February 22nd, 2023

'The Puggle Post'

OUR SCHOOL VISION:

"Wandong Primary School...Making a difference by developing confident, independent and resilient learners who strive for personal excellence."

PRINCIPAL'S MESSAGE

Get Your Colour On 😊

We are having our very own Colour Splatacular School Fun Run fundraiser! The Colour Splatacular School Fun Run will be on Thursday 6th of March, the last day of term from 1:00pm-2:30pm. Not only are we hosting an awesome slime and colour event, students can order up to a total of 5 prizes based on their donations received. They can even mix and match! Students have received a sponsorship book with instructions on setting up their cybersafe, online fundraising profile at www.australianfundraising.com.au. This is an entirely online fundraiser; all cash donations must be converted to online donations to redeem your prizes.

Extra Incentives to Fundraise!

 Online Golden Coins – complete fun online tasks to redeem an extra $75 towards your prize credit.

 Monty the Monstar’s Bonus Prizes – achieve milestones to unlock Monty’s bonus prizes.

 $10,000 JB HI FI Spending Spree for one organisation’s highest fundraising student – it could be you!

 A Play Station 5 Gaming Bundle – see your child’s sponsorship booklet for more!

 Our school will win an extra $5,000 if we have the highest average fundraised amount per student in 2023.

For further information, please contact Stephanie Pollock via stephanie.pollock@education.vic.gov.au or on 57871232 Happy fundraising!

WE CURRENTLY HAVE 76 STUDENTS WITH A PROFILE AND FOUNDATION L ARE LEADING THE WAY WITH OVER $1000 IN FUNDRAISING!

Attendance, Family Holidays, Principal Approval

Please find attached again the information regarding student absences. As we know, attendance directly correlates to student achievement and engagement in learning. It is important that students are not missing learning and we ask that family holidays are planned around the holiday periods. Together, we can achieve great things. We really need our little people at school.

Staffing

Next term Ms Scott will be welcoming her first little bundle of pure joy into the world. Her class are already very excited, as they spend first term on this journey with Ms Scott. We are so very fortunate to have Ms D’Arne Trafford joining the Wandong family and taking 3/4S from Term Two. Ms Trafford is already a welcomed addition to our staff, has been a regular replacement this term and will continue to be in our rooms this term and working with 3/4S occasionally before Ms Scott takes leave.

Casual Care – School holidays, curriculum days and before/afterschool

Please book in with TheirCare by following this address. www.theircare.com.au

Wandong Vision and Values

As you walk around the school, visit classrooms and office, you will notice that our School Values are quite prominent. Wandong prides our self on the fact that these values are not tokenistic but are ideals that are referred to and enforced. For your reference, I have included a copy of our poster.

Parents and carers, students and staff all share responsibility for ensuring that Wandong Primary School is a positive, respectful and safe school environment. Adults have a particular responsibility to be mindful of the way in which we conduct ourselves in and around the school, noting that we are the role-models that impressionable students look to. I want to express my sincere appreciation for the cooperation and effort put forth by the parents and carers of Wandong. Together we can all do great things and I look forward to seeing our family’s partner with us through home learning and parent helper opportunities.

Grateful

We have a real culture of being grateful at Wandong. We celebrate each other, however small or great the gesture or achievement is. This week I wanted to celebrate the amazing work of our teachers who have worked around the clock to get our videos and questionnaires published and sent home last week. This was no mean feat on top of an already full workload to get this organised. As we discussed what this would look like and how we could get this done in time for our conferences, every idea was met with ‘absolutely, no problem’, ‘let me do that part’… seriously, what a team 😊 This week, our teams have worked hard to get as much information as possible regarding our students so we can work together to meet the needs of all our students and their families. Today, our ever-awesome team are ‘putting in’ in excess of 10-12 hours, away from their own families to meet with children and parents across the school. I’m truly proud and overwhelmed with their commitment and selflessness to the learning environment we treasure at Wandong.

On top of all this, the icing on my gratitude cake is our forever supportive and encouraging families. We know and we have shared time and time again, how partnering with us and being involved in your child’s learning journey makes every bit of difference to their achievement. This week I want to celebrate our families who have planned, scheduled and worked with their children on completing their questionnaires and attending our conferences together. Being able to provide this one-on-one time is key in building a strong home/school connection and provides an opportunity for reflection, feedback and individual instruction on how the learning journey for each student can be enhanced and extended moving forward. I’m so thankful for our collaborative team at Wandong and am so grateful to be able to partner with our families in the education race.

Foundation

Next week is a big week for our smallest Wandong family members… they start full-time at school. I know that they are sure to be tired, so we encourage our little people to ensure that they are getting to bed nice and early. Thank you to our wonderful families for your continued support and help during our testing period and coming to your teacher appointments.

Some Great Advice

I read an interesting article by Tim Elmore, titled “Three Huge Mistakes We Make Leading Kids” Elmore concludes by saying “So let them fail, let them fall, and let them fight for what they really value. If we treat our kids as fragile, they will surely grow up to be fragile adults. We must prepare them for the world that awaits them. Our world needs resilient adults not fragile ones.” - See more at: http://growingleaders.com/blog/3-mistakes-we-make-leading-kids/#sthash.6R2opR7f.dpuf

Child Safe Standard Two: Statement of Commitment to Child Safety

Wandong is committed to child safety and wellbeing of all children and young people. We want children to be safe, happy and empowered. We support and respect all children, as well as our staff and volunteers. We have zero tolerance of child abuse, and all allegations and safety concerns will be treated very seriously and consistently with our policies and procedures. We have legal and moral obligations to contact authorities when we are concerned about a child’s safety, which we follow rigorously.

• Wandong Primary School is committed to preventing child abuse and identifying risks early, and removing and reducing these risks.

• Wandong Primary School has robust human resources and recruitment practices for all staff and volunteers.

• Wandong Primary School is committed to training and educating our staff and volunteers on child abuse risks. We are committed to the cultural safety of Aboriginal children, the cultural safety of children from culturally and/or linguistically diverse backgrounds, and to providing a safe environment for children with a disability. We have specific policies, procedures and training in place that support our leadership team, staff and volunteers to achieve these commitments.

If you believe a child is at immediate risk of abuse phone 000.

NOTICES

We would like to request parents/guardians of students to pack a set of spare uniform items in their child’s bag. We have limited spare uniform at the office. If your child has recently needed to borrow items from our sick bay, please wash and return them to the office as soon as possible.

IMPORTANT – Mobile Phone/Watch/Device Policy

In 2020, DET introduced strict restrictions on the use of any device with access to a cellular system, with or without a physical connection to a network. Where students bring a device of this type to school, it MUST be placed in secure storage at the office.

IMPORTANT – Student Information

It is very important we have up-to-date information for all students. Please check Compass and update current home & email addresses, phone numbers & medical details.

Picking Up Children – Please help our admin team

In exceptional circumstances and emergencies, at times children need to be collected from school early. Please help our wonderful administration team by ensuring that this is not done during the break times of 11:00-11:30am and 1:45-2:30pm. When children are outside playing with their friends, they do not hear the announcements and it is difficult to have a staff member unlock classrooms to collect bags and belongings. Please help support our classroom programs by waiting until 3:30pm to collect children. The admin area is growing quite hectic in the afternoons with families collecting children early Thank you in advance for your support and understanding.