7/5/2022

Term 2 SWPBS Focus - Respect

Kindness, Responsibility, Resilience.

School Vision:

Our school’s vision is to prepare young people to become active, engaged and responsible citizens of the local and global community. 

• We will provide a safe, calm and welcoming learning environment where every child is treated as an individual.
• We will develop children who have a strong relationship to school and their community. The children will have a sense of self & understand how they learn.
• We will build and support an open, healthy and welcoming community that is visible in its practical support for the learning and wellbeing of each child. Children will be encouraged to embrace and celebrate difference and they will experience positive interactions with adults.
• We aim to foster a love of and for our natural environment and nurture a strong sense of stewardship within our students. Eppalock PS prioritises environmental sustainability.

THIS WEEK AT SCHOOL
The Regional Cross Country was held on Friday and we were able to take out most of our 3-6 group to participate in the event.  Everyone gave it their best effort, putting aside some pre-run nerves.  We had quite a few personal bests on the day which everyone was proud of with lots of smiling faces and feelings of achievement.  We will publish some of the results next week.  Well done to all students for participating and a huge thanks to the parents who were able to transport students to the event or pick up students during the day.  Thanks also to Mr McCartney for his organisation of the day.

Our footy tipping competition is underway again this year.  At this stage I am ahead of Steve and hopefully I can stay there this year.  The Symes family are at the top of the table at the moment holding 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd.  We should be able to have our end of footy season kick to kick and presentation of the trophy at school this year which will be good.  Keep an eye out for that.  Go Blues!

We are a School Wide Positive Behaviours School and have been implementing this framework for the past few years.  Our values are aligned with SWPBS and all of our students are able to tell you what they are, some with a little prompting.  When you come into the school building you will now see some consistent SWPBS displays in each of the rooms and one in the main assembly area.  Sherie has done some amazing work getting these organised and using a lot of her own time creating them.  The expectations posters you see around the school are part of SWPBS and staff often use these to teach students about what is expected at Eppalock Primary School.  We also have our school wide reward operating this year.  A school disco is still leading.  Students get to choose which jar to fill if they receive a Positive Acknowledgment at school.  Hopefully parents have seen some of these cards come home this year.

Our Patch are working hard to provide our After School Care Program at school and operate all days of the week from 3:15pm until 6:00pm.  Abby is our new supervisor and she is keen to have more students in the program during the week.  More students will enable specialist programs to operate such as the Yoga being offered this term on Tuesdays.  If you would like to be part of this program please contact Our Patch through their website.

New Victorian School Teacher Agreement Requirements

For Term 2, 2022, the Department of Education and Training has provided schools with the option to hold each teacher’s allocated professional practice day on the same day for all staff. This is to enable the most effective and efficient use of this day.

As a result, we have scheduled our professional practice day for Friday 10^th June, 2022. This has been approved by School Council.  Students will therefore not be required to attend school on this day.

Our Patch will operate their Out of School Hours Care on this day, however will need minimum numbers to operate.

COVID GUIDELINES
A reminder of our Term 2 Covid guidelines.  These will not appear in the newsletter next week, but will be placed on our website for families and visitors to see if they need to check anything.

• Face masks, while recommended, are not required in any school setting. This means students in grades 3 to 6, staff and visitors in primary schools are no longer required to wear face masks. Any student or staff member who wishes to wear a mask may do so, including those who are medically at-risk.
• Students who have tested positive for COVID-19, and have completed their 7-day isolation period, now do not need to undertake rapid antigen test (RAT) screening for 12 weeks after their release from isolation. This was previously 8 weeks.
• Students who are household contacts of a COVID-19 case are not required to quarantine. They may return to school as long as they undertake rapid antigen tests (RAT) 5 times during their 7-day period. They are required to notify the school that they are a household contact.
• Students aged 8 years and above who are household contacts are required to wear face masks when indoors at school unless they have a valid exemption. If a student household contact returns a positive RAT result, they must isolate for 7 days.
• Parents, carers and other adult visitors (not performing work) are no longer required to show evidence of two doses of COVID-19 vaccine.
• RATs will continue to be supplied for the first 4 weeks of Term 2 to support the early detection of COVID-19 in our school.
• The testing recommendations will remain the same this Term for students and staff recommended to test at home twice a week

Another RA test box will be sent home this week with students.

ASSEMBLY
It was great to have quite a few family members attend our short Friday assembly last week.  These will be held indoors this term and take place each Friday starting at 9:05am and run until about 9:25am.  Our Student leaders do a great job organising the assembly and have been able to make changes to reflect student voice and agency.  They are always encouraged to include items which align with the interests of the students and they have been active in doing so.

On Friday our leaders reminded our student group of the opportunity to contribute to the student suggestion box at school.  This is a student led initiative and our leaders are looking forward to reading some of these and implementing some of the ideas.

On Friday we also gave out Green Team and Junior School Council Badges.  Our Green Team will meet this week to begin their work for the year.

NAPLAN

NAPLAN will begin this week for students in grade 3 & 5.  This is the last chance for students to be withdrawn from these assessments.  Paperwork must be filled out before any student being withdrawn.  NPLAN will take place on Tuesday to Thursday with catch ups being done after that.  Remember these assessments are just one snapshot on one particular day.

DUTY OF CARE

A reminder that staff duty of care operates from 8:45am-9:00am in the mornings and from 3:15pm-3:30pm at the end of the school day.  Outside of these times there may be times when there are no staff on-site due to a meeting or alternative commitment.  Students arriving before 8:45am will be unsupervised in the yard, other than on scheduled breakfast club days.

BREAKFAST CLUB

This has been a little difficult to get started consistently this year due to Covid and staffing.  We will begin the breakfast club for this term on Thursday of this week.  If we can get some parent helpers for other mornings we will be able to extend this program in the coming weeks.  Breakfast club will operate from 8:15am-8:45am.  Thanks to Cazz and Rob who have donated sour dough breads for breakfast club this year.

  

 
All bowlers will be required to wear flat soled shoes or bowl bare footed.

The club will provide all the necessary bowling equipment – bowls, mats, kitties, score cards and sanitiser.

The club has a licenced bar, including softdrinks etc which will be open to us. Liquor licencing laws do not allow us to bring our own alcohol.

Due to Covid-19 the club is unable to provide catering or allow the use of the Club BBQ.
We are very welcome to bring our own food or take away on the day.

There are tables & chairs under cover to sit & eat while watching the games unfold

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