We would like to acknowledge and honour the Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which our school stands. We pay our respects to all First Nations elders, past present and emerging.

With just over four weeks left of our 2023 school year, we are beginning to wrap up our learning experiences in class, we are planning how to celebrate all the growth we have experienced this year and we are getting ready for the changes that the new year will bring - but not before a decent holiday break!

Class Placements

Our 2023 Class Placement survey has now closed for parents and carers to offer additional information aimed to support our class placement process. We received 62 requests through the survey this year - a significant increase from previous years. This, along with some of the comments included, tells us that families have really appreciated how socially and academically engaged their children are this year and are keen for that to continue next year.

In discussion with students and their teachers, we feel that we can attribute much of this engagement to our new school wide Inquiry instructional model. With our Inquiry focus this year being on Sustainability and Design, and now Transition and Change, students and teachers are seeing real world context for their learning. We have intentionally, collectively, made the inquiry process slower and deeper so that students are following through with the processes of design, celebration and sharing, as well as creating time and space to focus on and evolve the personal and social skills that are required to follow such an exciting process whilst still being part of an interactive community of learners. Teachers have also been using the structure of the Literacy and Numeracy instructional models to ensure that learning is targeted at exactly the right level for each student in these subject areas. All of these practices will continue into 2023 … with a different Inquiry focus of course!

The class placement process we undertake at BNWPS is significant; we take more than six weeks to complete the task and consult with as many stakeholders as we can, which is motivated by belonging and community being such a high priority for our whole school. If we could wave a magic wand to multiply all our teachers, students and rooms to meet everyone’s wishes, it would certainly be tempting - though we might miss the unexpected new friendships and learning partnerships that emerge from different placements.

When creating classes, teachers consider class sizes, they balance genders, academic and social needs and keep in mind any separations or pairings that are important for the learning community. For this reason, in the absence of a magic wand, the school must triage the requests that come through the survey. We compare requests from parents and carers to the requests from students and the observations and recommendations from classroom teachers and find the best possible solution we can. It is rarely perfect, but we don’t stop until we are happy with the result. We also know there is much more to creating a community than just selecting people - great communities are about shared goals, respect and fun.

From the 62 requests, we have met the requests of 36 so far - many of which our teachers had already included in their own observations. We have 10 requests still to address in our meeting this week, leaving 16 requests that did not meet our threshold. With this being said, we want to assure all families that every single child in this school is important to us. Every child has had multiple adults consider what is best for their learning in 2023 and we are excited by the groupings that have been drafted so far.

Another huge component of our Transition and Change Inquiry unit this year has been teacher and staff discussion about how we hand information from one class teacher to the next, and what the scope of this information is. At the moment, teachers are not only working hard at writing clear and consistent reports, they are also unpacking quantitative and qualitative data and presenting it in a way that means new teachers have the appropriate information to begin building a positive relationship with their students in 2023.

Step Up Transition session two; Hello New Faces!

Last week, the focus of our Wednesday morning transition session was ‘Hello New Faces’. Students engaged in mixed groups structured as they will be in 2023 to focus on meeting new people, and saying hello to new (or sometimes old!) friends.

The students in the 2023 Junior school got to know each other by drawing social portraits of all of the new friends that they had said hello to in the session.

This week’s focus will be ‘Hello new routines’ where students and teachers will talk about or experience new happenings from the 2023 cohort; regular occurrences like inter school sports or being a buddy will definitely be discussed!

Quick Release Hats

As we move into the sunny months, broad brimmed or legionnaires hats are required to be worn by all students as a part of our Sun Smart policy. Broad brimmed hats that come with a cord or strap to tighten under the chin must have a quick release clip that can disengage when the cord is tangled or under pressure, which often happens when children play while wearing their hat. Please check that your child’s hat has one of these clips - all hats sold by the school have a quick release mechanism.

New Child Safe Standards - Online Environments

From 1st July 2022, all schools are asked to make changes to ensure we are meeting the requirements of the updated Child Safety Standards. Included in the update is a new standard addressing online environments. Child Safe Standard 9: Physical and online environments promote safety and wellbeing while minimising the opportunity for children and young people to be harmed.

This standard poses a challenge for schools, as online domains evolve so quickly and intersect with so many different areas of a young person’s life. However we never shy away from a safety challenge and look forward to working with DET, families and outside organisations such as Body Safety Australia to continually improve our young people’s sense of safety and connectedness.

Throughout every year we talk to our students about appropriate behaviour while online - focussing on respect for self and others. Last week our Google Education Workspace underwent a mandated safety upgrade that will prevent any of our students sharing files or links outside the school’s domain. If you are aware of any concerning behaviours that your child is engaging in while online, please speak with their classroom teacher.

Student Celebration

We would like to celebrate the efforts of Sammy Di Natale (one of our year four students) who, along with some of his friends from a variety of schools raised a significant amount of money to donate to the Ukraine Crisis Appeal.

Sammy and his friends call themselves the Comic Kids and were able to raise the money from donations for making comics and paper planes. Sammy’s efforts are a magnificent example of all four of our school values; Authenticity, Respect Creativity and Connection. What a fantastic effort Sammy!

The Nor'Wester

BNWPS is committed to Child Safe Standards and prevention of child abuse

Issue 37 · 21 Nov 2022

In this issue