Calendar Fri 8 Mar Grades 3/4 Excursion to CERES, please return paper permission form urgently Mon 11 Mar LABOUR DAY-NO SCHOOL Fri 15 Mar This is NOT a pupil free day after all! Students will attend school as usual. Wed 20 Mar Whole school sports day at Harold Stevens Athletics Track-see further information in this newsletter Wed 20 Mar Foundation students attend each Wednesday from this day on Mon 1 April Grade 5/6 Indonesian Excursion Thur 4 April Volunteer Drive, time TBA Fri 5 April Last day of term 1, early finish at 2.30pm Tues 23 April First day term 2 Thur 25 April ANZAC Day-public holiday, NO SCHOOL

Principal’s Message Hi everyone and thanks for sticking with this newsletter format for a little longer. We appreciate that a word document is not the most interesting text to read and understand the importance of a clear and consistent communication method for all families, we are making progress but not wanting to rush into anything so we can avoid multiple changes!

We are excited to announce that there will be an update to the Sentral Parent Portal released on Monday. At school we are tremendously excited by the options afforded by the change to Sentral, as we have a more streamlined and secure way to store and share student information with families and other members of school staff. Through Sentral we are able to collect information about the whole child, which ‘follows’ them throughout their primary school career and is available to teachers to ensure we are catering to each individual’s academic, health and emotional needs. We are also excited by the streamlined processes that will be rolled out throughout this year including communications, events, financial capabilities and school information. Thank you for all the positive feedback on what’s improved already and we have passed on suggestions for improvement to the tech team at Sentral, which is another reason for the move, as Sentral are highly responsive to the feedback from schools and families in order to continuously improve their service. Don’t forget to update your Sentral app after the release on Monday!

Our printed school calendar will be released soon, however we have dates in our online calendar and we will keep you up to date with upcoming events through the newsletter. With this being said, I want to alert everyone to an error that was briefly on the online calendar, listing March 15th as a Student Free Day; this should have read as February 15th. March 15th is not a student free day - we apologise for any confusion!

Our School Council Election process has started - from today on Sentral you will see a Notice of Election and Call for Nominations. This outlines the dates and required steps that you need to be aware of if you wish to nominate yourself or another member of the community for School Council. School Council is an essential element to our school running with efficacy and integrity and more recently, School Council has been integral to our funding campaign and seeking the supports required for each of your incredible children. If you want to find out more about what is involved in School Council, please contact the office or reach out to current School Council members. This Sunday BNW is part of the first ever Sydney Rd Street Parade! Jack and the music classes have been practising parading throughout our yard and buildings (we had some official visitors who thoroughly enjoyed an impromptu parade!) and we are super excited to be part of such a community event. If you and your children are interested in joining us, we are meeting on Union Street at 10.30am.

Next week are our first Parent Teacher Interviews for the year, which you would have been able to book on Sentral. If you do not yet have a booking, please contact your child’s classroom teacher ASAP to make a time. Parent Teacher Interviews are a great way to connect school and home, to ensure you are on the same page in terms of strategies to support your child’s development.

It has been such a joy to see our students (and many grown ups!) using our new Inclusive Schools Fund Sensory Playground and to receive such positive feedback from community members big and small. The project was a wonderful learning experience for everyone involved; the architects employed to design the space had never met a school like ours and were truly inspired by our approach to inclusion, student voice, measured risk and connection to the environment. As this playground is part of a massive funding project through the Department of Education, there will be an official opening with some important people and flashy cameras on the afternoon of Wednesday 27th March. We invite all community members who are interested and available to come along (more details to come) and have a play!

We have changed some dates due to clashes with School Council and DET events, so please check your diaries - on April 4th (our second last day of Term 1) we are holding a Volunteer Drive! This will be an early evening meeting, where we talk about different opportunities and avenues for community members to be involved in our amazing school. We will look at events coming up throughout the year, sub committees as well as our school’s priorities and will be available to answer questions and hear from the community on how we might approach this year. If you are interested in discussing possible events for the future, we also plan to have a community night in Term 4 (a while off yet, we know) to discuss the 2020 events calendar. We will continue to keep you updated about our Volunteer Drive, but in the meantime pop this date in your calendar. If you are unable to attend the Volunteer Drive or want to talk to someone about volunteering before the end of term, see Stacey Roberts (mum of Abby and Pepper) in the yard or leave your details with the office for Stacey to contact you.

This year our school is celebrating its 90th birthday and we will be celebrating with a birthday party later in the year. If any community members either have (or know about) photos, stories, artefacts/memorabilia or people we may be able to include in our celebrations, please make contact with the office.

Also on April 4th, School Council will be holding our Annual General Meeting (AGM). Interestingly, just this morning I have been informed that schools do not hold AGMs (as a whole-school vote is not cast), however it is not the name that is important, but the content of the meeting! This is an important meeting where we reflect and report on the school’s progress and position after 2018, which then guides our priorities for 2019. This year’s [not] AGM is happening right after our Volunteer Drive, so why not come along to both and see how you might want to be involved in the school this year!

For this week’s newsletter I want to finish with some sad news for our school community and exciting news for one of our community members! Linda Henshall (Office Administrator, Personal Assistant, Nurse, Carer and Punk Rock Superstar) will soon be retiring from working in schools. Linda has had a long history with our school and has seen us through many stages, big and small, challenging and enjoyable. Linda has guided our school through different governments, principals and dramatically different enrolment sizes. No matter how busy our office can get (and it can get busy!) Linda has a remarkable amount of time and compassion for each and every little person who enters her care, she has put her heart and soul into her work and (personally) she has kept me alive and on track this past 18 months (or decade!). We will miss Linda a great deal, but we also wish her the very best for her future of slowing down, spending time with her family and enjoying a very well deserved break. Linda’s last day will be Friday March 15th. Hannah Reid

Sprout, our Canteen Just a reminder that the canteen will be completely closed each Wednesday until the end of term. All students will be required to bring their own lunch and recess each Wednesday. There will be no café service operating for parents each Wednesday. Sprout is looking for volunteers! Can you help out please? We need 2 helpers on Thursday mornings please. Please contact Kris at Sprout or the office. Many thanks! Kris

CSEF The Camps, Sports and Excursions Fund (CSEF) provides payments for eligible students to attend activities like:  school camps or trips  swimming and school-organised sport programs  outdoor education programs  excursions and incursions. Applications for 2019 are now open and will close on 28 June 2019 (end of term 2). However, it would be appreciated if you would complete and return your forms as soon as possible. Families holding a valid means-tested concession card or temporary foster parents are eligible to apply. There are two criteria that must be met: ►Criteria 1 - Eligibility On the first day of term one (29 January 2019) or the first day of term two (23 April 2019), a parent or legal guardian of a student must:  be an eligible beneficiary of one of these cards: Veterans Affairs Gold Card Centrelink Health Care Card Pensioner Concession Card  OR they must be a temporary foster parent  OR the student is 16 years or older and holds a valid concession card (such as a Youth Allowance Health Care Card)  AND the parent or legal guardian must submit an application by the due date. Parents who receive a carer allowance on behalf of a child, or any other benefit or allowance not income tested by Centrelink, are not eligible for the CSEF unless they also comply with the above. Eligibility will be determined when the parent’s concession card successfully validates with Centrelink on either the first day of term one or term two. If the eligible card is in the name of the student, the fund is only granted to that student, not their siblings. ►Criteria 2 - Be of school age and attend a Victorian school Payments are: $125 per year for eligible primary school students Payments are made directly to the school and are tied to the student. Most payments start from March onwards. Applications can be received over term one and two. Payments are for the application year and cannot be claimed for previous years. The CSEF payment cannot be used towards voluntary school charges, books, stationery, school uniforms, before/after school care, music lessons, or formals/graduations. If you applied for the CSEF at your child's school in a previous year, you do not need to complete an application form in 2019 unless there has been a change in your family circumstances eg additional child starting school. Your child's school will apply for the CSEF on your behalf. Please collect a form from the school office.

Whole School Sports Day On March 20th students will be participating in the Whole School Sports Day. This year the event will be taking place at Harold Stevens Athletics Track in Coburg to accommodate our growing school community. The cost is $10 per student which covers bus fare and entrance to the sports ground. This cost is not covered by the excursion levy.

A permission form will be on Sentral soon, so please give permission there.

Students will be picked up by bus at 9:15 from school and transported to the venue. Students will return to school by 2pm at the latest.

Due to the change of venue there will be no lunch provided at the event, SO PLEASE MAKE SURE YOUR CHILD HAS A PACKED HEALTHY SNACK, RECESS AND LUNCH ON THE DAY. Please also make sure your child has a drink bottle to carry around with them to all of their events.

Students also need to wear clothing and footwear suitable for athletics and the weather, in house colours if you wish. A hat will also be required. Parents are welcome to volunteer to help the day run smoothly, so please put your name down on the sign up sheet located in the hall behind the office. All help appreciated! If you have any questions please chat with me. Thank you! Tom Nelson PE Teacher

Newsletter Week 4, Term 1, 2019 22 February 2019

Calendar

Wed 27 Feb Sprout will be completely closed each Wednesday for the rest of Term 1Wed 27 Feb URGENT: Please return completed Local Excursion/Photography consent forms by this dateFri 8 Mar Grades 3/4 Excursion to CERES, please return paper permission form by 1 MarchMon 11 Mar LABOUR DAY-NO SCHOOLFri 15 Mar This is NOT a pupil free day after all! Students will attend school as usual.

Principal’s Message I know, I know - it’s not my turn to write but there are so many exciting things happening that I am muscling my way into an even-week newsletter. Thanks for reading!

As I mentioned in last week’s newsletter, connections and engagement with our community is absolutely essential and we love to foster various opportunities to connect school to home and the wider world. From today you will be able to select a time for Parent Teacher Interviews, which will be happening on the afternoon/evenings of Tuesday 5th March and Thursday 7th March. You can book your time on Sentral from this afternoon - more information is on Sentral or attached to this newsletter.

If you are interested in spending a bit more time at the school and want to support the vision and improvement of our school, you may want to join a sub-committee and/or our school council! We will have a recruitment drive shortly, where families will have the opportunity to find out more about each sub-committee and the purpose they serve. However, if you are interested in joining school council the call will come sooner. Next Friday we will be calling for nominations of parents and caregivers who are interested in joining school council, as six current members are coming to the end of their two-year term. Please watch out next week for information on school council and the possible election process that may happen in March.

If joining a sub-committee or school council sounds like too much of a commitment, but you still want to hear about how our school is progressing and what our future goals are, we invite you to our Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Wednesday March 27th. Here we will announce the successful school council candidates, hear from sub-committees on how the 2018 school year went and what our intentions are for the future of this amazing school. We plan to make this an exciting night, with opportunities for discussion with all community members, so stick this in your calendar and we look forward to seeing you there!

Of course community extends beyond our school and we love that we are finding more and more opportunities to connect with groups and people that do not attend BNW. Next Sunday (March 3rd) our school has the chance to participate in the first ever Sydney Rd Street Party! Jack has been parading with our students all term and I can't wait to see all the colour and glory of our students stomping down the street! The parade begins at 12pm, with rehearsal happening at 11am. Parents and carers, please be aware that all students remain the responsibility of family members throughout the entire day.

Over the past few weeks the school has unfortunately been the target of a few incidents of vandalism and theft. As the school grows and the infrastructure increases throughout the yard, maintaining the safety of all community members and our property is a discussion point that is becoming more urgent. In the meantime I ask that all community members please increase their vigilance in regards to leaving any property in the yard, especially over night or throughout the weekend. I encourage members of the community to still use our space in the afternoons and weekends, but please be mindful of any members of the public who you do not know. Please report any missing or damaged property or concerning behaviour to the office or police, depending on the urgency. Hannah Reid Principal

Assistant Principal Message Dear Families, As we end week four of term one, so much has already happened. Teachers have been working hard to establish positive classroom environments, while undertaking essential assessments. This knowledge is being used to plan in targeted and engaging ways for your children.

During 2019 we will take many different opportunities to inform you of our school’s approaches to teaching and learning. We will also communicate your children’s learning progress using a variety of different forums and devises including Twitter, See-Saw, mid-year and end of year reports, and parent teacher interviews. If however you wish to take a more strategic, active role, learning of and contributing to the school’s educational programs and policies, you are welcome to join Education Committee. Anthony Atkinson, one of our Education Committee members provides the following concise overview.

Education Committee A thriving learning community like BNWPS relies not just on quality teaching and learning but also collaborative and productive relationships with the parent community. School Council, as the parent representative body, facilitates these relationships through its sub committees that are attended by school council reps and members of the broader parent community.

Education Committee plays an important role at BNWPS because it enables parents to work closely with the school leadership and teachers in discussing and giving constructive feedback regarding school initiatives and classroom programs as well as helping to formulate school wide polices that influence the culture and inform the decision making at our school. The Education Committee comprises of parents with a range of skills and perspectives with the common goal of enhancing the experience and educational outcomes of all students at BNWPS. Being a member of Education Committee over the last few years has enabled me to witness firsthand the enthusiasm and commitment of the educators at our school and the genuine good will and positive intentions of my fellow committee members. As the school year swings into action the Ed Committee would like to encourage any parents who are interested in seeking more information about being on the Education Committee to contact our assistant principal and committee chairperson Wendy White.

We hope to help facilitate and support a wonderful year of learning at our school in 2019. Anthony Atkinson

I want to reinforce Anthony’s comment in relation to the role of Education committee’s purpose as well as highlighting the outstanding work that the committee does. Personally I find Ed Committee a fantastic tool to gauge community perspectives, while harnessing the skills and energy of its members. Last year, Education Committee members particularly enjoyed when teaching staff presented school initiatives and directions. This year we will invite staff to share ways in which we’re addressing our Annual Implementation Goals of Writing, Numeracy and Student voice. Of particular focus for 2019 will also be building the school’s knowledge of Cultural Safety, including developing a policy and documenting processes to further address this issue. As always we have a lot to do! As Anthony said, if you are interested, please contact myself and I can provide more information. Our first meeting is Tuesday 19th of March at 7.30pm.

Attendance and Lateness This year we are going to focus on student attendance including what time students arrive at school. This morning I noticed that 17 students arrived late. As mentioned in previous newsletters, there are significant academic, social and emotional harms of consistent lateness. At our upcoming parent teacher interviews, teachers will access Sentral clearly communicating with you about your child’s attendance. For most children it is a cause to celebrate, for those who have already had significant absences, goals will be set. Let’s all work on this together this year. Wendy White Assistant Principal

Sprout, our CanteenAs of Wednesday 27 February, the canteen will be completely closed each Wednesday until the end of term. All students will be required to bring their own lunch and recess each Wednesday. There will be no café service operating for parents each Wednesday.

Sprout is looking for volunteers! Can you help out please? Times as below:  Mondays 1.30 - 3.30  Tuesday 9.30 - 11.30  Thursday 9 – 11.30 or 1.30 - 3.30  Friday 9 – 11.30 or 1.00 – 3.30 Please contact Kris at Sprout or the office. Many thanks! Kris

Wed 20 Feb Foundation students do not attend school each Weds until 20 MarchWed 20 Feb URGENT: Please return completed Local Excursion/Photography consent forms by this date Fri 8 Mar Grades 3/4 Excursion to CERES, please return paper permission form by 1 March Wed 20 Mar Whole school sports day-details to follow soon Wed 20 Mar Foundation students attend each Wednesday from this day onFri 5 April Last day of term 1, early finish at 2.30pm

Principal’s Message At Brunswick North West we know that there is a lot more to raising curious, compassionate and creative community members than just teaching them Reading, ‘Riting and ‘Rithmetic and we are always excited to work with families on how to provide the best educational experience for your children that is individualised, effective and full of love. With more than 500 human beings using this space every day, it is not just the strength of individuals, but the strength of our community that makes us both powerful and full of potential.

Since Jack Madin (Music Teacher) started with us in 2018, there have been many discussions on the elements that work together to make a group dynamic successful; building empathy, seeing value in the whole, putting others’ needs first, sharing the love and attention and working to each others’ strengths are just a few of the many wonderful skills and capabilities that are exercised when working together - but that doesn’t mean it’s easy and it doesn’t mean it we don’t need to practise!

Today is a student free day, while the staff at BNW attend our school conference, titled ‘Identifying Strengths and Supporting Growth in All’. At this two-day event, our staff will engaging in professional learning on collaboration, assessment and differentiating numeracy lessons (along with some team-building and fun!) as the beginning of a year where we enhance how all of the community members at BNW work together to achieve our goals. We look forward to reflecting on the Conference and sharing our highlights, as well as continuing to develop and implementing the incredible learning that we will be engaging in this weekend.

Working together as a community obviously needs to involve everyone, and there are many ways parents, carers and special friends can become involved in the school community. We have received a few questions from families about how to get involved with School Council and its Sub Committees (yay!) and information will be coming out from our School Council President (the wonderful Fiona Heathcote) shortly. Please also keep an eye out next week for information on School Council nominations and timelines. In the meantime, you may want to pencil in the date of Tuesday March 12th, as we will have an information evening in the MPR, where families (new and less-new) can come and hear (and ask) about the various council options available at BNW. We hope to see you there!

Of course, our community stretches beyond our school fenceline. As you are likely aware, most teachers don’t do the work for the salary, but for a deep desire to help young people achieve their full potential and find happiness in their world and this extends beyond the wonderful creatures that roam our halls! Our moral purpose to inspire and support young people is for all, which is one reason why I am so excited to share with you the work Deborah Robins (Foundation Teacher) has been doing within our network for Respectful Relationships. In 2017, our school became a lead school in the implementation of the new curriculum. Deb lead an implementation team consisting of staff, families, students and experts and was so successful in her work that she has since been asked on multiple occasions to support other schools and present at network meetings. This week Deb was asked to sit on a live-streamed panel of experts, discussing how schools can better prepare and support families and staff through any disclosures of abuse. We are so incredibly proud of Deb and the work she is doing and it fills our school-bucket no-end to know that her inspiration is rippling across the state and beyond. Hannah Reid Principal

Newsletter Week 2, Term 1, 2019

8 February 2019

Calendar

Wed 13 Feb Foundation students do not attend school each Weds until 20 March

Fri 15 Feb PUPIL FREE DAY-NO SCHOOL

Wed 20 Feb Foundation students do not attend school each Weds until 20 March

Mon 11 Mar LABOUR DAY-NO SCHOOL

Fri 15 Mar STUDENT FREE DAY-NO SCHOOL

Wed 20 Mar Whole school sports day-details to follow

Wed 20 Mar Foundation students attend each Wednesday from this day on

Assistant Principal’s Message

Dear Families,

Welcome to you all! I hope that you managed to have some lovely family time over the holidays and that 2019 is shaping up to be an exciting year.

Like Hannah, I am pleased to be back and feel very excited and energised about what 2019 offers. My first Random Act of Kindness was giving up some of my lunchtime to meet with someone to help them! Let’s see if I can tick off all 100! Now that’s a challenge!

This first few weeks of the year, is a critical time of building classroom routines and learning behaviours. Pleasingly the school year has already started with a purposeful calm. Classrooms are beginning to find their ‘groove’ and children are telling me wonderful stories of new friendships, enjoying working with new teachers and generally building confidence about future challenges. Thank you to families for bringing well rested children to school, and well done for teachers for putting in such extraordinary measures to quickly establish classroom routines, having high expectations of all.

In order to help teachers get to know your children quickly, significant information sharing has occurred. This has included two staff meetings at the end of last year where 2018 teachers shared with 2019 teachers your children’s learning data and relevant information. This also included ways of supporting your children’s social and emotional needs. This year I have also sensitively shared with 2019 teachers, information given to me last year from families. I am confident that this communication is helping teachers gain deeper insights into your child’s academic needs, while forming respectful and rich relationships even faster than previously! That is saying something as for most of you know, this is something that BNW already does extremely well, building a sense of community and family!

In order to further support information sharing and communication, included in this newsletter is the “Family Suitcase” form for families to complete where relevant. This provides families with the opportunity to share any change in family circumstance. This will further enhance home-school partnership. Families can decide what to share, but please keep in mind, it is crazy how things in a child’s home life is expressed at school. While it might feel insignificant to you, changes in routines and relationships often affect your children. Please remember that you are always welcome to contact your child’s classroom teacher through Sentral if need be. Sometimes a brief meeting allows for a richer discussion and consideration how your child’s needs can be catered for. Other professionals working with your children such as Speech therapists and Psychologists are always welcome to provide their insights. In fact I’d go so far to say that it is highly beneficial for classroom teachers and other professionals to work collaboratively. Feel free to discuss this with me further if relevant. During week 6, Tuesday 5th and Thursday 7th of March. “Meet the teacher” interviews will be held. I will also be facilitating Student Support Group meetings in weeks 8 & 9 for students on the Program for Students with Disabilities (PSD). I’ll be in touch soon to arrange these.

In regards to paraprofessionals we will continue to work with onPsych. onPsych offer services to students and families at no cost under the GP Health Plan. This will entitle the student/family member to a maximum of 10 individual sessions per year and up to 10 group skills training sessions per calendar year, with our psychologist. The psychologist who is working at Brunswick North West Primary School is named Lily Arnott-Hoare.

Lily is a registered Psychologist with a Master’s Degree in Educational and Developmental Psychology. She has experience working with children and adolescents in both Primary and Secondary School settings, and in private practice working with clients across the lifespan. She is dedicated to child and adolescent mental health and wellbeing, and helping to empower students to reach their fullest potential.

Lily works extensively with children experiencing significant emotional and behavioural challenges. She has expertise across a wide range of presenting concerns including childhood developmental disorders (i.e ADHD and ASD), anxiety and mood disorders, school refusal, maladaptive behaviour, bullying, grief and loss and interpersonal difficulties.

Lily uses an integrative therapeutic framework, incorporating cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment therapy (ACT) solution focused and humanistic modalities.

Lily aims to provide a safe, supportive and non-judgmental environment for all clients and tailors treatment approaches to suit individual needs.

An information pack for onPscyh is available at the office, if interested please speak with myself and I’ll arrange the referral.

Last year we were successful in obtaining an Equipment Boost for Schools grant. This grant provides the school with additional funds to support your children further. We are going to work with speech therapists in order to further refine our practises including purchasing and implementing assistive technologies. These include ipads, computer programs, such as Read, Write Gold, Apps such as Proloquo2go and C-pens which, when held over writing, reads the text. This can be very supportive to students who find reading challenging. Other funds will be used to purchase adaptive furniture, such as sit/stand tables, Hockey chairs and adjustable chairs. Please see me if you have any suggestions for your child. Although we have limited funds as well as a short time line, I am keen on purchasing materials that will help all children meet their learning potential.

On a lighter note, but equally designed to support your children, our lunch clubs have now been scheduled. Please read the attached timetable and discuss these options with your children. If you have any further suggestion of lunch club activities for later in the year, let me know and I’ll see if we have any teaching staff with the requisite skills and time.

Looking forward to continuing to work with you all, and getting to know new families.

Wendy White

Assistant Principal

Brunswick North West Primary School Newsletter

Week 1, Term 1, 2019

1 February 2019

Calendar

Wed 6 Feb Foundation students do not attend School on Wednesdays until 20 March

Fri 15 Feb Pupil Free Day-NO SCHOOL

Principal’s Message

Hello everyone and welcome (back) to a fantastic new year at BNW! I hope you each had an opportunity to rest and relax over the past few weeks and that you have had a smooth start to the new school year. I have been so impressed by the learning and connecting I have already seen within our community and have no doubt that we are going to have another incredible year together.

As you can see, today we have a printed newsletter but we hope this is the last of the year. For those of you who weren’t with us last year, we reviewed our newsletter format towards the end of the year and it still needs lots more tweaking! Our newsletter is an essential element of our communication strategy and is one of the main forms of communication between school and home. Starting from next week, each newsletter will include essential information about the running of the school (important upcoming dates, messages from OSHC & Sprout, etc), information from school leadership (Wendy and I take it in turns each week), information from school council or one of our sub-committees, information from one of our classrooms or learning programs. The newsletter is a great way to get regular information to families; as our school grows bigger it is increasingly difficult to effectively distribute information for each and every class if we are creating separate notices each time. As communication is a two-way street, we ask that all community members make a habit of checking the newsletter each week and letting us know if you are experiencing any difficulties with the new format (next week).

Our newsletter is not the only way we like to communicate, though! If you haven’t yet started following us on Twitter, I would recommend to follow the school, your child’s classroom and specialist teachers, Sprout and OSHC. Twitter is a fantastic way to gain insights into daily classroom activities and learning tasks.

Another exciting form of communication for us is Sentral. Sentral is a new student management system, similar to the Compass system we have used previously. BNW opted to transfer to Sentral for a number of reasons, as the functions available support better communication with families, improved student data management (especially around attendance and lateness), a more integrated finance system and a much nicer user interface! We understand that the transition will take a few weeks and we appreciate your patience during this time. Earlier this week you should have received an email with information on how to log on. Today a printed version of this log on information is also coming home. Soon we will start to run family information sessions to support anyone having challenges, but please also ask if you are experiencing difficulties! Later this term we will be arranging Parent Teacher Interview sessions through Sentral, so we want to ensure everyone is onboard and ready well before then.

With each new year, it is so exciting to meet the amazing new community members who have joined our big school family. Our school continues to grow (though at a slightly slower rate since the statewide enrolment policy change) which means we have many new students across different year levels, new family members (and pets!) and a number of new staff! Throughout upcoming newsletters, you will get a chance to learn more about our staff and how BNW functions from day to day, but in the meantime, here are the names of the staff in our new teams:

FOUNDATION: Chris Moed, Bell Martys, Deb Robins, Larissa Fry

JUNIORS: Emma Mallia & Celia Dickinson, Alice Hamilton & Alison Burns, Jack Ryan, Jess Brown, Jesse Hughes-Welch, Nici Fausten, Lisa Do, Shalani Marasinghe

MIDDLES: Kate Middleton, Ben Coady, Faith Kelly, Lori Kirk, Michael McLaughlan

SENIORS: Tim Plummer, Ann Laming, Jessie Meade & Sarah Riley-Smith, Linda Van de Wall

SPECIALISTS: Andrew Lang & Kate McCormack (Art), Ian Adams & Sarah Riley-Smith (STEAM), Jack Madin (Performing Arts), Kasenya Grant & Nadia McComb (Indonesian), Tom Nelson (PE)

AIDES: Charlotte Barker, Diane Carpenter, Emilia Quagliarella, Helen Phillipou, Jo Adams, Justine Russell, Lucia Tomesetig, Mika Sutawan, Susan Cashin, Tracy Hopkins, Veneta Braybon

OFFICE: Ange Hopkins, Audrie Sexton, Danni Vidali, Linda Henshall, Mayii Evans, Suzanne Turner

STEAM, I say?! Yes! We are super excited to be trialling a fifth specialist subject in 2019, which will incorporate our Gardening program with Indigenous Studies and Science/Tech. Interestingly, there have been recent revisions to the curriculum that incorporate a stronger focus on Indigenous STEM concepts - so we are ahead of the game! The staff at BNW are thrilled to be trialling this within the school, not only because it is providing our students with an exciting new learning program, but also because this affords us a new approach to teacher planning. Starting next week, you may notice that your child/children will have the majority of their specialists on the one day. We have adopted this approach for a number of reasons:

This limits disruptions to our weekly and term timetable, as we will no longer have planning weeks at the end of term or changed timetables to cater for events;This supports our students with additional needs, who tend to become unsettled by changes in programs;This supports truly integrating subjects within the classroom across the day, as the daily timetable is no longer confined by attending specialists throughout the week;This supports greater collaboration and increased planning time for our teaching teams, as they are able to dedicate an entire day to planning each week instead of breaking up their planning time throughout the week.

Soon you will start to see opportunities for volunteering within the school; these may come from classroom or specialist teachers, from our sub committees or for special events. If you are interested in volunteering within the school this year, I ask that you ensure you have a valid Working With Children Check (WWCC) card - please note, this includes the Winter Magic Market. As part of our Child Safe Standards, it is required by law that all adults working with children at school have completed this check. As a volunteer, this check is free and can be completed online at http://www.workingwithchildren.vic.gov.au/home/applications/apply+for+a+check/ As it is free, we recommend all community members apply for your card as a precaution, so there is no delay if/when you choose to volunteer! If you have already presented your WWCC card to the front office, please keep an eye on the expiry date to keep it up to date.

Any parents and carers present for our first morning assembly for the year would have heard me talk about our BNW Random Acts of Kindness Challenge. This is a competition to encourage kindness within and beyond the wonderful community that is BNW and I encourage all students and family members to participate. Acts of kindness within our school and families keep communities functioning successfully and continues to bind us together. Acts of kindness beyond our community continue to demonstrate to the world that BNW is a community that cares, that kindness is beneficial for all and hopefully improves the days and lives of those around us! Your child/children will have a printed copy of this challenge with the rules and ideas of RAKs for them to complete. We will also place a digital copy of the challenge on our school website and Sentral for family members to print and complete. As this challenge will extend over the entire year, there will be regular reminders to complete your RAKs - we want lots of entries for the big prize draw. If you have any questions in the meantime, please let me know!

Kind regards

Hannah Reid

Principal

Sprout

Dear Parents/Carers

The menu and information for Sprout was sent home on Wednesday to the eldest in each family. There are copies available at the office or at Sprout should you require one.

Welcome to Sprout!

Kind regards

Kris

Notice from the School Office

Dear Parents/Carers

Just a few reminders from the office please:

If your contact details or those of your emergency contacts eg phone numbers, address have changed please advise the office straight away.If your child has a new medical issue or plan, or requires medication, please advise the office straight awayStudents who are late are required to obtain a late pass from the office prior to going to their classroomStudents who are leaving the school early, with their parent/carer, to attend an appointment etc, must be collected from their classroom by the parent who has completed an early release slip at the office. We apologise but cannot page students to come to the office as it is very disruptive to the whole school and the class teacher needs to see the student leave with their parent/carer.On Monday 4 Feb, a Photo Permission form/Local Excursion form, will be sent to each child. Please complete this form on both sides and return it to the student’s class teacher. The completed form will be kept in the classroom for reference by the teacher.A Uniform order form may be dropped off at any time, but is only available for pickup/sale on Wednesday and Thursday mornings, with the exception of hats which are available at any time.

OSHC

Dear all parents , carers and school community

Welcome to BNWPS OSHC 2019!

Our staff for 2019 are; Bernadetta, Andrea, Nadia, Naarah, Adam, Eric, Beverly, Carly, Brianna, Stephen, Mika, Thelma and Manuela.

We are an awesome team of qualified teachers and experienced child care industry professionals. We all have diverse interests and areas of expertise and are looking forward to sharing these with the school community. We have a big year planned for 2019! Watch this space.

Enrolments for 2019:

All children must have a current enrolment form for 2019.

Please log in in QK enrol, review your enrolment, make any changes (i.e. class grade or add new child) and submit your enrolment. We will receive a notification email that your enrolment has been submitted again.

Permanent Bookings for 2019:

1. Please log in to QK Enrol;

2. Go to current bookings;

3. Click on edit;

4. Select the starting date (i.e. 30/1/2019), the days of the week you need and type of care (i.e. Before or After School Care) and minimum days you need;

5. Click on "request"

You will receive an email with the offer, to confirm your booking you need to accept the offer.

Medical Management Plan and Risk Minimisation Plan. These are incredibly important and we advise you make a booking with your doctor or specialist now to ensure your records are up to date.

All children with any medical condition, such as asthma, allergy, anaphylaxis or other, must have a current medical plan (signed by a doctor in the last 12 months).

IMPORTANT: Children with a medical condition cannot attend OSHC program without a current medical management plan and/or medication.

Please be advised that if you do not provide a current medical plan and/or medication your child cannot attend the OSHC program as per the national regulations and law.

Also, a Risk Minimisation Plan must also be completed by the parent and coordinator. A template of the RMP will be provided later when the child will attend on their first day at OSHC.

Weekly Program and Clubs

A reminder that we will provide a variety of activities from cooking/gardening to sewing/ art-craft and from group games (including drama activities) to sport games. However, some of these activities have been extended and catered on permanent basis as children showed a big interest. In saying that, here is the list of the Clubs that children are very keen:

Monday

Catch up Club

Children are given the opportunity to catch up with their homework.

Tuesday

Kitchen Program

Coding Club

Children have the opportunities to look after our OSHC garden. Cooking will be also included as part of the program.

Grade 3-grade 6 students are given the opportunity to develop and improve their coding skills.

Wednesday

Coding Club

Thursday

Kitchen Program

Coding Club

Science Club

Hands on activities are provided to allow children to explore and learn about our nature world

Friday

Chess Club

Board games Club

Children will learn and practice their skills from experienced educators and seniors children.

A specific board games will be discovered each week.

Just a reminder all students - including Foundation - start on Wednesday 30 January 2019.

For all Foundation Students, your classrooms will be open from 8.45am, so please go directly to your classrooms, do not line up in the undercover area. Foundation students will watch/listen to assembly in their classroom for the first 3 days.

Canteen: Please note sandwiches ONLY can be ordered for lunch on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Students will receive a menu for 2019 in the first day of school to bring home. Please be aware of menu and price changes by reading the menu carefully.

Dear all parents , carers and school community.

We would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a lovely January break.

It is with great sadness that we say farewell to Christina after eight years of dedicated service to OSHC. Christina graduated this year from her teaching qualification and she will be teaching grade 5/6 next year at Kings Park Primary. They are very lucky to have such an experienced, kind and clever educator and we wish her well.

We will also greatly miss Dan, who has be an awesome educator, often willing to come in on late notice when we have last minute bookings. You will also be sadly missed and we wish you well.

Our staff for 2019 are; Bernadetta, Andrea, Nadia, Naarah, Adam, Eric, Beverly, Carly, Brianna, Stephen, Mika, Thelma and Maneulla,

We are an awesome team of qualified teachers and experienced child care industry professionals. We all have diverse interests and areas of expertise and are looking forward to sharing these with the school community. We have a big year planned for 2019! Watch this space.

From the program

Our new Green hat balsa blocks came in this week. As one student put it, “it’s like Minecraft but for reals”.

Our space is looking really festive and I thank all the students for their dedication and enthusiasm over the past few weeks. I wish it was Christmas every week! We’ve been enjoying shortbreads in cooking club and science experiments in Science club. I’m sure there’s been some crossover learning to be had there.

The weather has been gorgeous and we’ve enjoyed many group games. We’ve also been eying off the new playground and produce garden due to be opened in 2019. Exciting times people.

Donations

Thank you for the beautiful donations that have come in this week. We love re-loving good quality toys and craft items. As one foundie put it last week, “I get to play with my toys all over again here!”.

Enrolments for 2019:

All children must have a current enrolment form for 2019.

Please log in in QK enrol, review your enrolment, make any changes (i.e. class grade or add new child) and save the enrolment. We will receive a notification email that your enrolment has been submitted again.

Permanent Bookings for 2019:

1. Please log in to QK Enrol;

2. Go to current bookings;

3. Click on edit;

4. Select the starting date (i.e. 30/1/2019), the days of the week you need and type of care (i.e. Before or After School Care) and minimum days you need;

5. Click on "request"

You will receive an email with the offer, to confirm your booking you need to accept the offer.

Medical Management Plan and Risk Minimisation Plan. These are incredibly important and we advise you make a booking with your doctor or specialist now to ensure your records are up to date.

All children with a medical condition, such as asthma, allergy, anaphylaxis or other, must have a current medical plan (signed by a doctor in the last 12 months).

Children with a medical condition cannot attend OSHC program without a medical management plan and/or medication.

It is advised that you better provide your child's medical plan and/or medication by the end of this year or at their first day next year.

Also, a Risk Minimisation Plan must also be completed by the parent and coordinator. A template of the RMP will be provided later when the child will attend on their first day at OSHC.

Accounts to be paid and finalised before the 19th of December

As mentioned previously, all the bookings until are charged the 21st of December. All accounts must be paid and finalised by Wednesday the 19th of December. Failure to pay your account will result in your child not being able to attend the service in 2019. We are a not for profit service that charges really reasonable fees (the most reasonable in the area) and we do not have excess funds to cover non-payments. We thank you for your understanding on this and ask that you contact us immediately if you are having trouble covering your invoice.

Any changes to your bookings, such as cancellations and casual bookings will be adjusted accordingly in your statement.

A weekly statement will be issued every week from now until the end of the school.

If your account is not finalised, your child cannot attend the program.

Well! There goes 2018! Thank you to everyone for all your support and custom this year. You guys make a regular ol' school canteen into something special, and my job a joy. Thank you! Best wishes for the holidays. May they be safe, gentle and above all else, restful.

You have received a link for the Sprout survey via compass. As Sprout is a service offered by the school my aim is to serve! Please take 5 minutes to let me know how Sprout figures, or not, in your school lives. It would be so helpful to revisit the needs of the community, both generally and specifically after 10 years of operation. I want Sprout to stay fresh and relevant, that means I need your input. Much appreciated!

Finally, Congratulations to all the fine young people graduating from BNWPS! Did you know that you are the first year that I have seen from prep to grade 6? Wow! Hand on my heart, you are a great bunch of people, I have seen you grow and develop and mature so beautifully over the past 7 years. Well done and thank you!

While I am on that subject, there are some parents who are graduating too! To you I say a heartfelt thank you. Your support and community spirit, generosity and input have been integral to Sprout, to the community at large, and to me personally. Wishing you all the very best always.

Kris XX"

Wow! What a huge term it’s been. A big congratulations to Lisa who has been offered a teaching position in our school. Lisa is an awesome educator and the school will community will benefit enormously from her time at OSHC. A big congratulations also to Christina, who has graduated in her Teaching qualification and been offered a teaching position in Kings Park Primary School in St Albans. Christina has been working with BNWPS OSHC since 2011 and she will definitely be missed.

We sadly say goodbye to our beautiful grade sixers, many of whom began at OSHC as little foundies. They have been a great help over the past year modelling wisdom, patience and maturity. Wherever they are headed next, they will be an amazing asset to any community. We wish you well!

The foundies for this year will move up to the junior roll (grade 1/2) in 2019. They will need to make their own way to the MPR and will have their circle time in the middle room. Could parents and carers please remind their children when they will be attending OSHC (we only provide reminders to foundies). Some parents in the past have used a special “OSHC” keyring on the school bag or put a note in the lunchbox. We understand that best made plans can go awry, so we will call over the PA any children who haven’t arrived.

This term we had lots of fun in the art room with jewellery making being very popular. We have ordered a whole heap of new findings and beads for next year. Term 4 was also a big term for bringing back “old school” activities such as hopscotch, skipping and elastics. Children enjoyed a spot of gardening as well and with the expansion of the new garden program, we are super excited to be part of it for 2019! We played new group games on the basketball court (thank you Tom for the new games, the kids love continuing them in aftercare). We are also super excited about the opening of the sensory garden in 2019 and can’t wait to add it to our outside program. We also yarn bombed the front gate, we helped with setting up the election booth for Election Day, we celebrated Halloween and Christmas. On top pf all that we enjoyed coding club, cooking club and our new Science club with experiments in erosion and the environment (many of which have been further explored in the playground).

We have began planning for 2019, so look out for announcements in term 1 2019. In the meantime, have a wonderful Christmas Break, Happy New and we look forward to seeing you all in January.

OSHC team

Assistant Principal Newsletters, December 14th, 2018

My grade 6 camp highlight. Picture this, a pitch black night after a hot day, sitting around a glowing camp fire. The fire built and tenderly cared for by some experienced campers. A group of us sitting around the fire mesmerized by the flickering flames, chatting about the day and what the following day will bring. Another group sitting with Jack, playing guitars and ukuleles, singing along to songs (many of my generation) by the light of a mobile phone! Then once the fire dies down, imagine walking back up to the cabins, singing along to music being quietly strummed.

It simply was a beautiful, moving and classically BNW experience, one which I will hold in my heart! To me this vignette encapsulates the many unique, and often hard to articulate, qualities of our wonderful school. In those children I saw a sense of community, of care for one another, of connectedness. Throughout this year, I have regularly been touched by the eloquent way in which students have been able to express a concern, to raise an issue, and where needed, to resolve a problem. One reason for me joining the BNW community was my belief that our children have the requisite capabilities and qualities enabling them to become our future leaders. It is both exciting and rewarding to work collectively with our dedicated teaching staff and with families to help each and every child be the best they can be, both for themselves and for those that potentially they will influence. The grade 6 graduation was another opportunity in which their qualities shone, and many tears of joy were shed. It was a beautiful night!

My 2018 school highlight. Those of you lucky enough to attend the Junior school collaboration of “Young Einstein at the Beach” were witness to an extraordinary production. Thanks to the creativity, perseverance, dedication and talent of both Jack and Andrew, the Junior students worked together to create and then execute this engaging and inclusive performance. Every child had a roll. Every child was fully engaged and focused. All children had the opportunity to shine! In all my years teaching experience, I can honestly say that I’ve never seen children do anything like it. A huge thanks and congratulations to both Jack and Andrew, what credit to you both!

So where to in 2019?

Next year we are going to continue with our Teaching and learning journey. Just now, while writing this newsletter, I overhead two teachers talking about how excited that are about next year. Not bad for exhausted people, who have just spend the day, helping to move heavy furniture while keeping 20+ children engaged. So why are we excited?

As a staff and as people who fundamentally believe in life-long learning, we are all committed to student progress, in whatever form that takes. We have a strong moral purpose to ensure that all children grow in a manner and at a pace that they are capable of achieving. Next year through a variety of programs, which will be discussed more fully early in the year, staff will have numerous learning opportunities. These learning, whether it be in reading, writing or numeracy, will translate directly into the classroom. We as a staff are very confident that these learnings will build on this year’s approaches that we’ve been refining. Some highlights have included assessment schedule being revised, the inquiry model being fine-tuned and the Foundation and Junior approach to synthetic phonics, which has already made significant impact in how children read and write.

Those of you who have been reading my newsletter items or have met me, by now know of my undying commitment to student wellbeing. In 2019, while working with the talented Wellbeing team, we’ll continue implementing evidence based approaches which include student voice.

A powerful example of this is the Junior School Council. This has been facilitated for many years by Andrew and this year, I have played a ‘bit’ part in supporting its running. On Wednesday night at School council, two of our incredibly articulate and altruistic grade 4 JSC reps (nearly in grade 5 as they repeatedly reminded us), shared the committee’s reflections, questions and concerns. They shared their successes for example the “Variety Show” and the blackboards, while speaking about some challenges. Both students, gave fantastic suggestions as to how we can change JSC for next year. Ideas that I will share with Andrew so that once again student voice is valued and impactful.

During this year, student resiliency has been a constant concern. The student attitude to survey data showed that while there were significant improvements, more needs to happen to address this. Interestingly it is also one of the Department of Education’s targets. Our school is clearly not alone.

As such this is one of next year’s challenges. In part it will be addressed by the continued implementation of Respectful Relationship program, which we are widely identified as being an exemplar school. We will also continue the implementation of Restorative Practices. Finally in line with our commitment to working in partnership with families, next year, we will also offer families the opportunity to participate in the evidence based and well respected Tuning Into Kids programs. More information will be provided early next year.

On a personal note, what a year! I sincerely thank you all for welcoming me into this wonderful community. I hope that you have a joyful break with your families, taking the time together to do those creative and enriching activities which form the memories for your children and for yourselves. I can say from experience that these years do go quickly! Enjoy, little people have so much to teach us!

This year Sprout celebrated its 10th year at BNW. Over the years we've had many ideas and suggestions that have helped make Sprout what it is today. We are always encouraging of your feedback on how to make Sprout even better than it is, so with that in mind, we would ask you to complete the attached survey before Monday December 17.

https://goo.gl/forms/pTgvFlWP1Xn6Vmnz1

Wominjeka everyone and welcome to week 9.

Frist of all, big Congratulation to all the children that participated at the instrumental concert last Monday the 3rd and Tuesday the 4th - lots of big talents are coming to shine! The concert was held at the MPR and OSHC shared the space with the music teachers to accommodate this beautiful event. Most of the OSHC children enjoyed the concert and supported their friends in their performances, which is what we want to see - embrace the friendship. On the other hand, I would like say ' a big thank you' to all the families and children that patiently waited after each performance before moving between spaces. This helped all the performers to be focused without being distracted - it takes already a big emotional state to control the nerves when performing in front of an audience! So well done everyone!!!

Secondly, As we are fast approaching to the end of the year, I would like to give few important information and reminders:

Enrolments for 2019:

All children must have a current enrolment form for 2019.

If you are already registered, please log in in QK enrol, review your enrolment, make any changes (i.e. class grade) and save the enrolment. we will receive a notification email that your enrolment has been submitted again. .

If you are new to OSHC and you would like to enrol, just simply visit the school website, click on OSHC tab and register for OSHC. Also, for the new families to the school, don't forget to update your mygov.au account. the enrolment usually takes up to 10 minutes to be completed.

Booking for 2019:

For existing families:

1. please log in to QK Enrol;

2. go to current bookings;

3. click on edit;

4. select the starting date (i.e. 30/1/2019), the days of the week you need and type of care (i.e. Before or After School Care) and minimum days you need;

5. click on "request"

For the new families:

1. please register into QK Enrol;

2. complete and submit the enrolment form;

3. go to new request;

4. select the starting date (i.e. 4/2/2019), the days of the week you need and type of care (i.e. Before or After School Care) and minimum days you need;

5. click on "request"

You will receive an email with the offer, to confirm your booking you need to accept the offer.

Medical Management Plan and Risk Minimisation Plan

All children with a medical condition, such as asthma, allergy, anaphylaxis or other, must have a current medical plan (signed by a doctor in the last 12 months).

Children with a medical condition cannot attend OSHC program without a medical management plan and/or medication.

it is advised that you better provide your child's medical plan and/or medication by the end of this year or at the first day next year.

Also, a Risk Minimisation Plan must also be completed by the parent and coordinator. A template of the RMP will be provided later when the child will attend on their first day at OSHC.

Accounts to be paid and finalised before the 21st of December

As mentioned previously, all the bookings until the 21st of December will be charged on Friday the 7th December. All accounts must be paid and finalised by Wednesday the 19th of December.

Any changes to your bookings, such as cancellations and casual bookings, will be adjusted accordingly in your statement.

A weekly statement will be issued every week from now until the end of the school.

Last day of school is Friday the 21st of December - and OSHC operates from 1:30-6pm. Fees apply

Please note, we will be running OSHC on the last day of school Friday 21st December, starting the session at 1.30pm and continuing through to 6pm.

We will be offering the following last day of school activities;

A "just dance 2018” competition (Nintendo Switch) with Prizes!

We will be showing a movie (PG)

Cooking Club (Christmas shortbread cookies)

Christmas arts and craft and Christmas story competition

A stroll around Yakai Bari

Group games

In past years, we have allowed children to bring electronic/screen devices from home on this day. As per our new ICT policy we ask that children keep their devices safe in their school bags. We can assure you it will be a fun afternoon with lots of fun activities planned!

I know I have said in just about every second newsletter that this has been a big year and will continue to be… and now I’m saying it again! With two weeks left of the year, a quick reflection shows how much has grown, changed and improved over the last twelve months as well as some areas that we can continue to strive for improvement. The next two weeks are about celebrating our successes (students, staff and community) and plan for the future and the pace will not slow! Important dates to keep in mind will be at the end of my report.

I would like to extend a big congratulations to the incoming Foundation students and their families! This year's transition was a huge success and we have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know the newest members of our community. I was particularly impressed with the maturity and independence of many of the little ones and appreciate the engagement of our Foundie families during the information sessions. Also, a big thanks to the Foundation teachers (both current and future) as well as all the school staff for assisting with a massive program and managing the disruptions that can occur.

Reports will be coming out soon (the date is listed below) and we ask that, so the most accurate attendance data can be uploaded into your child's Semester 2 Reports, could all parents and caregivers please ensure that any unexplained absences have been recorded on Compass ASAP.

Our school community is a spectacular one - I have never before been part of such a wonderful extended family of diverse people with such devotion to the education and nurturing of our children. Throughout the year we depend on volunteers for so much; in classrooms, on excursions or at Sprout, on school council or its sub-committees, at CET events or to donate items, through working bees or presentations to students - our school would not be the same without you! As a small token of our appreciation, we invite all parents, carers and special friends to join us next Monday (December 10) in the BNW staffroom at 11am for a Thank You Morning Tea. All families are welcome, because we know you all help us in very special ways.

With the exciting announcement of a pledge to fund a new STELLA (Science, Technology, Environment, Language, Library, Arts) building at Brunswick North West, we have been busily considering how we can improve our STEM educational experiences across the school and wider community, utilising the grounds and the varying skill sets available through our staff and community. Next Tuesday (December 11, 6-8pm @ Make-Create Warehouse Space) there is a meeting held by Peter Khalil MP and Engineers Without Borders for those interested in STEM, to discuss what they think are important considerations in the STEM space. The discussions will revolve around education, policy, employment opportunities and more! Unfortunately we aren't able to attend as that is the night of our very special graduation evening, but I encourage any and all community members (including students) to have their say! You can RSVP for the free event here.

We are super excited to see the school playground developments continue. Our productive garden seems to be growing out of the ground, with new garden beds and fence posts nestling in around our upcoming outdoor kitchen, whilst our sensory playground is almost finished and ready for climbing and exploration by young and old! I have been allowed into the temporary fencing for a preliminary play and I promise you, it's a delight. We have some little native bushes that have been planted in the area, to begin the replanting of our woodlands area and these little buddies may do it tough over the summer. If you are around during the holidays and available to water the young plants for one week of the holidays (every other day, in the morning or evening), please sign up to our watering roster in the front office. And thanks!

On a final note for this week, I want to acknowledge that the current format of the newsletter has not been working for many families. Thank you to the families who have provided us with constructive feedback on what you are looking for and what makes the current and old formats less accessible. Over the summer break we will endeavour to find (or make!) a better version of the newsletter, based on feedback. I want to thank you for persisting with the current format (because if you are reading this, you clearly are persisting!) and I hope we get the third time lucky!

BNW would like to send out a huge thank you to all our invaluable volunteers who helped organise & run our Election Day BBQ. Our extended thanks to Carli Gray,Kylie Smith & Rodney White for all you do at all our BBQ's.

It turned out to be a very successful fundraiser with over $2500 raised from the sausage/veggie sizzle and our cake stall.

Thanks for taking me into your confidences!

Over this year, I feel very privileged to have got to know so many families. I have thoroughly enjoyed meeting with many parents, extended family members and children. Working with our committed teaching and support staff to help children maximize their learning.

For some children, learning at school, is a natural part of life. They quickly adapt to working with a variety of individuals, tackling different curriculum concepts, and learn both independently and as part of a group. For others, with no fault of their own, school can be a complex place, one in which they need to navigate, and need additional support. Over my extensive career, nearly 30 years in fact, I have learnt so much about children. One thing that I’ve regularly said to families is that children are like a ‘jigsaw’, sometimes it feels like we’ve got missing parts that we need to find or even create. Thank you to those of you who have worked with me to find build this jigsaw, enabling us collectively to place pieces carefully in place, helping your children to have greater success.

Below is an outstanding fact sheet about Autism, written by the well respected Bouverie St Family Services. When reading this, I couldn’t help but see the commonalities that many families face when grappling with children with additional needs. Below are my thoughts, linking to key themes. See what you think?

Families facing additional stresses.

Autism Spectrum Disorder and Families Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a lifelong neuro-developmental condition that impacts a person's social communication (both verbal and non-verbal) and interaction, and is coupled with restricted and/or repetitive behaviours and interests. An estimated 1 in 59 people are on the autism spectrum, with around 55,000 Victorians and 250,000 Australians being on the autism spectrum. ASD affects almost four times as many boys than girls, although it’s thought that many girls may remain undiagnosed. While the exact causes of ASD are unknown, research suggests that multiple genes act together with influences from the environment to affect development in ways that lead to ASD. ASD affects both the individual and their family. ASD and its impact on the family life cycle and relationships People with ASD often experience difficulty with knowing how to communicate with others; developing and maintaining relationships and friendships; and difficulty managing changes to their routine. They can also have difficulties with the sensory environment being either over or under-responsive to sensory features. People with ASD tend to rely on family members, including parents and siblings, well into adulthood. Family members of people with ASD often experience stress, anxiety and depression. Each family member and family relationship faces particular stressors/challenges throughout the family life cycle. Family members often feel shock, confusion and go through different emotions including grieving following an ASD diagnosis. Parents may feel guilt and blame themselves or may question that they themselves may be on the autism spectrum, as the condition is highly familial. Finding supports for the diagnosed child and considerations of treatment options can add to parental stress and family relationships and balancing work/family life. Siblings are at greater risk of also having associated features and/or emotional and behavioural challenges. They may struggle with issues of over responsibility; feelings of embarrassment; and jealousy at the attention and care that parents give to their sibling with ASD. As adults, many siblings face the stress of caretaking. Moreover, extended family members may be concerned about the effects of ASD on their family and future generations. Family stress and conflict can exacerbate the challenges for people with ASD. Many, but not all with ASD require consistent and calm environments, and need families to serve as effective advocates and caretakers. This may be compromised when family members are anxious or depressed. Strained family environments may lead the ASD family member to act out more, and limit their ability to make developmental progress. As a result, stress on the family may increase further, creating a negative cycle.

Tips/What might help?

Understanding ASD

Understanding the impact of ASD on not only the individual, but its impact upon family relationships, roles and responsibilities can help family members make sense of what is happening, and can assist and support the person with ASD. Understanding ASD can also assist with resolution of the diagnosis, enabling the family to move forward.

Acknowledging grief

Grief is a normal and inevitable response to loss, and the losses associated with ASD can be complex, ambiguous and difficult to understand. It is normal for family members to go through different feelings, emotions and how they handle these emotions can constrain or facilitate their connection with each other. Family members report waging an exhausting battle between fighting and accepting change in which there is a tension between grief and loss and fighting for recovery.

Linking in with significant others and community supports

Finding ways to keep connected as a family and with significant others (e.g. parents, grandparents, siblings, and friends) assists both the person with ASD and family members. Focus on the couple relationship is crucial given the challenges that ASD may bring; being aware of these changes and their impact can help to address strains on the relationship. To handle these strains and changes it is important to make time for each other as a couple, whether it is through organising a formal/informal carer once a month, respite or counselling. Nurturing your family relationships helps during times of crisis/ stress to remain strong and connected. Individual, couple and family counselling can also assist family members identifying strategies and resources, and staying connected and committed to working together on communicating and problem solving to create a cohesive and supportive environment for growth and development of all members within the family. Linking in with community services and ASD family support groups can be a beneficial way to offer and receive support and understanding about ASD. Joining other people in a similar situation to yours can help your family feel competent and supported.

Self-care

Too often those caring and supporting the family member with ASD neglect caring for themselves. While this is understandable in the early days, over time, the health of carers can suffer. It is important to consider self-care and the mental and physical needs of all family members, as well as the person with ASD. Participating in recreational and social activities is a good way to relieve stress, provides a much needed sanctuary and break from worry, and is a way to maintain connections with others.

Resilience and considering positive effects of the ASD

Many families display resilience, reporting that they have become stronger as a result of ASD in the family. Families living with disability report: a deepened compassion for others; re-establish values and priorities in life; learn new skills; provide service to others; deepened spirituality.

Links and further information:

Amaze: Ph: 9657 1600 http://www.amaze.org.au/ Raising Children Network: https://raisingchildren.net.au/autism Olga Tennison Autism Research Centre https://www.latrobe.edu.au/otarc

As mentioned above, while this fact sheet addresses Autism, it raises common themes for families when supporting their children with additional needs, including physical or cognitive disabilities; learning difficulties such as Dyslexia, Social or Emotional challenges, for instance anxiety.

Understanding – although it can be a scary and incredibly challenging time, understanding the diagnosis and learning about potential strengths and challenges is the first step of acceptance. Many families have reported to me being ‘ready’ to find out more! This can take time, and is a process which is different for everyone.Understanding the potential family stressors allows all involved to be well prepared and informed. Time and time again, I have seen families and teachers finding it far easier to show compassion when it is understood that needs or behaviours aren’t “deliberate or personal, but rather are what the child needs.”Acknowledging griefLinking in with significant others and community supports – as mentioned in previous newsletter, there are many services and supports available to families. Although people may feel alone, they aren’t. The NDIS can be helpful navigating the complex web of service providers.Self-care – sometimes easier said than done, but essential!Resilience and considering the positive effects – this is very relevant as seeing ‘what your child can do, rather than what s/he can’t’ helps build a strength based approach. Just today, a family was laughing when telling a story of how their child sees the world! Such joy and positiveness was contagious!

For the original fact sheet refer to:

So as to continue to build shared understanding of your child’s needs:

Our teaching staff will ensure that key information is shared at the end of this year with next year’s teacherI will share relevant information provided to me at the beginning of next year with 2019 teachers or on a ‘needs to know basis’.The ‘Family Suitcase’ proforma will be sent home at the start of next year.Families will be invited to continue communicating with myself or classroom teachers, depending on need.

Enjoy your children!

Wendy

Wominjeka everyone!

As you all recall, the Victorian Inclusion Agency have created a series of 90 second professionally filmed videos to showcase services with great practices to be linked to VIA website (viac.com.au). The videos are a mixture of Educators/Coordinators discussing topics such as how an additional educator has been used in their program and examples of inclusive practices. We were offered the opportunity to showcase the great work we do, and here is the link of the videos.

A big thank you to all the families that gave permission for their children to be part of this project and to all our amazing educators. https://vimeo.com/viac

Important notes:

A Current Medical Management Plan - signed by a doctor for the last 12 months;a Risk Minimisation Plan - discussed with the OSHC Coordinator;any medications, including i.e. ventolin and spacers.

Please Note: if you cannot meet the above requirements your child cannot attend the OSHC program according to our regulations.

Staffing News:

Both Carly and Bev will be back next week. Congratulations to both of them for completing their placements.Eric is safe and sound in Canada and he will be back in 2 weeks.

QIP (Quality Improvement Plan):

The Quality Improvement Plan is a regulatory document that helps OSHC services developing goals for change and improvement. At present we are working on Quality Area 6 - Collaborative partnerships with families and communities, where a Children's handbook is being implemented.

The Children's handbook is a great visual tool that helps children understanding the routines and expectations of the program, reducing anxiety and stress.

We welcome any of your feedback on both of these changes in the near future!

Information in the newsletter about class formation will slow down for a few weeks as teachers pore over thousands of combinations of student groups in order to find the best combination for everyone in the school. We understand that students and families can tend to feel a range of strong emotions about class groupings for the following year, we also understand that this is partly due to such strong connections between members of our community - relationships are so very important. I want to assure everyone that the staff involved in class formation take this job very seriously; it takes up a large portion of our meeting schedule in term 4 and teachers spend weeks collecting, considering and discussing the strengths and challenges of each combination. We take into consideration children’s academic and behavioural performance, their previous teachers and positive learning partnerships. Often our youngest want their friends to be in class with them, thinking about who they love to play with and whilst we delight in making learning fun, when we are in the classroom we look for different characteristics in a positive partnership - who supports your learning, who is kind and inclusive, who will respectfully challenge you to help you grow? This is what teachers look for when creating learning communities, based on their observations in the classroom and their knowledge of your children.

If you have been to the school in the past few weeks you will have seen a lot of progress on the playground in our Woodlands area and our productive garden. It is so exciting to see these projects come to life after so much imagining and planning! We hope that both of these projects will be finalised before the end of the school year, along with a new portable coming onsite over the summer holidays. A number of other projects are currently in the pipeline, as we continue to improve our building and grounds to meet the needs of our growing community. One special project that is currently still in the design phase is a special bench for Isabel Marrero to go into the Woodlands. A number of students from Unit MM and across the school did a design session with Michael and me, considering how we want to remember Isabel. This was a wonderfully positive and warm session that I feel honoured to have been part of; there were a number of themes that were raised by students, which speaks to how well people knew her and how deeply she touched her peers. If you have woodworking skills or know someone who might be able to assist us with this very special project, please make contact with the school.

During this time of construction, teachers have been talking with students about being mindful of objects in the yard that ‘don’t belong’. The builders and trades working within the school are aware of their OHS requirements and keep their tools and refuse within the temporary fencing and I continue to do weekly checks of the yard for anything left behind from construction or weekend adventures by the public, however our yard is large and filled with many tiny hiding places. We instruct students to not touch anything they see that seems strange and to tell a grown up straight away, but the cubby builders of this community appear to be part bowerbird and sometimes the lure of something colourful or shiny is very strong! We ask that any parents and carers of cubby builders continue this conversation at home - what are found-objects I can bring into my cubby (bits of string, rocks, etc) and what are found-objects I should find a grown up for without touching it (anything sharp, made of glass, owned by someone else), remembering that if it’s OK to go into the cubby, the grown up will let you keep it.

This Saturday brings our State Election and BNWPS is an official polling station! I encourage everyone who has not already voted to come and vote in our MPR; after the two political announcements made in recent weeks at our school, people are paying attention to us and our needs. It is important that everyone votes for whichever party and people they feel represent their needs and values, but no matter who you vote for, voting in our MPR will continue the attention we want… and thanks to our Community Events Team (CET) we will have delicious democracy sausages and cakes available! Thank you to everyone who has volunteered their time this Saturday - it’s not too late to bake a cake, muffins, cupcakes or biscuits for us to sell!

Wominjeka everyone!

Important notes:

A Current Medical Management Plan - signed by a doctor for the last 12 months;a Risk Minimisation Plan - discussed with the OSHC Coordinator;any medications, including i.e. ventolin and spacers.

Please Note: if you cannot meet the above requirements your child cannot attend the OSHC program according to our regulations.

Staffing News:

Carly is still way in India, completing her final placement.Eric is away for the next 2 weeks and Beverly is completing her placement next week.

Program News:

We went for a lovely walk around Yakai Barring. We’re so lucky to have a wetlands reserve as part of our school. We spotted lots of wildlife and commented on how well established the plants have become.

This week we also had our first tea party. We’ve been enjoying herbal teas as part of before care program, but we thought it would be lovely to share the “tea experience” with our after school pals. The students loved being part of the “café culture” (we are in Brunswick) and many great conversations were had over a warm cuppa.

Lastly, we have already began Christmas celebrations with craft and cooking activities. Watch this space!

Just a quick one from me this week as it's not my week, however I know you're keen for the next installment of Class Formation!

We know that many families are interested in finding out our teaching teams for 2019. We have been creating different models for a number of months now and are really excited to have designed teams that have both a great dynamic and a spread of expertise and interest.

FOUNDATION (4): Chris Moed, Bell Martys, Deb Robins, Larissa Fry

JUNIORS (8): Literacy Learning Specialist & Co-teacher, Alice Hamilton & Co-teacher, Jess Brown, Jesse Hughes-Welch, Nici Fausten, Shalani Marasinghe, 2 x advertised positions

MIDDLES (5): Kate Middleton, Ben Coady, Faith Kelly, Lori Kirk, Michael McLaughlan

SENIORS (4): Tim Plummer, Ann Laming, Jessie Meade & Co-teacher, Linda Van de Wall

SPECIALISTS:

Art - Kate McCormack (Foundation), Andrew Lang (1-6)

Indonesian - Kasenya Grant (Foundation and 3-6), Emma Hill (1/2)

Music - Jack Madin

PE - Tom Nelson

Library & Intervention - Jo Hutchins, Emma Hill, Diane Carpenter

As you will have noticed, there are a number of positions that do not have names yet; we are advertising a few positions to support Alice and Jessie in a new Numeracy Project they are part of in 2019-2020 and to assist with the growth of the school.

We are hugely excited that Jesse Hughes-Welch and Celia Dickinson are returning in 2019. Celia will be one of the ‘Co-teachers’ working in a shared classroom but will not be placed until we know the skill sets and personalities of the successful applicants from advertised positions. BNWPS want to wish Claire Cotton the best of luck in 2019, as she and her family move back to Tasmania for a year to enjoy the weather (brrr). We will miss you and your teaching skills greatly and look forward to your return.

Wominjeka everyone!

Important notes:

All accounts must be finalised by the end of the term 4. No bookings for 2019 can be accepted if your account is still in arrears;Enrolments for 2019 are now open. please visit the school website/OSHC/How to register to enrol your child or children for 2019. If you are registered please make sure to update your enrolment on QKenrol.bookings for 2019: you can make a request for booking to OSHC for 2019. Please go to QK enrol and update "current bookings". You will later receive an offer for your bookings, please accept the offer to confirm your bookings.If your child is away to camp, please cancel your bookings through My Family Lounge.

Staffing News:

Last wednesday the Professional VIA video were launched and BNWPS OSHC was involved in the production of these professional videos. Watch this spot. Carly is off for 2 weeks to India to undertake her amazing journal through a program from CERES. 'Educate the Educators' is a collaborative program between CERES Global and La Trobe University, where Australian and Indian teachers work together to address the educational needs of students with diverse abilities and focus on sustainable education within remote communities. Check out The Jamnya Project for more information! Congratulations Carly and all the best!Eric will be back next week from his placement and we all can't wait to have him back!

Staff Profile: Meet our beautiful Carly

Carly is studying towards the Bachelor of Teaching (Outreach & Community Education).

FUN FACTS about Carly:

Originally from Northern NSW- near Byron Bay;loves travelling and lived in UK for 2 years;Enjoys Yoga, snowboarding and collecting indoor plant;Makes coffee at the Herbet Cafe (Northcote) on weekendsHas a beautiful dog (son) nbamed Herman

Program Planning for Week 7

Focus Activities based on children's needs and interests

Monday 19 Nov Activities:

BSC: 1. watercolour still painting native wattle 2. Letters to Santa 3. UNO

ASC: 1.Pinecone poms poms Ornaments 2. Story writing 3. Catch up Club

Tuesday 20 Nov Activities:

BSC: 1. Outdoor ball games; 2. Magazine collage

ASC: 1. Yarn Bombing Conclusion 2.Cooking Club - Australian Native Spices 3.Group game: Chinese Wall

Wednesday 21 Nov Activities:

BSC: 1. Selection of colouring sheets 2. Badminton

ASC: 1.Chess Club 2. Bead Jewellery making; 3. Basket ball court games; 4.Coding club; 5. Cooking Club

Thursday 22 Nov Activities:

BSC: 1. Crosswords(Captain underpants pant); 2. Chessboard constructions

ASC: 1. Story writing Comp 2.Science Experiment 3.Coding club

Friday 23 Nov Activities:

BSC: 1. Cosmic Yoga(Moama) 2.Badminton

ASC: 1. Pinecone pom pom Ornaments 2. Board game Club

Activities provided on a daily basis:

Indoor quiet games, reading and outdoor play will proceed as usual while the focus activities are being regulated daily.

*Catch Up Club= opportunities of homework will be provided during the week if required.

Indoor quiet games include: board games, building cubbies, dress ups, Lego and other forms of construction.

Outdoor play includes: Play ground free play, sport games, cubby making and ball games (either child-led or teacher-led).

Menu

BSC: Selection of healthy cereals, wholemeal and fruit bread, a variety of spreads along with cold and hot drinks.

ASC:

Monday 19 Nov: Pasta Salads

Tuesday 20 Nov: Dips, veggies sticks and crackers.

Wednesday 21 Nov: Fresh fruit Muffins

Thursday 22 Nov: Healthy Wraps

Friday 23 Nov: Oats Cookies

Note: Please be aware that both the program planning and menu may slightly vary.

As you all know, last week, the whole school spent each afternoon learning together.

The goals of this program were for:

Children to have an opportunity to work with other children from different grades and year levels.Children to get to know teachers.To share and understand a clear, school wide definition of bullying.For children to explore practical ways to problem solve, including, but not only, when being bullied.For us as staff to communicate what the school does so that children and parents know our processes.

In cross aged groups the children and staff explored the following learning intentions:

1. We are learning to identify times when we are unsafe at school, including being bullied. We are also learning about what the school will do to help us feel safe.

2. We are learning to identify what we can do when we feel unsafe or when we see others upset.

3. We are learning to identify ways in which our families can help if we are feeling unsafe at school.

This program was designed in response to Student Attitude to School data as well as teacher and parent observations in relation to creating a school wide approach to managing both the perception of bullying and bullying itself, while empowering students and building their resilience to cope with life's challenges. The program also placed a significant emphasis on how we can all work together if children aren't feeling safe. This once again reiterates the whole of community approach to caring for and supporting all our children. We really are a team!

Last Friday, it was so exciting to see the number of carers who attended the afternoon session. Feedback from staff was how pleased they were to have the family input and involvement. This was especially important in relation to the 3rd learning intention which was learning to identify ways in which our families can help if we are feeling unsafe at school.

Other feedback from staff includes:

Linda and Deb reported: "Our kids loved playing the "Drop It If It's Nasty" ball game where they threw the ball to each other and pretended it was either a nice comment or a mean comment. The idea being that you don't pass mean comments around and you drop them instead and you pass the nice ones around.

They also loved designing t-shirts with their slogans about bystanders and kids having comeback lines ready for when someone said something mean to them. My favourite was, "That's pretty funny. You should write a joke book and put it in there." Or, on the front, "You smell" then on the back, "really nice."

Overall, they seemed to have a good time and they all had a lot to say about upstanders and bouncing back from hurt.

Alice and Chris reported: Resilience week was a great chance for different ages to collaborate together. The Senior students were fantastic leaders and facilitated some great discussions. We loved designing the t shirts and came up with some fantastic slogans! The attitude and commitment of all the students was incredible we were very proud of the work and discussions.

Kate Middleton reported: Bell and my group were so sweet. The older students were extremely nurturing towards, and considerate of the younger kids, and helped them engage in the written activities. All the students also participated in discussions and circle games enthusiastically. I think it was extremely beneficial in creating a cross-school dialogue involving all three sectors or the community (children, staff and parents) so that we are all on the same page when it comes to the issues of bullying and building resilience. I think it was important to involve the parents, and they loved it! The children spoke eloquently and confidently against all their learnings of the past three days.

There was even a parent whose child was absent, who came along to the parent afternoon, (which I thought was pretty dedicated!) and he was also impressed by the multi-age approach and the strategies we were teaching the children. He took photos of our ‘What Families Can Do To Help’ display to discuss when he got home. He also took the contract.

As I said to Deb already, it was a great experience. I guess we won’t know the impact until we make some observations in the yard though.

Family Workshops:

Resilience has also been addressed in the Family workshops that have been held for this term, both in relation to creating and maintaining friendships and when expressing emotions. This is something that we will continue to work towards developing next year when we offer the evidence based, "Tuning Into Kids" program for interested families.

Talking about resilience...

The Senior's Race Around Melbourne, certainly gave the students (and staff) a chance to practise their problem solving skills, coping when things don't go according to plan and learning in the real world. What a great, authentic opportunity to build resiliency skills. As a family, what opportunities can you give your children to develop these skills further?

We hope you all enjoyed the extended weekend and a shortened week; sometimes it can be nice to take a moment to breathe and stop to enjoy the roses, especially with a busy (and somewhat hectic) school calendar like we have this term! We are certainly learning from each and every term, how we can improve our practices to meet the best educational outcomes; but we have also enjoyed lots of bucket filling this week, which is a wonderful way to build resilience!

Our Attitude to School Survey data is collected annually by students in grades 4-6 across the state. Interestingly, our data was on a downward trend in recent years, which informed the school’s priority of working on how our students were feeling within the school space, especially in regards to their feelings of safety and their sense of agency over their learning. The 2018 data showed an impressive improvement through student voice, inspiring teaching and positive relationships with adults in the school - the feedback was very exciting! But there was clearly more to do - students had identified ongoing concerns around bullying and their sense of safety within the school. As a school, we have had a comprehensive and ongoing approach to this, which informs and engages students and teachers to be part of the solution. We have spent a large portion of the year learning about personal safety, boundaries and consent with Deanne Carson of Body Safety Australia and have started to review our approach to Restorative Practices. We have changed our yard duty routes and frequencies, we have resourced spaces within the yard and are looking into student projects that can create more equitable spaces, we have reviewed our consequence pathway and we held a senior school student forum, where students were able to share their own research around bullying and child safety at BNWPS and guide school leadership's attention to what they felt was most important. A through line that we have recognised is around perceptions of bullying - what does it mean to be bullied and what does it mean to be resilient? The senior students decided that we needed a shared understanding of this to help clarify behaviours, discussions and appropriate consequences, so this week we have been exploring the concepts of bullying, resilience and bystanders through fun, cross-age resilience week activities.

It has been so wonderful to see these cross-age activities; to see the kindness and thoughtfulness that exists between our students of all ages, to see children actively engaging in finding positive solutions to challenging issues and relying on the amazing network of friends and safe people they have already formed. I was impressed to see children struggling to be mean through role play, demonstrating empathy that many bullies act out of their own fears or worries or cackling with laughter at the humorous rebuffs they were thinking of for insults we’ve heard of before or made up on the spot. Resilience is not something one can buy or ‘get’ in a moment, but is developed and nurtured over time through connections with those who care about us, through remembering the positives and our strengths, letting go of the negatives and through actively thinking about what we can do to empower ourselves and those around us.

Following the timeline in our , we have finalised our 2019 class structures (below), which aim to support student learning by maintaining consistency with strong teaching teams and small classes, while utilising our spaces to the best of our current ability.

Teachers and staff will soon start the mega-task of creating class groups. We ask that any requests for class placements are made through our Google Form that can be found at: http://bit.ly/2019ClassFormation which will close next Friday November 16th. Each year we have numerous families asking for their child to have a particular teacher or a particular friend without there being a clear and ongoing underlying reason for this to be necessary. I want to assure everyone that while we are only accepting parent/carer requests that respond to ongoing concerns or additional needs, every single student is carefully considered when finding the right class for them. Classroom teachers, specialist teachers and integration aides all work together to create the most functional, supportive and engaging class cohorts that we can - considering academic ability, behaviour, past years, friendship groups and pairings that don’t work so well. Meanwhile, our leadership team has spent the whole term developing a strong workforce plan of teaching teams that will cater to the needs of all our students and excite them into learning! You will be able to read about which teachers are in which teams in next week's newsletter.

2019 Class Structures: 431 students, 21 classes

Foundation Team: (Foundation)

4 classes, approximately 16 students per class

Junior Team: (Grades 1 & 2)

8 classes, approximately 20 students per class

Middle Team: (Grades 3 & 4)

5 classes, approximately 23 students per class

Senior Team: (Grades 5 & 6)

4 classes, approximately 24 students per class

Last week was filled with news and excitement, visitors and attention like we have never had before! Actually, we have made big news before, but this was definitely for a better reason! Whilst the money is not in the bank yet, the recognition of both our exceptional school and community and our below-standard resources has filled the buckets of many of our school councillors and biggest campaigners. I want to extend a huge thank you to all those participating in the campaign and acknowledge that members of our community that do not have children at our school have been incredibly helpful - we thank you for this sharing of knowledge and skill. I want to extend a particular thank you to Fiona Heathcote, our School Council President; Sam Cohen, our School Council Treasurer and Belinda Kerry, our Strategic Infrastructure Committee Chair; the number of personal hours you have dedicated to this campaign over the past 12 months is quite extraordinary and it must be noted that numerous politicians have described our Strategic Infrastructure Statement and other elements of our campaign have been virtually faultless (perhaps the reason for the unmatched pledge for a primary school). After the announcement, campaign work continues. If you are interested in finding out how you can contribute to this cause, please speak with a school council member or check their social media pages for information.

Since the announcement, I have had a number of people ask about their voting and how this influences funding of our school. I want to state very clearly that I cannot and will not tell anyone how to vote - you must all consider the numerous issues our society faces, what your priorities are and how you feel your values will be best represented. I will ask however that if it’s not a trek out of your planned day, we’d love community members and their friends and family vote in our polling station in the Multipurpose Room!

Families of students currently in grades 4-6 may be interested in following this link to find out more information about Student Scholarships that are available from the John & Maud Askew Fund. $500 is available for students in grades 4 and 5, with $1,000 available to students in grade 6 if they are enrolled in a Victorian Government school and are involved in school or community activities. Applications close 1st February 2019.

Tomorrow night (Saturday) is our first ever Movie Night! We can’t wait to see how this new idea goes as both a fundraiser and social event. Come along, bring your friends and family, bring a rug and your best paper plane design! There will be food trucks and a space for drinks, with raffles drawn and prizes awarded throughout the paper plane competition. Tickets must be pre-purchased through Eventbrite - click this linkto buy. Doors open at 6.30 with the movie starting at 8.30 - we can’t wait to see you there!

Woominjeka (Welcome) to our weekly newsletter.

What a fantastic day we had on Monday for the OSHC All Day! Children loved the cooking activities: pizza and rice paper rolls! It was lovely to see children being engaged in decorating the pots, as well as, working towards the yarn bombing for the front gate... children were so good in making the pom poms that they decided to take them home! Oh well... as long as they are happy!

Important Notes:

1. As part of our focus on the Aboriginal Culture and Identity, children have been welcomed at group time by acknowledging the traditional land of Wurundjeri every afternoon session.

2. At OSHC we plan and cater activities based on children interests and needs, where children can learn or develop their skills through a fun, nurturing and inclusive environment. Therefore the OSHC team educators have extended from the most popular activities and implemented new clubs.

Program Planning for Week 6

Monday 12 Nov Activities:

BSC: 1. Origami Cats; 2.Uno competition; 3. Cosmic Kids Yoga (use utube lady 20 min max); 3.uno Comps

ASC: 1. Pom pom Pinecone Ornaments; 2.Painting flowers and fruit (still life); 3. Catch up club (homework support); 4. Scavenger hunt

Tuesday 13 Nov Activities:

BSC: 1. Skipping outside; 2. Writing letters to Santa

ASC: 1.Yarn bombing the front gate Conclusion! 2. Group Game: un, due, tre stella! 3. Cooking club; Muesli Cookies (Bush Tucker); 4. Coding club

Wednesday 14 Nov Activities:

BSC: 1. Mindful colouring cityscapes; 2.Badminton

ASC: 1.Tea party – making tea in the kitchen at 4:30pm; 2.Drawing COMP; 3. Group Game: Poison Ball; 4. Coding club; 5. Chess Club

Thursday 15 Nov Activities:

BSC: 1. Word searches; 2. Chessboard construction

ASC: 1. Walk around Yakai Bari (after 4.30pm); 2. Comic characters; 3. Group Game: Fruit Salad; 4. Science Club: Erosion Experiment; 5.Coding club

Friday 16 Nov Activities:

BSC: 1. Jig saw puzzles; 2. Musical freeze (airplay ton TV)

ASC: 1. Chalk drawing outside, 2. Soccer drills; 3. Board Games Club; 4 Pom pom Pinecone Ornaments;

Menu

BSC: Selection of healthy cereals, wholemeal and fruit bread, a variety of spreads along with cold and hot drinks.

ASC:

Monday 12 Nov: pumpkin potato currie puff

Tuesday 13 Nov: Pita salad wrap

Wednesday 14 Nov: pasta baked

Thursday 15 Nov: Fresh Fruit Muffins

Friday 16 Nov: Dips, Veggies sticks and crackers

Note: Please be aware that both the program planning and menu may slightly vary.

Learning together, “You need to be a good friend, to have friends.”

On Monday night, over 30 family members attended the session on Friendships which Deb Robins, Thea Calzoni from Strengthening Parents North and I facilitated. It was a great night where parents met other families, share their experiences and learn. Thanks to all parents who attended, we especially appreciated your honesty, input and reflection. Once again, it is lovely to see everyone’s openness and willingness to share. We look forward to running more of these sessions next year. Especially keeping in mind that we’ll run the “Tuning Into Kids” parent program, for interested families next year…very exciting indeed! Look out for details.

Playground matters:

The playground indeed matters! Regularly your children face complex social situations in which they need to cope with challenges and disappointment, and yet behave in respectful ways, while seeking to find resolution. Sometimes they do this on their own, with friends help, and sometimes with adult support.

An outstanding example of this, where a group of approximately 15 students demonstrated, humanity, consideration, negotiation skills and respect was where…

One morning before school, a group of children ran up to me, understandably upset because someone had destroyed their ‘hotel cubby’. The damage included breaking a metal box, removing and eating the chocolates, smashing a ceramic flower pot and breaking a wooden container. Although upset, we all though, me included, that it must have been the ‘teenagers’ after school. While this was bad enough, later we discovered that it was in fact some of our students. Clearly we had a problem to solve!

Restorative Justice in action.

By now many of you would understand that we use Restorative Practices to resolve problems!

In this instance it involved, firstly:

Talking to children about who knew what about the problem. Over the course of the day, it appeared that a few children were involved.Meeting with these children, determining, “What happened”. It is important to note that this is a ‘fact finding time and no blame is laid.During this discussion, children told of their part of the problem, including what they had done. This is a very important phase as individuals need to accept responsibility for their actions.These children then spoke of the ‘harm they had done’, i.e. who had been effected and how? Some very insightful comments were made including: “The cubby group must be very upset, we ruined things they had bought from home.” And, “They will be upset when they find out it was someone at school.” This part of the process is designed to build children’s empathy in an attempt to ensure that they don’t make the same mistakes in the future.The next step was meeting with all the cubby builders. Firstly, I explained how upset I had been to see what happened and that I knew that a lot of effort had been put into making the cubby. I then asked all children to tell me how they had been affected by the damage done. All children had their say. Needless to say, they felt pretty upset, especially as other members of the school had done this.At this point, I read the offers that the other children had made in order to try to fix the problem. We all quickly realised how similar they were. We had a brilliant discussion about how we wanted the apologies. All but one child, agreed that it would be best to give a choice about how to apologise, either face to face or a written apology with their name. No one wanted them to feel ashamed of their actions, but wanted them to realise that they had caused ‘harm’. This showed cubby group’s maturity and kindness.

The future:

We then began a discussion in which we wanted to stop this happening in the future. The suggestions were as follows:

Bring things that won’t breakDon’t bring any food, as the children thought that it may be taken it again as it is so tempting and also because of allergies and potential illness.Don’t spend money on things.Don’t bring special stuff – things get taken when cubbies aren’t being used.Invite people to join in because “we’re a ‘rich cubby’. Another child added that he had counted the sticks and they had over 220 sticks, while other cubbies only had 100 sticks. The discussion then went into “Do we have to let people join in? The cubby is already huge!” It was decided that if someone has done you harm, i.e. ruined the cubby, you don’t have to let them join in, this is in fact a consequence of their actions. You may want to wait a while, (maybe a month!) and then give them another chance.

I was so proud of these children, I can only imagine how you as parents would have felt.

I share this story both to celebrate the strength of character of your children, and to also illustrate how resilient children can be. They faced adversity, with adult support, they resolved the issue. While I followed up with the children, I didn’t set the consequence, I didn’t need to! If of course this happened again, then we would need to escalate the school’s response, with the behaviour potentially been seen as bullying.

With this in mind, I invite you all to come on Friday, 9th of November at 3.00pm to share with your children the outcome of the Cross-age work on Resilience and Bullying. You will learn more about:

What the school doesWhat your child can do to help themselves and others solve problems , andShare with your child, what they want you to do to help.

Look forward to seeing everyone there!

Welcome to our weekly newsletter!

In OSHC, one of the most important part of Before and After School Care is eating healthy. Our children really enjoy our snacks, which often are cooked or baked by our amazing educators. We also look for opportunity to improve our quality care. We are currently reviewing our menu to make sure that sugar and salt present in the food are very limited. As you are aware, there are also a number of children with a strict diet requirement and often this can be challenging for us to plan and provide always a healthy snack for everyone, no matter their restrictions.

So, the OSHC team would like to thank Russel Hall for spending time in researching and creating some recipes of healthy food with no nuts, or allergy free (i.e. gluten free), or no refined sugar, that we are enthusiastic to use in our menu or even for our cooking activities with the children.

Important dates and notes:

Student Free Day: Mon the 5th Nov (Melbourne Cup long weekend) is Student Free Day and OSHC is offering a full day care from 7:30am- 6pm. If you need care on this day, please make your booking through My Family Lounge App. All snacks and lunch are provided, including breakfast. Lots of activities will be catered, including cooking, gardening, art&craft and lots of group games.Melbourne Cup: Tue 6th of Nov – Public Holiday. No OSHC. All bookings will be cancelled at no cost.Reminder Absences Reporting: if your child is away you must reporting their absences through MFL App. If your child is away because is unwell, please make sure to advise the OSHC program as you will be charged at different rate.

Staffing

Eric started his placement this week, while Bev will be finishing her placement this week.Nadia, Andrea and Bernadetta attended to our OSHC Network Meeting, and the main topic was Nutrition Australia with Amy Wakem, where some samples of healthy OSHC menu were presented. A food and drink guidelines and checklist for OSHC were also introduced and discussed.

I don’t know if you have noticed, but BNW has hit the ground running in term 4! There has been a sense of purpose to every day these past few weeks; students are in the rhythm of learning, teachers are also enjoying that rhythm and have started writing semester reports while school leadership has their heads halfway in 2019 already! As per our , today I am publishing our forecasted enrolment numbers for 2019 and ask for any fresh and new ideas of potential class structures. When creating new class structures, it is important to remember that the Victorian Government Schools Agreement states that the average class size in F-2 should be 21 or lower and that we as a school, like to create teams of similar year levels to allow for teachers to collaborate in their planning and support each other throughout the year. If you have any ideas that you wish to share, please email them to the school or bring them to the front office before Thursday 1st November. Our enrolment numbers and an example structure is below, but new and creative ideas are always welcomed!

Swimming starts next week and is scattered throughout the term for different classes. We acknowledge that the swimming in schools program can be an added hassle in the mornings for some families and we know all too well that it can make the learning program challenging, but water safety for our young people is so important that it is worth the interruptions! We have had a few questions about the swimming in schools program, so hopefully we can clear up some of the more common questions:

The Swimming in Schools program is compulsory for schools to provide - it is not compulsory for students to attend. If your child is already participating in swimming outside of school and/or your family would prefer your child does not attend for any reason, we will make arrangements for them to stay at school and continue their learning with their peers. Sessions run consecutively so your child will be able to stay with a class of the same year level.The Swimming in Schools program is provided to all families completely free of charge however families are able to make a completely optional contribution, as the funding provided for the program does not cover the costs of running the program.The Swimming in Schools program is on different weeks for different classes. As we are partnering with Elite Swimming, the pool and facilities can only fit a certain number of students and sessions and weeks had to fit around existing events at our school.

If any parents or caregivers are able to attend swimming and support students in getting changed, please contact your child’s teacher. Typically we run short on male grown ups to assist our younger students and would appreciate any assistance that you might be able to provide. Please remember, all volunteers must have a current and valid Working with Children Check that has been presented to the front office.

On Saturday November 10th we are trialling a new fundraising event for Brunswick North West; we invite all community members to join us for a movie night on the oval. The aim of this event is to raise much needed funds for our oval and (of course) to enjoy the warmer evenings with the best community around. Keep an eye out for information on our movie night and please let us know what you think of the event and whether we should book it again for next year!

Building resilience will continue to be a regular theme throughout this term and next year, as evidence demonstrates that this is a priority in society and also within our student population. Attitudes to School Survey data outlines that our students aren’t feeling as though they have the skills, strategies or dispositions to always be as resilient as they want to be. I can only imagine as a parent that there is a desire to protect your child from any harm, big or small, however we know that life will always bring challenges and the best way to support your child is to upskill them to manage those challenges in a positive and empowered way. The question is, how do we build resilience? An interesting and thought provoking video can be found here- titled ‘5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Children Do’. In this video, Gever Tulley challenges society’s beliefs about ‘commonly known’ child safety facts and proposes that there has been a significant impact on our society and our children as a result of these beliefs. Whilst the presentation may take some patience to get through, a number of his ideas are fascinating and perhaps worth a further exploration about how this fits within our school environment and community, where we have a pre-existing belief about children interacting with nature through measured risk.

Welcome to our weekly newsletter!

First of all we would like to welcome our newest families to our program. It is always nice to meet new children and families at OSHC program.

Important dates and notes:

Student Free Day: Mon the 5th Nov (Melbourne Cup long weekend) is Student Free Day and OSHC may offer a full day care from 7:30am- 6pm depending on numbers. If you need care on this day, please make your booking by Friday the 26th of October through My Family Lounge App. A communication will be sent out on Monday the 29th of October whatever the OSHC full day will take a place or not.Reminder Absences Reporting: if your child is away you must reporting their absences through MFL App. If your child is away because is unwell, please make sure to advise the OSHC program as you will be charged at different rate.

Staffing

Andrea, Eric, Nadia and Bernadetta attended to the Aboriginal Culture and Identity Workshop last Wednesday 17th Oct.

This workshop was conducted by Annette Sax from Yarn Strong Sista. It included group work, storytelling and hands-on art experience.

Promoting authentic representations of Indigenous culture and identity forms the purpose of work that the Yarn Strong Sista perform. At this workshop we learnt what contemporary Indigenous cultures and identities look like and we focused on breaking down prejudices that exist, and the discriminations faced by Indigenous people.

By touching on elements – both from the past and the present – this workshop also challenged existing beliefs and shifted the way we think about Aboriginal culture and identity.

In the next following weeks, we will incorporate a range of activities to embrace the Aboriginal Culture and Identity. Watch this spot.

Naraah is currently away this week enjoying a wonderful holiday and she will be back on Monday.Eric and Bev will be on their placement for next few weeks and we wish them good luck.

The Quality Improvement Plan is a regulatory document that helps OSHC services developing goals for change and improvement. At present we are working on Quality Area 5 – Relationships with Children. As part of this, we are collaborating to develop behaviour management strategies that are consistently in line with our core beliefs and the values of the school community. We want our approaches to be fair, respectful, and inclusive of all children, while also being effective in keeping children safe.

Another opportunity for improvement we will be working on in the next few weeks will be in Quality Area 4 – Staffing Arrangements. We will be developing and displaying educator profiles, to keep you informed about who is working at the OSHC and what our interests and values are, and what we have to offer.

We welcome your feedback on both of these changes in the near future!

I would like to conclude this newsletter with this quote:

“What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?” - Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Philosopher 1712-1778)

Bernadetta

OSHC Coordinator

The 3/4s this term are learning all about poetry. This week we’ve had a go at writing Cinquain poems.

Here are some fantastic examples :

Important dates and notes:

Last Wednesday, we welcomed Jack and the choir. Lots of children from OSHC joined in as well as several parents with their children. It was a very lovely experience watching both adults and mixed age group children working together and developing new friendships. For anyone who is interested, Jack is offering his spare time every Wednesday from 3:45pm -4:30pm. Anyone can join and there is no weekly commitment. If you are free on a Wednesday, just pop over and enjoy the sound of music.Damper Recipe:INGREDIENTS50g (3 cups) self-raising flourPinch of salt80g butter, chilled, cubed185ml (3/4 cup) waterYour favourite bush tucker spicesMETHODStep 1-Preheat oven to 200°C. Line a baking tray with non-stick baking paper. Combine the flour and salt in a large bowl. Use your fingertips to rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.Step 2-Add the water to the flour mixture and use a round-bladed knife in a cutting motion to mix until the mixture just comes together, adding 1-2 tablespoons extra water if the mixture is a little dry. Add your favourite bush tucker spices. Use your hands to bring the mixture together.Step 3-Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead gently for 1-2 minutes or until smooth. Shape into an 18cm disc and place on tray. Use a sharp knife that has been dipped in flour to mark 8 wedges on top. Dust the damper with a little extra flour and bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes or until the damper is cooked through and sounds hollow when tapped on the base. Transfer to a wire rack for 5 minutes to cool slightly. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Building Resilience in your child

Holidays are over and many great experiences have been shared.

Speaking to many children they seemed to enjoy the “Holiday Bingo Challenge”. Thank you to all those families who trialled some of these experiences, hopefully it allowed for some very positive family time, while maybe encouraging your children to take some risks.

The purpose of this activity was to expand your children’s repertoire of activities and where necessary replacing ‘screen time’. As with all behaviour change programs, we start small!

As Deb Robins has mentioned in the Compass message, during “Cup Week”, on the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, we are all going to be involved in a ‘resilience week’. The goals of these 3 x 11/2 hour sessions are:

For children to have an opportunity to work with others from different grades and year levels.For children to get to know other teachers.To share and understand a clear, school wide definition of bullying.For children to explore practical ways to problem solve, including, but not only, when being bullied.For us as staff to communicate what the school does so that children and parents know our processes.

All the children will be divided into multi-age groups. Two teachers will work together to help children attain the following Learning Intentions:

We are learning to identify times when we feel unsafe at school, including being bullied. We are also learning about what the school will do to help us feel safe.We are learning to identify what we can do when we feel unsafe or when we see others upset.We are learning to identify ways in which our families can help if we are feeling unsafe at school.

All parents are invited on Friday 9th of November at 3.00pm to share the children’s learning.

This program has been designed to revisit many of the concepts introduced as part of the RRRR program which is delivered throughout the year. It also aligns with research by Beyond Blue as seen in table 3.

Especially:

Peer relationshipsPro-social skills* and empathy Positive coping skillsSelf-regulationSense of agency*Self-reflectionProblem-solvingSelf-efficacy*

For more information about Building Resilience, please go to the following link: https://www.beyondblue.org.au/who-does-it-affect/children/building-resilience-in-children-aged-0-12

As seen in Figure 3 below, a core foundation of building resilience is to “Build, strengthen and promote supportive relationships.” As the primary educator, parents and families form the foundation.

During this year, I’ve taken the opportunity to share different ways of supporting both you and your children. On October 29th you are invited to the 2nd Family evening where Deb Robins, Thea Calzoni and myself are sharing resources and strategies to support your children build friendships.

Next year we are planning on offering the “Tuning into Kids” parenting program. More information will be provided as arrangements are finalised.

Another way of that families can access information and support is through Gateway Health. This is a highly respected organisation. Let me know if you want any support contacting this or any other service.

Positive Parenting Telephone Service

The Positive Parenting Telephone Service (PPTS) is a parent education program that you can do from your own home. It is for families with children between the ages of 2 and 10 years, who are experiencing difficulties in parenting, have children with behavioural problems or simply as a preventative measure.

This is a unique program which delivers the service via the telephone. Participants are required to complete a 6-10 week series of tasks based on readings from a workbook or via online modules. Over this period parents are supported on a one to one basis via weekly telephone consultations with a trained Parent Educator. Consultations are based on an appointment system with both day and evening appointments available.

This is a free service for parents, grandparents caring for their grandchildren and carer of children aged 2-10 who live in Victoria. Our freecall number is 1800 880 660.

https://gatewayhealth.org.au/images/brochures/162303_-_Positve_Parenting_Brochure_FINAL_no_watermarks_24102017.pdf

In the undercover area on the 26 October at 3.30pm. Our grade 1/2 parents are hosting this market with an array of fresh and baked goods.

Hope to see you there!

Hello brilliant BNWers and welcome back to term 4! I hope you all had a wonderful and restful break and that you and your family are feeling energised for the 11 (now 10) exciting weeks ahead. This is a particularly exciting term for our Foundies and Grade 6 students, each of whom are celebrating the last term of a very important year - but we certainly know that every year is an important one at BNWPS! This term sees some exciting experiences such as 2019 Foundie transition, and Grade 6 graduation events, but there will be plenty on for everyone.

I have heard some wonderful stories this week, of trips away, time with family and friends and plenty of relaxing, which is great to hear! I know a few students did very well on their holiday bingo challenge and I hope you enjoyed the challenge if you participated yourself. Over the holiday break our school projects continued to make progress. You may have noticed that our shipping containers have moved - one is near the new productive garden site for garden storage and one has been taken off-site to get some modifications that will turn it into an outdoor kitchen for our garden program. I was lucky enough to have a go at breaking up the concrete that supported the shipping containers in their old location. I may need a fair bit more practice before Darren will employ me to do this work, but it is very exciting to learn some new skills!

Our ISF playground continued their landscaping works, removing the concrete slab from our chicken coop (thanks for your help with that too, Darren!) and preparing the ground for the incoming equipment. The bespoke wooden pieces for our playground are still a few weeks off so progress will now slow down in this area, but we have been assured that the playground should be ready for children before the end of term.

During the holidays there was also a site meeting for our incoming portable classrooms. This new classroom will be ready for the 2019 school year and is intended to be positioned between this year’s Units AL/MM and Yakai Barring, with a deck between the two portables. We are excited about the installment of more classrooms and appreciate Grove’s willingness to work with us to create a beautiful learning community for next year.

This term we are trialling our new weekly newsletters, with only one message from leadership in each newsletter. I will be writing on odd weeks (I guess I am a bit odd!) and Wendy writing on even weeks. We value any feedback about the new approach and whether the more regular, succinct information is easier to access for families.

During the holiday break the data from our Parent Opinion Survey was released to schools. Initial analysis of this data shows some great improvements, some interested trends, a clear message regarding our facilities and infrastructure and a few contrasts against the Attitudes to School Survey data, which is collected from students in grades 4-6. Our school uses all of this data to inform priorities as part of our continuous improvement cycle. Over this term, Wendy and I will unpack much of this data with students, in the newsletter and at Education Committee, to understand what we need to focus on most and how effective our practices currently are. Much of our most interesting data from students and families revolves around resilience and feelings of safety. We have been addressing yard safety all year and will continue to work on this in 2019, but this term you will start to see a lot more information and events around building resilience, including a very exciting week of fun coming up later this term.

Speaking of yard safety, we love our school with its measured risk and natural playground environment; I know many of you chose this school, at least partly due to our cubbies and rock gardens. Towards the end of last term we had two incidents involving unsafe play with rocks that ended up with students being injured. As a school we are reminding students of how to play safely with rocks and sticks and we are reviewing our natural laws of stick play to include rocks as well! If your child is one who enjoys playing with our natural resources throughout the yard, I ask that you support our messaging at school by discussing how they play with sticks and rocks and reminding them to always be careful and aware when they are playing in this way. If you ever hear of unsafe play from the yard, please communicate this with your child’s classroom teacher so we can be proactive in monitoring and supporting all students to play safely.

This term is a SunSmart term in all government primary schools. This means that all students across Victoria must be wearing a broad-brimmed or legionnaires hat during recess, lunch and PE and they must have their shoulders covered (ie. no singlets or tank tops). A related school-based policy as we head into the warmer months is that we ask students to wear closed-toe shoes as our yard poses many potential risks with sticks poking inside sandals. These are the only compulsory rules we have around student uniform/dress and we appreciate your cooperation and understanding in keeping all our students safe.

For our staff, a large portion of this term is dedicated to planning for 2019 and one of the biggest tasks ahead of us is class formation. Our classroom placement policy can be found and outlines the timeline and process we undertake to design classes that cater to the needs of individuals while working cohesively as a larger group. Each fortnight I will continue to write about class placement, guiding families through where and how their input is sought.

Hi everyone

Welcome back to a busy Term 4!

Just a reminder that there is a new menu for term 4 and that there are some price changes notably:

muffins and biscuits are now $2.50!

Please ensure your child has the correct money to pay for their lunch order or to purchase items at recess.

The Term 4 menu is on Compass or there are hard copies available on the counter

at the school office.

Thanks as always to our volunteers!

Kind regards

Kris

Special offer: 50% discount for new enrolments from OSHCP families!

Parents of OSHCP children, why not come along and try French Club? It’s a fun and effective way to use an hour of your child’s afternoon.

Watch your kids feel positive about learning another language.

Children of all ages and experience welcome. Limited places.

Wednesdays 3.45-4.45pm

Contact Jim

0432 719 034

jim.callahan@lcfclubs.com.au

You are invited to the opening of the lemonade-drinking-season at the

Lemonade Stand Shop, Saturday 27 October, 2-5pm

Hello you might remember us … The Lemonade Stand Shop. We sell homemade, ice-cold lemonade from a strip of shops in Pascoe Vale. The idea is that people from all over Melbourne donate lemons, we make and sell lemonade, and the money raised buys food for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre Foodbank.

The shop has raised over $6,000, so far, and we’ve bought things like sacks of rice, lentils, toilet paper, eggs, sardines and spices for the Foodbank.

Drop by for a drink or take-home bottle. You can even help serve lemonade if you want, and drink lemonade, of course. Everyone is welcome.

Opening hours:

· Saturday 27 October, 2-5pm

· Saturday 17 November, 2-5pm

· Saturday 15 December, 2-5pm

The Lemonade Stand Shop – 16 Devon Rd, Pascoe Vale (next to the bottle shop)

From, Dot (unit MM) and Flowers (unit FK)

www.thelemonadestandshop.com

www.facebook.com/thelemonadestandshopdevonrd

All day OSHC

We run all day OSHC sessions for pupil free days during the year. The next pupil free day will be the day before Melbourne Cup day Monday 5th Monday. Further details will be emailed to all enrolled families in the next few weeks. We cannot run the session without a minimum number of students. If you require care for this day, let us know via email so we can start gathering information about numbers.

Donations

We are a non-for-profit program and appreciate donations of good quality items for students to use in the program. Look out for the flyer attached to this email for further details.

Holiday absences

We’ve had a few families head off on fabulous holidays while forgetting to cancel OSHC. If you don’t want me ringing you while you’re relaxing at the beach – remember to email and cancel!

From the program for this week

We had a great start to the term exploring water filtration and the importance of having clean drinking water in our society. We also enjoyed making damper with bush tucker spices wild plum and lemon myrtle.

Yesterday was Chilli con carne day with many kids going home with full tummies (all healthy of course)! All our food seems to disappear very quickly. We’ve noticed a whole heap of growth spurts going on lately. We go through 35 kilos of fruit and veg alone per week!

What we’re looking forward to this term

Cooking with bush tucker in cooking clubHalloween eventsYarn bombing the front gateScience experimentsCup day fashion paradeCoding and catch up clubsResilience week activitiesNew games to play

ATTENTION ALL SCHOOL FAMILIES Time to de-clutter your life! We love giving children the opportunity to enjoy awesome art and games experiences at OSHC. We are a a non-for-profit service and appreciate all donations. Help save the environment and enjoy seeing your stuff cherished a second time round.

We would appreciate any of the following materials; • Good quality pens, pencils and paints (including water-colour) • Sticky-tape, glue, hole punches and ink stamps • Coloured paper, card off-cuts, recycled paper that has only been printed on one side. • Beads, jewelry findings, Fimo and modelling clay • Cloth, sewing threads, needles, buttons, stuffing and trimmings • Bits of wood off-cuts (that have not been treated or are MDF) • Jig saw puzzles (preferably under 300 pieces) • Quality games with all pieces present • Sports equipment (basketballs, tennis balls, hula hoops etc) • Train set (especially wooden) and match box cars • Aprons and cooking utensils for cooking club • Good quality dress ups (size 6 upwards) • Lego (ok – only if you’re feeling very generous). Due to our environmental policy we can’t accept glitter or iron-on bead craft. Please note: we can only accept donations between 8.45am and 9.30am and 3.45pm – 6.00pm week days. (3pm – 3.45pm is a super busy time for us and we appreciate your understanding).

Last week our staff received professional learning from Deanne Carson of Body Safety Australia. It was the final session of a series throughout the year, supporting our staff in talking to students about bodies, relationships, safety, sexuality, personal boundaries and consent. There was an obvious trend when we got to Cybersafety - this is where our teachers feel most unsure and I know many families have shared that they feel the same way. During this latest session, Deanne mentioned something that truly stuck with me - as teenagers we used to transition to independence from adults by seeking opportunities to be away from our parents or teachers for period of time, often in groups and often in public spaces. Here we would engage in risk-taking behaviours of varying degrees (something research says is a very typical teenage behaviour) and not under direct supervision of an adult. Over the past 20-30 years there has been a shift away from young people being outside due to safety concerns and now we see teenagers seeking to be away from adults and engaging in risk-taking online, filling the online spaces as we did parks, beaches and shopping malls. The difference being, in the shopping malls we know who we are dealing with, no one is hiding behind a screen and the young people are observed by a community where someone will (hopefully) step in or call authorities if things go awry… this begs the question, who are the observers and the authorities online and how can we allow our young people to develop their independence without leaving them at risk?

caused interesting responses in our last two ‘Naked Truths’ parents and carers sessions with Deanne. Many of our young people go online to play games with regularity, which I understand because they are fun! I know many of our teachers play online games also. However if your child uses online games, I ask that you please consider the following:

What is the age restriction on this game? Why?Have you played this game yourself to see the themes and language used?Does this game include online chat options or advertising for gambling?How many hours and at what time of day is your child using these games - is it impacting their education or daily routines?Where does your child play these games and who is supervising, if anyone?

As I said, I don’t pretend to have any answers, but I know that the online ‘world’ is a new space in the scheme of things and that we, together - families, schools, experts and students can keep ourselves and each other safe.

Today marks twelve months of me in the principal role and I wanted to take a moment to say a big thank you to the whole school community for the wonderful year that has been! It is hard to imagine that it was only 12 months ago that we were cheering Trevor as he flew off in a helicopter like a true rockstar - it seems like just yesterday and also a lifetime ago! Reflecting on the past twelve months, I’m not sure who has learned more - your children or their principal; but what I can certainly say is that learning is invigorating, empowering and everyone should do it! I have certainly found myself in the pit of confusion once or twice, but planning, persistence and a huge amount of support has provided me with the steps to get myself out of the pit with a big grin on my face and a bank of new resources, skills, knowledge and understanding. I want to thank you for your trust and patience through my various learning experiences in this role; I hold a high standard for myself and I know I have not always met that standard this past twelve months, but the trajectory is steeply improving and I hope you see that too! I want to also thank you for inspiring and collaborating with me to find ways in which we can improve our school environment, community and learning program. I want to thank school council and its sub-committees for being more active, engaged and fierce than ever; your support of our school and its community is incredible. I want to thank the students for your enthusiasm, positivity and the acts of kindness I see every day. I want to extend a massive thank you to the staff, who have made this job so much easier with their own type of patience and understanding and a professional trust that is priceless, but also for the reminders, the laughter and the bags of popcorn - you are all amazing.

I hope everyone enjoys a safe, relaxing and fulfilling holiday and that you are all well rested for the return to school next term; because learning is more freeing and exciting than any helicopter ride and we can do it together. Amazing.

Dear Families,

Last week Deanne Carson facilitated the final of 3 “Body Safe” professional learning sessions with our whole staff. For those of you who know Deanne, I am sure that you appreciate how stimulating and informative this session was.

When considering sources of sexuality information for grade 5/6 students, we had a fascinating discussion about social media and the use of technology as a primary source. As is often inevitable when discussing technology, the conversation led to children’s unsafe or over use. As a demonstration, a teacher explained how one of the students spent 11 hours online one Saturday. To this Deanne raised the question, “What is it replacing?” This question particularly resonated with me and was in alignment with a few of my recent wonderings.

Deanne went onto explain how children go online for the following reasons

InformationRisk TakingConnection to friends, and /orPlay

Let’s explore these areas further…

As has happened over the ages, it is common for children to hunt answers to questions, especially those that as parents we may feel less comfortable answering or simply aren’t aware that they are contemplating. It is important to note that while the internet is a great source of information, it is only one source and it needs careful moderation and education of in relation to its accuracy. Children need guidance to be critical consumers of information.

As a late primary / early secondary aged student, I remember speaking to my friends on the landline phone for hours after school. Yes, that’s right, I am that old!! So it is no wonder that our children seek out this connection. If we have concerns about their safety when playing games, going on apps, joining chat rooms - how do we provide an alternate way of children connecting? Do they really know who they are communicating with, their age, their gender and their intentions? Children need guidance when determining who, how long for and ways of connecting. Keeping in mind – face to face time with friends.

Finally, how is going online replacing other activities? While we all understand that there are times when children will ‘relax’ with a game, or will have downtime while we cook dinner, the question really becomes how long a reasonable time is? What else could your children be doing? What time do we routinely have with our children when we are mutually engaged and even having fun, e.g. sharing a story, playing a family game, completing a jigsaw, going for a bike ride etc. Children need our time, our enthusiasm and energy.

So at this point, many of you may be wondering who is this parent who can provide this guidance, this time and wisdom? It is true, parenting can be very challenging and there is no such thing as a perfect parent. This is where the concept of the ‘good enough’ parent resonates with me. We simply can’t, no matter how hard we try, be perfect, but we can seek to be the best we can be. When trying to answer the question “What is technology replacing in our children’s lives?” be thoughtful and creative. Like all good behaviour change programs, we don’t start at the end, we take measured steps to achieve our goal. We replace a less desirable behaviour with a more positive one.

Hello everyone!

Spring has sprung and Sprout needs a big clean!

I will be Spring cleaning on the 2nd Wednesday of the holidays-October 3rd. If you have an hour or two to help out, please come to the canteen at 2pm on that day.

Let's make Sprout sparkle!

Refreshments available!

Kind regards

Kris

CALL FOR HOST FAMILIES

The Australia Indonesia Youth Exchange Program (AIYEP) is seeking Melbourne-based host families to welcome 21-25 year old Indonesians into their home.

AIYEP is a one of a kind, highly successful DFAT program marking its 37th year in 2018/19. Eighteen young Indonesians spend two months (October to December) in Australia experiencing work placements, home-stays, community service, cultural performances and visits to local schools and communities. One of these young Indonesians will be working at our school for three weeks from the 14th October.

If your family would like share their family and community cultural values with an Indonesian AIYEPer for 3 weeks October 14 to November 2, contact Project Coordinator Eloise Dolan on Eloise.dolan@afs.org or visit https://afs.org.au/aiyep-host-families/. This is a fantastic opportunity to forge life-long connections, learn about a new culture and share your own. Host Families will be remunerated as well.

You're invited! Fundraiser Celtic Music Concert,

Sunday September 16th. Dear BNWPS Community, On Sunday, September 16th at 4:30 PM, BNWPS's Boite Choir will feature as guests along with Brunswick Secondary College Senior Saxophone Ensemble in a one-hour Celtic music concert presented by The Tudor Choristers, conducted by Dr. Kathleen McGuire (step-parent to Eowyn Sexton Carroll, Unit MM).

Where: BNWPS Multi-Purpose Room

When: Sunday, September 16th

Time: 4:30 pm The concert will conclude with tea and refreshments.

Donations of baked goods are greatly welcome. If anyone can help with serving refreshments please let Audrie know at the office.

Tickets are available at the door for only $5-$10. Proceeds from the concert will go toward the purchase of a new PA for the multi-purpose room. Looking forward to seeing you there!!

Last newsletter for Term 3! Really??? Where did the time go??? Good news – spring has finally decided to wake up!

Next term our focus will be ‘yarn bombing the front gate’ and exploring indigenous bush tucker across the program: from cooking to outdoor games and from storytelling to art&craft. How exciting!

Important dates and notes:

Circus Incursion: what a great experience that our children at the OSHC with Joh and Tara. Big thank to both the ladies for sharing their passion and skills. All children had a great time and loved every single session. Looking forward for more sessions in the near future! Who knows? May be very soon!Breakfast: just a reminder that Before School Care operates from 7:00am- 8:45 am and a breakfast is provided with a large of variety of cereals selections and toasts; just keep in mind the last call for breakfast is 8:20am, as this allows children to have enough time to consume their breakfast. Children will be marked off the roll at 8:40am so they are off to school yard at 8:45am.

Hourly Rate Cap: for the OSHC services the hourly rate cap is $10.29 per hour. This means you will not receive a rebate in any amount above this cap. Fortunately our school run not for profit OSHC service charges fees well below of this cap. For instance for our permanent fees:

BSC fees: $12; our hourly rate is$6.85 and ASC fees: $18; our hourly rate is $7.2

As you can see our fees are very reasonable. This is why we love working for not for profit as we are able to provide good quality care with over qualified and passionate educators, great and homemade healthy food, plenty of fun and active experiences in an environment that promotes respect, care and support to everyone.

Clothing: all students need to be encouraged to wear proper shoes, such as runners or school shoes as we need to minimize any risk of hazards, such as trips and falls.Playground Area: can be very busy at dismissal time (3:30pm), especially now that the weather is nice and warm. At OSHC we have increased supervision in this area as the children who are attending OSHC are mixed with other children, younger siblings and parents/carers. We would like to ask all families standing in the playground area to be aware their children’s whereabouts and to approach and talk to any OSHC educators if there are any concerns that need to be reported. The OSHC team will greatly appreciate all the community collaboration in this matter.Did you know that children love veggie fritters? It is one of the children’s favorite recipe in our Cooking Club and children loved them! So, Naarah kindly shared the recipe with all families (please see below) – Thank You Naarah!

Also, we would like to have your child’s favorite food recipe – if you have the recipe please share it with us!

Feedback: at OSHC we get lots of positive feedback, however, we would like to hear from you all as we are constantly reflecting on the quality of our service. Please feel free to come and talk to Bernadetta if you have any kind of issue. The door is always open!

A reminder that all children need to wear hats and sunscreen. At OSHC sunscreen is provided unless you have a specific requirement then please come and talk to one of our educators. As often children forget to bring their own hats, a hat program has been implemented by the OSHC educators, where children can use OSHC clean spare hats and at the end of each session all hats used are placed in our washing tray. If you have any spare hats to donate that would be much appreciated! J

FROM THE PROGRAM:

Circus has been a very successful and popular at OSHC during Term 3. Children learnt lots of skills, able to make a human pyramid, juggling and much more!

Lots of ball games outdoor, from basketball to soccer. Badminton is very popular in the morning as well. Children have been exploring the yard, making cubby house and lots of sensory play. Hopscotch was popular in the undercover area with lots of decoration and drawing.

Cooking Club: children have been enjoying the whole process of making the veggie fritters – from peeling to measuring and mixing. The best part? Testing! Yum!

A few children are participating to Catching up Club and Coding Club. However, some children don’t know their logins for the google class. If you would like your child to participate to the Catching up Club for their homework please provide their logins to your child or just come and talk to us.

Veggie Fritters Recipe:

INGREDIENTS

2 eggs, lightly beaten. (or eggs replacement)

1/2 onion, finely chopped.

1/4 cup finely chopped broccoli or cauliflower.

2 cups grated vegetables (zucchini, carrot, sweet potato, parsnip or potato)

1/4 cup self-raising flour.

1/2 teaspoon curry powder.

salt and cracked black pepper.

yoghurt, salsa or chutney, to serve.

METHOD

Step 1

Combine the eggs, onion, broccoli and grated vegetables in a large bowl. Add the flour, curry powder, salt and pepper and mix until well combined.

Step 2

Heat a little olive oil in a non-stick frying pan over medium heat. Add heaped tablespoonfuls of the egg mixture to the pan and cook in batches for 2-3 minutes each side or until golden. Transfer to a plate and keep warm. Serve fritters with minted yoghurt, salsa or chutney.

Bernadetta and OSHC Team

A huge thank you to all the performers and audience members who came along to the first ever Music Assembly on Thurs, 13th Sept. We were treated to a range of weird, wild and truly impressive performances:

KM smashed out Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes

MM took us on an emotional journey with This Is Me from the recent movie The Greatest Showman

JAM created a masterful mash up of Under The Sea with a taste of Mr Bombastic

LVW took us home on a high with a powerful rendition of Believer by Imagine Dragons

A special mention for the students from the Musical Elective who devised, scripted, scored and then performed their abstract masterpiece, as yet untitled, about a devious Dad, an inquisitive girl called Patricia, a Twisted Wolf and more. Can’t wait to see what happens with that next term!

Briefly in other music news, next term we will be starting a Community Choir, which will be open for all students and grown-ups to attend. It will most likely be run on Wednesday after school, but specific times will be announced early next term. It will be exciting to welcome students and grown-ups in to learn and sing some simple songs together!

On a personal note, I would like to say a huge thank you for the support from the entire BNWPS community, it has been a privilege and a pleasure coming in to teach music in such a welcoming environment.

Jack the Music Teacher

Hello everyone!

Spring has sprung and Sprout needs a big clean!

I will be Spring cleaning on the 2nd Wednesday of the holidays-October 3rd. If you have an hour or two to help out, please come to the canteen at 2pm on that day.

Let's make Sprout sparkle!

A new menu for Term 4 will be sent home with the eldest in the family next week. There will be some price and menu changes so please read the menu carefully before placing any order next term.

In line with our school's environmental policy, please provide a lunchbox for lunches and please refrain from using ziplock bags for your child's lunch order.

Thanks as always to our wonderful volunteers!

Kris

I am sure many of you have heard or read me saying before, that we have the best school community I’ve ever had the honor of knowing. When we talk about our community, however, we often think of the inner-circle - the families, students and staff connected directly to BNW. Yet our community (and our responsibilities to our community) extend far beyond our fence line. This term our school has made some new friends from the Men’s Shed Strathmore and we are really excited about this new relationship. The Men’s Shed is a wonderful program that supports aging community members to have authentic purpose and build connections through working with wood. We asked Richard and his friends to rebuild our outdoor seating near the basketball court. This project cost the school just the cost of materials and a few sausage rolls from Kris at Sprout, but in return we have beautiful new seating, new friends and some new ideas of what else they can build around the school!

Thank you to Richard and all the people at Men’s Shed Strathmore for your time, your skill, your humour and for helping us see how mutually beneficial our community connections can be. I am sure we will see you again very soon!

This year has seen a lot of projects that work towards improving our school environment for the purposes of learning, connecting, growing and having fun. The first half of the year saw renovations to our staff room, kitchen, meeting/therapy room, administration area and sickbay and last newsletter I shared the news of our upcoming portable for the 2019 school year. The next six months turns our focus to outdoors. Many of you will have seen the temporary fencing and earth works that have been occurring in our woodlands area this past week. Whilst the demolition phase of any project can let the imagination fly, we are very excited to see progress on our Inclusive Schools Fund playground and can’t wait for the bespoke wooden structures to start being installed.

Part of the ISF Playground grant will provide us with funds to plant out the space after construction is done - we will take over this part of the project, to ensure we have native plants that the students are involved in planting and caring for. In addition to this, Buildings & Grounds are developing plans for woodlands regeneration works, to prevent any further damage and loss to our woodlands trees and then to increase the number of plants in the area for future generations of students.

Our productive garden is also about to break ground (literally) with earth works occuring in the next couple of weeks, installation of garden beds, composting station and a new outdoor kitchen! The chicken coop and amphitheatre will be in future phases of our new garden.

I am sure you will all agree that the undercover area is also due for a spruce up! As this space is where we gather as a community every morning and where many students play, we want this space to be bright, inviting and unique, just like us! A design for the ground of the undercover area is currently being developed and a working bee will be arranged for later in the year where we can paint the design onto the ground with safety grip paint.

I want to thank all the action groups that work on each of these projects - whether you are assisting with research, design, funding applications, project management, trades acquisition or some good old manual labour, you make an incredible difference to the students and staff who use this space every day. If you are interested in joining one of these groups - whether you attend a sub-committee meeting or come to the Thursday garden group or anything in between, please reach out to the school or the Buildings & Grounds sub-committee to see how you can be involved.

Imagine a long-lasting structure built by the students and wider community of BNWPS; where music, art, science and more are combined via this mud-stomping, project-led, educational & very fun journey.

The Victorian State Government is delivering grants through an initiative called 'Pick My Project', which invests in community projects across the state and we are in the running to create a mud brick structure within our school grounds. We have successfully made it past Round 1, but Round 2 is based on votes - we need your help! The projects with the most votes win! So it’s time to stop imagining and start voting! We would also really appreciate your efforts to cajole anyone (16 years or older) you know within a 5km radius of the school!

Click here and vote for us (you can submit three votes and there are plenty of great projects up there but ours is the best idea for sure) but we need you to do this fast - votes close this Monday (17th September @ 5pm).

Over the holiday break I am sure many of you have made plans that include relaxing as a main priority, but some of our teachers are workaholics (or perhaps they love their vocation so much, it’s not work?)! Jack Madin, our extraordinary new music teacher is travelling to Queensland this holiday to present a paper he has written on Participatory Music Experiences in Whole School Performances. I am sure that anyone who attended assembly in week 1 or 5 of this term has a good understanding of what is meant by this! We wish Jack the best of luck in presenting his paper; we are incredibly proud of our exceptional teaching staff and we can’t wait to hear how it all goes.

An unexpected but incredibly enjoyable element of my role as principal is that I get to make regular announcements of babies, but this one is a first… an official BNW baby! We are very excited to announce that Rebecca Ewer and Michael McLaughlan are expecting the birth of their first baby early in 2019. As this is the first baby born directly as a result of BNW, I have already informed both parents that their baby belongs somewhat to the BNW community and therefore we get to name it (and cover it in splodges for the rest of time). We wish Becc and Michael the best of luck on this exciting new journey.

BNW has had a long-standing tradition of gathering together at the end of the year to celebrate the learning and growing we have done as a whole school in a whole school excursion. Traditionally it has been a whole school pool day, but there’s no reason why it has to be that way! It has been raised with the school that there may be an even better way to celebrate our year together, but before we change a school tradition, we would like to hear from everyone! Please click here to complete a quick survey (5 minutes only!) to let us know your thoughts. This survey is for parents and carers - our students and staff have also been surveyed.

Thank you to everyone who has provided feedback on the newsletter, we are glad that you are enjoying the readability and interactivity of the new format! If you are having trouble viewing or accessing the newsletter, please let someone within the school know, so we can support you with any technical issues.

Next term you will notice that newsletters will start coming out weekly. The dramatically reduced workload on Linda Henshall, Deb Wood and Kate Cunningham formatting the newsletter each fortnight means that we can increase the frequency of newsletters, making the newsletter shorter, with more timely news items. You might notice that Wendy and I will generally interchange between which one of us will write our report and we intend to hear from school council and its sub-committees with more regularity. We will also be decreasing the number of Compass announcements that go directly to families, as the newsletter will be the main source of information.

Hello Crunchem Hall Primary School! I hereby declare that there is far too much fun had in this place, which means none of those disgusting small people are learning ! No more playing, no more pigtails and NO MORE FUN! This may make very little sense to anyone who missed my costume this morning, but thanks for going with the flow! Thank you also to all the community members - students, staff and families, who participate in all our school events (including the dressing up bit). Unlike Miss Trunchbull, I firmly believe that fun is a marvellous medium through which to learn and I thank you for assisting our youngest to express their creativity, celebrate books and to laugh and play, during our Book Week celebrations and beyond <3

In a previous newsletter, I started talking about the Victorian Schools Building Authority's enrolment policy change and how the school and its community will be impacted as a result. As I mentioned in the previous article, whilst we love the idea of building connections within local communities and encouraging every school to be inclusive, one of the main concerns for our community were the enrolments of younger siblings when an existing family resides outside our local catchment area or zone. I am pleased to announce that we have been given the green-light to continue to enrol younger siblings of existing BNW families and we have also been allocated a portable classroom for 2019, that we hope to position near Michael and Ann's portable, to create a beautiful 4-classroom learning area near Yakai Barring.

I want to thank the community for your support and advocacy of our school and our community during this time; I want to thank you for your patience as we continue to discuss with relevant bodies on how to best transition to this new enrolment practice and I also want to thank everyone for your incredibly kind words around why you have chosen BNW as the school for your family. We are very proud of our approach to inclusion, our partnership with our incredible community, our natural environment/stick play and of course, our remarkable and dedicated teachers who deeply care for your children and love to inspire their learning!

As you may be aware, the National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is transitioning from a paper and pencil test to an online test. NAPLAN assesses literacy and numeracy skills that have been identified as essential for every child to meet their full potential in school and life. Students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 participate in the annual NAPLAN tests in reading, writing, conventions of language (spelling, grammar and punctuation) and numeracy. The transition of this test from paper to online is expected to take approximately three years and BNWPS is part of the second phase, which means our Year 3 & 5 students in 2019 will be sitting the test either partially or completely online. There are many benefits to moving the NAPLAN test online including, but not limited to more accurate and timely results, an adaptive test design that selects levelled questions in response to student answers and a more engaging test method, but we understand that there may be a few ‘teething problems’ along the way. In preparation for next year’s NAPLAN sessions, our grade 3s and 5s sat a School Readiness Test this week, which did not assess students’ achievement, but instead our ICT infrastructure.

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) has stated that NAPLAN Online will not be a test of keyboard or technological skills; Year 3 students will continue to perform the written portion of their test on paper and teachers are working with students to ensure they have the right digital, device and test literacy to access the tests equally.

To get an idea of what the tests look like, visit the public demonstration site at nap.edu.au/onlineassessment/public-demonstration-site

While BNW encourages all parents and caregivers to arrange for student medication to be taken outside of school hours, we understand that a number of students need to take medication at school or during school activities either in a short-term capacity or in an ongoing way. To support students to do this safely, we ask that all parents and caregivers do the following:

Arrange for the student’s treating health practitioner to provide written advice to the school;The school must be aware of the Medication Authority and the required administration process;In some cases, it may be appropriate for a student to self-administer their medication, but this must be outlined on the Medication Authority Form, with the agreement of the principal;The medication must be within its expiry date and in the original packaging. If the original packaging needs to be kept at home, the Community Pharmacy at 228 Melville Road will transfer medication to a webster pack for free if you let them know your child attends BNWPS;Most medication is kept in sick bay at the front office unless there is a class or school event; some medication is kept in classrooms for quick administration. For safety reasons, absolutely no medication is to be kept with students and without the knowledge of the school.

Please note, this does not apply to asthma or anaphylaxis, which have their own policies and protocols. More information regarding the Administration of Medication is available on the policies page of our school website.

We are working BIG this term in the Art Studio. We are also doing a great deal of collaborative work which is helping us develop communication skills. Cooperation, collaboration, communication, creativity. That’s where it’s at and we’re loving it.The Foundies have just started a new project based around housing. Having a roof above your head and walls to keep the weather out are a necessity which is the link to this term’s topic. The Foundies are all working together as the project develops organically. The houses are large, the project is BIG. It’s been a great period of discovery so far and I’m excited to see how it develops.The Juniors are not working quite so large but the thinking is expansive. After completing a sculpture unit where natural materials were used to create organic forms we have delved into a unit investigating mosaic art. We began with sketches on graph paper, progressed to paper mosaics, and hope to create real mosaics later in the term. By the way, if you have any colourful crockery you would like to donate to this project, I’d be happy to take it, smash it, and reuse it.The Middlies are making their own art materials! It’s amazing. So far we have made willow charcoal and chalk pastels; all housed in handmade felt kit bags. We plan on making wax crayons next to complete the pack. The students will take this with them at the end of the term armed with the knowledge that they can make their own drawing equipment. Earlier in the term we completed an intensive portrait unit that travelled from representational to abstract.The Seniors have been revisiting many techniques such as painting, printing, drawing, frottage and collage this term. They collected their experiments which were reused in mixed-media artworks. The results were eye popping. Later we will use collections of refuse to create new, thought-provoking pieces.

I am keen to see what is produced!

Dear Families,

Last week, Deb and I had the good fortune of running our first, of hopefully many, family sessions. Thea Calzoni, Coordinator of Northern Strengthening Parents, also attended the session, in order to provide some information for families who have with children with additional needs. This was a highly successful evening, one which Deb and I thoroughly enjoyed. Following is an excerpt from Northern Strengthening Parents Newsletter which provides a great summary of the night.

Parents' emotion coaching

On August 20th, Strengthening Parents met with parents at Brunswick North West primary school. The occasion was a workshop in emotion coaching presented by Wendy White, Assistant Principal and Deb Robins, Foundations' Teacher and Wellbeing Leader.

First up, Wendy and Deb presented the results of a survey of student wellbeing of Years 4, 5 and 6. Children had indicated that they felt safe in the classroom and in the school café, but not on the basketball court. As a result the school decided to move lunchtime soccer playing from the basketball court to the oval.

To support students' need to feel safer, the school placed an additional staff member on yard duty at lunch time. And staff were assigned to designated routes so that they could be easily found by students - on the oval, in the wood land, and on the asphalt.

The survey also showed that a lot of children weren't sure what bullying actually was. Showing a way managing perceptions of bullying, the school has set in place restorative justice for healing relationships.

Restorative justice addresses these questions: What happened? What were the feelings? Who was affected? And How can we fix it?

Wendy said the school community sought to increase student resilience through enhancing their emotional connections with teachers, parents and each other. She recommended the parenting program, Tuning in to Kids, as a guide to building emotional connection between children and parents/teachers, rather than just controlling children’s behavior.

In the Emotion Coaching workshop, Wendy drew on the training manual from Tuning in to Kids to engage parents to form pairs to share and support each other's accounts of a strong feeling recently held and the circumstances surrounding it.

After this activity, there was group discussion where participants contributed individual experiences of how their parents dealt with their emotions when they were children. Some examples given were of parents dismissing their children's emotions: "Get over it". "Don't be a cry baby!" Participants were asked how such childhood experiences might have affected their own style of parenting.

Deb and Wendy presented role plays of examples of dismissive responses and the alternative response that demonstrated Emotion Coaching. The principles of Emotion Coaching are noticing from body language/behaviour, how your child is probably feeling and think about a comparable situation for yourself.

1) You might say to the child: "It looks like you are sad" or "You look a bit angry".

2) Help the child put a label on the feeling, perhaps by asking "Did you feel x when y happened?" or by commenting "It sounds like that made you feel x."

3) Respond by reflecting how you would feel in a similar situation. "That would make me feel x too!"

4) You might follow up with a comment to find out more about the situation, or simply let it rest.

Sometimes it is enough benefit to the child simply to have their feeling acknowledged.

Before you use new strategies with your child, discuss the plan with your partner or anyone else in a caring role with your child. It helps if you are on the same page.

Tuning in to Kids

Tuning in to an emotion

1) notice the emotion, 2) clarify with a question and 3) reflect the emotion with empathy.

Emotion Coaching might be adapted for children who have learning difficulties or disabilities that make communication hard for them. Parents can mirror children's feelings by dramatising them, for instance by growling like a bear, or stamping a foot and pointing to the thing that has upset the child while saying "You are angry because it's time to stop playing on the Ipad". Grr. I don't like it when I have to stop using my phone! Sometimes brief interruption is necessary with children with additional needs at this point, to re-set their emotional clock. For instance: "Look at the clock! It's snack time!"

The Triple P Tuning in to Kids for families with a child who have a disability points out that children with speech difficulties may respond to sign language, gestures or pictures. Triple P suggests that to build a relationship with your child with additional needs, you might look at photos together, or make a scrap-book with pictures of things that they like that you can point to and talk to them about. It's good to show affection and praise your child for behaviour that you like. And notice what they like. Rewards for their good behaviour don't have to be treats. A rewarding activity might be something simple like a tactile experience with a bundle of cotton wool to make into shapes, or playing a game of tossing a scrunched up ball into a basket. It might be a turn around the garden to pick up interesting sticks or leaves or flowers to arrange in a special place inside. This can then be a subject of conversation, an example of something interesting that the child has done.

Emotion Coaching tips

Avoid criticism or mocking the child

Challenge your own ideas about how a parent 'should' be or how your child 'should' be

Listen to your child's point of view first

Don't try to impose your solutions on your child's problems

Read children's books together.

We are currently reflecting on this session, and working on ‘where to from here!’ If you have attended outstanding parent sessions, or know of any inspiring facilitators who you believe could support our community, please let either Deb or myself know. We sincerely want to support you all create harmonious families and resilient, resourceful and empowered children.

Dear Community Members,

Hats are required to be worn by all students for all outdoor activities from next Monday 3 September 2018.

This includes PE/Sport lessons, garden program, excursions and for recess/lunchtimes in the yard. Students without a hat will be required to stay in the undercover area or other shaded place.

Hats are available for sale at the office as follows: broadbrimmed hat $12, legionnaire's hat $10. Payment can be made by cash or card. Please ensure your child has their name written on their hat.

Kind regards

Linda

Important-please read this carefully!

From 2 July 2018, the Child Care Benefit and Child Care Rebate have been replaced by a single Child Care Subsidy. The Child Care Subsidy is tested based on the combined family income, the fortnightly activity of families – such as work, study or volunteering – and the type of service a child attends*. As part of the new Child Care Subsidy, the number of hours of subsidised care you are entitled to is based on your level of recognised activity. Understanding the different types of activity that will be recognised is key to maximising your child care subsidy.

Here’s a breakdown of the hours of subsidised care families can receive based on their amount of activity:

Families in recognised activity 8 – 16 hours per fortnight are eligible to receive 36 hours per fortnight of subsidised careFamilies in recognised activity 16 – 48 hours per fortnight are eligible to receive 72 hours per fortnight of subsidised careFamilies in recognised activity more than 48 hours per fortnight are eligible to receive 100 hours per fortnight of subsidised care

What classifies as recognised activity?

The good news is there’s a broad range of recognised activities that you can undertake to maximise your child care subsidy.

Paid work: includes paid leave, paid or unpaid parental and maternity leave if this is a condition of employment, or being self-employed.Study and training: includes being enrolled in an approved course of education or study, or being enrolled in training courses for the purpose of improving the individual's work skills or employment prospects.Unpaid work: includes unpaid work in the family business which is owned by a member of the individual’s immediate family, actively setting up a business, or unpaid work experience or internships.Actively looking for work: includes looking for job vacancies, preparing résumés and job applications, contacting potential employers, or preparing for and attending job interviews.Setting up a business: includes obtaining finance, advice and support, attending and organising meetings and networking, developing business and marketing plans.Volunteering: includes voluntary work to improve work skills or employment prospects, voluntary work for a charitable, welfare or community organisation, voluntary work for a school, preschool or a centre based day care service (if the work directly supports the learning and development of the children at the school, preschool or service e.g. reading to children). Note: Being on the Parents and Citizens Committee, or coaching children’s soccer team are considered parental duties and would not be considered as a recognised volunteer activity.

Note: voluntary work for the school that either “improves the learning and development of children” or “improves your work skills” or “helps you look for work”.

These include;

• Reading café and in school literacy programs

• Sitting on a school committee and completing committee work

• Buildings and grounds work such as working bees, gardening and maintenance, sorting lost property etc.

• Canteen duties (as improving work skills)

• Assisting teaching staff on excursions (with the safety and learning development of students)

• Volunteering for the garden program

• Volunteering for music program events including specialist teacher music events

• Volunteering for sports day excursions and events

• Volunteering to share your knowledge or skill in the classroom

• Volunteering your skills for the newsletter, graphic design etc

• Volunteering your skills for community events (improving work skills etc)

• Volunteering for the Winter Magic market, stalls and wine evenings (improving work skills)

• Volunteering your time with OSHC (this also counts as improving the learning development of students and improving work skills)

Evidence can be your sign in/out at the office or examples of your contribution (photos etc). You may be asked to provide evidence at a later date – so keep a record on your phone.

Important dates and notes:

Last Circus Incursion for Term 3: Friday 14th of September: from 4pm to 5pm. The Circus will run every second Friday for Term 3 with Joh and Tara. If your child would like to participate please contact OSHC on 0478 836 264. Bookings are essentials as we cater for a limited number of children. There are no additional charges for your child to attend (however your child must be enrolled and booked into the OSHC program for the afternoon’s session). Don’t forget children needs to wear comfortable clothing that allows freedom of movement.Breakfast: just a reminder that Before School Care operates from 7:00am- 8:45 am and a breakfast is provided with a large of variety of cereals selections and toasts; just keep in mind the last call for breakfast is 8:20am, as this allows children to have enough time to consume their breakfast. Children will be marked off the roll at 8:40am so they are off to school yard at 8:45am.

Hourly Rate Cap: for the OSHC services the hourly rate cap is $10.29 per hour. This means you will not receive a rebate in any amount above this cap. Fortunately our school runs not for profit OSHC service charges fees well below of this cap. For instance for our permanent fees:

BSC fees: $12; our hourly rate is$6.85 and ASC fees: $18; our hourly rate is $7.2

As you can see our fees are very reasonable. This is why we love working for not for profit as we are able to provide good quality care with over qualified and passionate educators, great and homemade healthy food, plenty of fun and active experiences in an environment that promotes respect, care and support to everyone.

Hats!!!

All students attending OSHC are required to wear a hat as at Monday 3 September. Thank you!

FROM THE PROGRAM:

In the last couple of weeks, children have been enjoying more group games and sports outdoor, since the weather and daylight are allowing. Also, children are really participating to the Father’s Day activities in the art room.

Circus Incursion is a big success, children are learning skills and developing self-confidence to create human pyramid.

Few children are participating to Catching up Club and Coding Club. However, some children don’t know their logins for the google class. If you would like your child to participate to the Catching up Club for their homework please provide their logins to your child or just come and talk to us.

Cooking Club on Monday is also very popular, children enjoy different recipes and be challenged every week. It is lovely to see the senior children mentoring and looking after the younger ones.

If you have a special recipe that you would love to share, please talk to any of the OSHC staff or Naarah.

Bernadetta and OSHC Team