Dear Families,

A very warm welcome back to all our students and families. I am pleased to communicate that all our students and staff have returned to school safe, well and rested. The past week has been fabulous, particularly with us all being back in our designated regular spaces. It has given me great pleasure to observe our students so settled and happily learning and interacting in their respective classrooms.

Professional Practice Day July 10th – First Day Back Term 3:

Our professional Practice Day occurred for our staff on the first day back. It was a successful day and staff were able to engage in planning, curriculum development and assessment of student learning.

Thank you to all our families for your support with this day, it is greatly appreciated.

Student Reports/3 Way Conferences and Student Portfolios:

Our 3 Way Conferences (years 1-6) and our Prep Parent Teacher Interviews went extremely well on Wednesday. Students enjoyed the experience of sharing their work and achievements with parents/families. All our students in years prep to 6 have taken their portfolios home so that families have an opportunity to have a closer look and a deeper conversation regarding the work students completed.

Can all families please complete the reflection sheet provided and return all Student Portfolios to school by Friday July 28th. In addition we will send out a link in the coming week seeking feedback regarding our 3 Way Conferences and Parent Teacher Interviews.

School Community Garden with Indigenous/Native Plants:

Our new school garden is looking fabulous with the work continuing. Today 200 plants were delivered for planting and Peter and his team were out early in the morning planting native/indigenous shrubs. This adds to the pride we all have for our school and supports our students to be within an environment that is calm and beautiful.

Tutor Learning Initiative (TLI):

Our TLI continues this second semester with the focus back on mathematics. Mrs Pentecost is working with our year 4 students, twenty eight year 4 students have been identified for the program. Mrs Pentecost will support students to catch up as well as provide time to extend students. Our Acting Assistant Principal Mrs Louisa Beckenham will take groups this term providing support for our Year 1 students with a focus on catch up. Sixteen students have been identified for the catch up program after looking closely at student achievement data.

Restorative Practices:

Last year all our staff participated in a whole day professional learning session on Restorative Practices. Restorative Practices focuses on fostering a sense of community within classrooms and the school grounds to prevent conflict, and on responding to conflict and student behaviours by encouraging students to accept responsibility and rebuild relationships.

This term all our teachers will use the framework from Restorative Practices when engaging with students who communicate a problem. The Restorative Chat will follow the following framework:

Can you explain what happened?
How did it happen?
How did you act in the situation?
Who do you think has been affected by this?
How were they affected?
How were you affected?
What needs to happen to make things right?
If the same thing happens again, what could you do differently?

We look forward to supporting all our students to reflect and problem solve for greater connection.

School Production Update:

Our school production is in full swing and we have now received additional donations for the production.

The Simes family (Indiana Gr 1 and Sienna Gr 5) have committed to donating $500 to our production. A huge thankyou to the Simes family, we appreciate it greatly!

In addition Oscar and Alice Pearson's mother Kimberly, has offered us the free hire of props, costumes and sets from the Ballarat Lyric Theater Company and has offered to transport everything we need free of charge as a donation. A huge thankyou to Kimberley , we greatly appreciate her efforts. Over the holidays Karen Bodily was busily arranging staging curtains. If Karen manages this then we wont need to pay the $500 hire fee from Sunbury Sound Studios.

Prep 2024 Enrolments: UPDATE

Currently we have 39 prep enrolments for 2024. This year there is a new process statewide for prep enrolments that require parents placing an application into the school by July 28th, 2023. I am hoping that our enrolments will increase in the coming weeks and months. I will continue to advertise and remind parents to enrol their child/children who are due to start prep in 2024.

If you know of families or friends with children who will be starting prep in 2024 can you please remind them to contact our school and seek a tour and an application form.

Nationally Consistent Collection of Data for Students with a Disability (NCCD)

Every year, all schools in Australia participate in the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD). The NCCD process requires schools to identify information already available in the school about supports provided to students with disability. These relate to legislative requirements under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and the Disability Standards for Education 2005, in line with the NCCD guidelines (2019).

Information provided about students to the Australian Government for the NCCD includes:

year of schooling
category of disability: physical, cognitive, sensory or social/emotional
level of adjustment provided: support provided within quality differentiated teaching practice, supplementary, substantial or extensive.

This information assists schools to:

formally recognise the supports and adjustments provided to students with disability in schools
consider how they can strengthen the support of students with disability in schools
develop shared practices so that they can review their learning programs in order to improve educational outcomes for students with disability.

The NCCD provides state and federal governments with the information they need to plan more broadly for the support of students with disability.

We are currently in the process of collecting this data for our students.

I am thanking all in our community for a productive week and together with our staff I look forward to a wonderful term of learning and connection.

Warmest Regards,

Kathy Cvitkovic

Principal

‘Building the foundations for success and happiness’.

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