We appreciate that there will be families in our community who have been impacted by racism and we want to reassure you that we are taking extensive steps to educate ourselves as a school first before embarking on this work. The school leadership team is working with the Centre for Multicultural Youth (CMY) early this term, undertaking a series of workshops that will help us develop our School Action Plan. 

The CMY, in partnership with the Department of Education and Training, states that, where inappropriate conduct occurs, explicitly naming the issue is necessary to demonstrate a zero tolerance approach. This notion underpins the bold and visible actions we intend to undertake as a whole school. It is critical for all our students, staff and wider community members to feel safe and free from any form of discrimination, and as such we will be: 

1. Undertaking leadership professional learning
2. Developing a whole school action plan, in partnership with the CMY
3. Commencing learning opportunities in classrooms from Prep - Year 6 
4. Beginning to share information with our whole community, via Sentral, the Newsletter and Social Media 
5. Implementing signage across the school that conveys anti-racism messages 
6. Undertake professional development as a whole school in 2024

The importance of a strong partnership between home and school is critical to the success of any initiative that we embark upon, and this is no different. It is for this reason that we intend to extend this education beyond the walls of the classroom, into our community - providing opportunities for parents and carers to engage in meaningful conversations at home. 

We hope you will support us in this journey, and look forward to sharing further information with you soon. 

School Wide Positive Behaviour Support

Inclusion

This term at Wembley we will be focusing on our value of Inclusion, with weekly lessons focused on different ways that students can be inclusive. We are teaching students that 

at Wembley we give everyone equal opportunities to participate and contribute regardless of their background, identity or ability. Creating an inclusive community is crucial to ensuring all students feel a sense of connectedness and belonging to school as research shows that children feeling connected to their school and family is associated with positive health and academic outcomes. 

This term we will be teaching students the following inclusive behaviours:

• Welcoming others
• Cooperating
• Being an upstander
• Grow who you know (expanding your group of friends)
• Celebrating Strengths & Differences

Current Whole School Behaviour Focus - Welcoming Others

This week we have introduced our next behaviour focus: ‘Welcoming Others’. Students have been learning what it means to welcome and include others and how they can do this through the gestures they use, smiling and waving, and the language they use, greeting people and using their names. They will also be learning ways they can invite others to join their game or group if they are left out. Students and all Wembley staff will be watching for when students are showing inclusion by welcoming others and record a nomination for these students. If your child comes home with an orange inclusion stamp, be sure to ask them what they did to earn this stamp. 

Watch the video below where some of our students show us how we can welcome others. 

Previous Whole School Behaviour Focus - Bouncing Back

The last two weeks of Term Two we continued our focus on our value of resilience and focused on the behaviour of 'Bouncing Back'.  In every class students engaged in lessons about 'Bouncing Back'. As part of these lessons, students looked at scenarios where they could practise bouncing back and read books where characters had to show resilience and bounce back from a given setback. Students were also given stamps when they bounced back and were nominated for our Wembley Values Award when they were seen bouncing back.

Wembley Values Award Winners

Thank you to all the students who nominated their peers when they saw them showing last term's behaviour focus of 'Bouncing Back'. It was wonderful to read about all the great ways students have been showing resilience and bouncing back. Congratulations to each of the students, listed below, who won the Wembley Values Award last term. 

Social and Emotional Learning

Each week at Wembley, students take part in Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). This can be a stand alone lesson or interwoven with other subject areas. This term, students and teachers will be focusing on the topics of help-seeking and gender and identity. 

Learning activities in the help-seeking topic area are designed to help students discuss the importance of seeking help and providing support to their friends when dealing with problems that are too big to solve alone. The scenario-based activities help students identify situations in which they should seek help, identify who are their trusted sources of help, and practise seeking help from peers and adults. Research has shown that young people are more likely to use informal sources of help, such as friends or the internet, rather than formal sources, such as teachers or counsellors. It has also been found that females often seek help more readily than males. Consequently, by teaching students how to seek help and provide help to their peers, helps to normalise help-seeking as well as building students' peer support and peer referral skills. The learning activities provide students with the opportunity to rehearse the skills they need when seeking help or supporting others so they have these skills when an actual scenario arises.

Learning activities within the gender and identity topic assist students to look at and challenge stereotypes and explore the influence of gender norms on attitudes and behaviour. Research has shown that looking at gender stereotypes with students is important because males and females have different health, educational and economic outcomes that are not the result of biology, but are associated with the influence of social expectations and the resulting behavioural and institutional practices. For example, dominant societal conceptions of masculinity can mean that young males are more vulnerable to risk taking, more reluctant to seek help, and more likely to engage in violence. While dominant societal conceptions of femininity can mean that young females are more vulnerable to body image distress, anxiety and eating disorders. Helping students to understand the potentially negative effects of dominant gender expectations can assist them to work on changing those expectations that limit opportunities, reduce equity, contribute to poor health, or lead to violence.

Victoria University Psychology Services

At times, we have a numerous families who need to access Psychology services for a variety of reasons. As many of you will be aware wait lists are often quite long. Over the last two years a number of families have accessed the psychology services offered by Victoria University. This service is run by provisional psychologists, under the guidance of a fully qualified psychologist. The clinic offers initial consultations within 2 - 4 weeks and can be a more cost effective way of accessing support. The flyer attached has all the details you need. 

Breakfast Club

A reminder that breakfast club runs Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 8.30 - 8.55am and will commence in Term 3 from Wednesday 12th July. 

We have some new community volunteers starting in Term 3 which is fantastic news. If you see any new faces around, please make them feel welcome. 

There continue to be supply issues with some of our favourites (Messy Monkeys!) An order will be placed as soon as they are available. 

Wellbeing Dogs

Ginny will be back in school on Tuesdays and Thursdays starting this week. 

As a school we are continuing to remind all students about the key rules when they see Ginny. These three rules will be crucial for the beginning of term to ensure a settled start back.