Welcome back to school and another big term of learning.  I hope that the holiday break was a relaxing and enjoyable time for you and your families.  I spent some time with my dad, doing building work at my house, and accidentally broke my thumb.  Hopefully my black, shiny splint will be taken off next week and I can get back into the basics, like opening jars and undoing clips.  Thumbs are so important and useful!

ANZAC Day is upon us and teachers have been sharing ANZAC stories and traditions, (eg The Last Post; ANZAC biscuits) across the week.  Many of our families have family links to this special day, and our children have shared this information with their teachers and classmates.

This important tradition has now become an opportunity to stop and reflect on the sacrifice and dedication of all our veteran and service community, and the families who support them.

As ANZAC Day is a public holiday, you may wish to join in commemorative activities at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne. These activities include the:

• dawn service
• commemoration march
• laying of wreaths
• commemoration service

 https://www.shrine.org.au/anzac-day-25-april

Easter raffle

Many thanks to all the families and staff who donated items for the exquisite hampers and to the Events team for coordinating and preparing the hampers.  It was a delight to see the excitement and anticipation on all our students faces at the drawing of the raffle at assembly.  Through our community efforts we raised $3,263.00 which supports our learning programs.

Student Engagement and Wellbeing

We have a holistic approach to engaging students in school life.  This can be highly structured, such as, formal lessons in social and emotional learning, drawn from the Respectful Relationships curriculum,

“Research shows that students who participate in rigorously designed and well-taught social and emotional learning programs demonstrate more positive social behaviour, are less likely to engage in risky and disruptive behaviour, and show improved academic outcomes. Collaborative learning activities help students to build their social skills.  Building a large vocabulary for emotions helps to increase emotional literacy, build self-awareness and empathy for others”. RR Curriculum, Department of Education, 2018

It can also be less formal, such as our lunchtime clubs, or teacher-student check ins before going out to play.

We have a number of recess and lunchtime clubs, supervised by school staff, that children can choose to participate in across the week.  These include the ever popular LEGO club, Hooptime (basketball), and Ukelele. This year we also have a dance club and robotics, both well attended and providing lots of fun and learning for our students.

This term we have two new clubs that have come about due to student feedback.  These new clubs are for students in Grades 5 and 6 – Drama Club, and the Pride and Allies Club.

The Performing Arts are such a popular curriculum area and an enormous part of our daily lives – what would we be without music, visual arts, drama, and dance?!

The Pride and Allies club is an informal fortnightly drop in club for LGBTI Grade 5-6 students and friends to meet and participate in conversation and activities.   We know that young people do better at school and in life if they attend schools where they feel welcome and safe.  Unfortunately, not all students have this experience, and not all students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) have a positive school experience.

In primary schools, we are seeing more children than in the past, begin to inquire about their identity, and to explore this in different ways.  This could be in their choice of preferred name, pronouns, or appearance.  They may be confident of who they are and can name it, eg gay or trans, or they may be unsure. Exploring identity can be fluid, ie, changeable., eg a preferred name in term 1 may change in term 2.  Or a student’s preferences at grade 4 may be different in grade 6.  This can be an unsettling and confusing time for the student, their families, teachers and friends.

The Pride and Allies Club is one way we can support LGBTI students to feel welcome and safe, and to experience school positively and inclusively.  We believe it will also benefit students who have family members who are LGBTI, as well as staff members who identify as LGBTI.

A school that celebrates diversity benefits everyone.

It is important our staff are supported in knowing how best to role model behaviour, such as intervening to challenge discriminatory behaviour, and that they understand their important role in creating safe and inclusive spaces.  Our teaching staff are participating in Safe Schools professional development provided by the Department of Education to improve teachers’ knowledge and confidence.

If you have any questions about the lunchtime clubs please contact your child’s teacher.

Warm regards,

Karen

Congratulations to Ramez on winning the amazing Jersey prize. A HUGE thanks to all the kids that dressed up and to everyone that donated money to support Down Syndrome Victoria.

Dear Parents and Carers

Please see attached poster and information for our upcoming Mothers and Special Persons Day Stall - Fri 10 May. 

The Events Committee are also looking for some volunteers to help out at the stall and to help with setting up the stall (after school Thursday 9 May)

Please see below for times:

1. THURS 9 May SET UP - (after school from 3:30PM)

2. FRI 10 May

9:30am

10:00am

10:30am

BREAK 11am

11:30am

12:00pm

12:30pm

1:00pm

BREAK 1:30pm

2:30pm

3:00pm (including Pack down)

If you can assist, please email ywpsevents.new@gmail.com with your preferred time/s. Spaces do fill very quickly, so please confirm your availability as soon as possible. You will also need to provide a copy of a current and valid WWCC.

What a wonderful first term we’ve had in Prep! 

Students have been busy learning school routines, making new friends and building relationships with their teachers at YWPS. 

In Literacy, students were learning about rhyming words, the difference between a letter, word and number, and beginning to explore the sounds (phonemes) that connect with different letters (graphemes). 

A big focus of Term 1 was our multi- sensory approach to assist students in learning their letter names and the correct formation of these letters (the beginning of handwriting).  Students were engaged in a range of activities, some of these can be seen in the photos below; making the letters with playdough, writing them in coloured rice or writing the letters on whiteboards, just to name a few. 

Multi-sensory learning provides engaging learning tasks while allowing the students to connect with the content they are learning in more than one way.  It also means we are catering to our students different learning styles.  We are looking forward to another fun filled term.

The Prep Team

VHAP (Victorian High Ability Program) has commenced this week, with selected students eagerly starting their 10-week online courses.

The primary mathematics course focuses on exploring multiple solutions and strategies, while the English course aims to enhance writing skills through narrative masterclasses and understanding the impact of writing.

Congratulations to last term's VHAP students: Alexandra, Samuel, Angus, Rory, Ruby, and Bella, who received their certificates of completion at this week's assembly.

Respectful Relationships

Across the school we will be focusing on two main topics in RRRR this term: Positive Coping Strategies and Problem Solving.

Positive Coping

Learning activities in this topic provide opportunities for students to identify and discuss different types of coping strategies. When children and young people develop a language around coping, they are more likely to be able to understand and deliberately utilise a range of productive coping strategies and diminish their use of unproductive coping strategies. Activities introduce students to the concept of self-talk and practice using positive self-talk to approach and manage challenging situations. 

Problem-solving 

Problem-solving skills are an important part of the coping repertoire. The activities in the program assist students to develop their critical and creative thinking skills, and to apply them to scenarios exploring personal, social and ethical dilemmas.  

At home, you can have conversations all together about how each of you prepare for a challenge or a changing situation. Practise positive and productive self-talk about how you get through a difficult situation. Parents/carers can use this time to reflect and connect on the types of situations that they found difficult or challenging when they were younger.

Connecting Interoception and Self-Regulation

No, you didn’t read the first word wrong, and it is certainly no typo. This not-new-but-new buzzword has come up for a breath of fresh air in the Mental Health space. Interoception is an awareness that allows us to feel sensations from within our bodies. For example, interoception enables you to feel your stomach: is it growling or is it fluttery? Is it full or maybe nauseous?

Here at school, we are continuing to make use and explore mindfulness activities in the classroom designed to help students feel more connected to their bodies, and to help students interpret and express their emotions helpfully. Every day, our bodies send us indicators about our emotions through physical changes like our heartbeat speeding up or slowing down, our muscles tensing up and our breath shifting. Tapping into these changing signals and learning to recognise them as emotions and/or feelings is called interoception or ‘mindful body awareness’. Everybody’s natural interoception is different. Without good interoceptive awareness, children and young people might find it difficult to recognise or notice a big emotion building up inside until it becomes overwhelming or distracts them from learning.

The simplest activities involve gently engaging parts of your body, like your hands and feet, and mindfully paying attention to the stretch. Below is an interoception activity you can try at home. This activity can be done in the morning, before bed, or even in the car on the way to school.

School Wide Positive Behaviour Term 2

SWPBS is a framework we use at Yarraville West Primary School to develop and foster positive, safe, supportive learning cultures. We recognise that students need to learn and practise demonstrating appropriate behaviour at school, just as they need to learn and practise academic learning. A key element of SWPBS is that staff and students use a common language to discuss behaviour, which is underpinned by our school values and outlined in our Positive Behaviour Matrix.

So far, our matrix has a clearly defined set of expected behaviours for the areas of Paths & Walkways, Outside Classrooms, Play Areas and Toilets. In Term 2 we are continuing to build our matrix, with a focus on Learning Spaces. This involves unpacking how students can demonstrate our school values of respect, resilience, creativity and integrity during learning time. The JSC have been leading this space by brainstorming positive behaviours that all students can show when they are in classrooms and learning spaces across the school.



Community Feedback

A huge thank you to the families who participated in our Community Feedback Survey at the end of Term 1. There was an overwhelmingly positive response to the questions, which asked families to reflect on what makes them feel a sense of pride and belonging as part of our YWPS community. The School Improvement Team are in the process of using these results to identify what is going well at YWPS and what we can do to improve our sense of school connectedness. Attached is a summary of some of the key terms that popped up in the survey responses.