Newsletter Week 5 Term 1, 2023 – Message from Administration, Chaplains Corner, P&C Annual General Meeting and Elections TONIGHT, Numero Club, Canteen

Message from Administration

Dear parents and caregivers

We are halfway through the term already and off to a flying start. Next Wednesday, we have our faction swimming carnival at HBF Stadium for our Year 4-6 students. Parents, carers and grandparents are all most welcome to attend and cheer on our students. We have had incredible participation for before school swimming training, with 85 students on one day alone last week. Thank you to Mr Bowman, Mrs Watson and parent Jayne Malone for their support.

Security

I would really appreciate the support of the community on keeping a close eye and ear out for our school grounds on evenings and weekends. The level of vandalism is increasing and causing disruption for learning programs and our neighbours at times. The Kindy and Pre-primary areas in particular have seen increased vandalism and the basketball court area is also an issue with late night use, damage to the drinking fountain and parties. We have over 800 students at Wembley and the school grounds do need to be protected for their use. The school and P&C have collaborated to ensure we have amazing school grounds and facilities and together we can make sure we keep the grounds in excellent condition. Please alert School Security if you notice anyone other than staff on school grounds after hours. Thank you.

2023-2025 Business Plan

Over several months, the school leadership team has been consulting with staff, the School Board and the community to reflect on our previous business plan and develop our new strategic direction. A school business plan is a document that outlines the priority areas for school improvement for the next 3 years. Specific targets have been developed to monitor the impact on student, staff and community outcomes.

Our new business plan builds on the momentum of the previous plan, particularly in relation to embedding explicit, evidence-based teaching strategies aligned with the current research and cognitive science principles around how students acquire and retain learning. Wembley PS staff are highly committed and dedicated to professional growth and embrace change to be the best educators they can be. We will be focusing on fine tuning our teaching practice and embedding a common language and approach for high impact learning design over the next 3 years. Our newly developed whole school instructional model is based on research and includes the elements that need to be included in a sequence of learning to have the highest impact on student learning. We will begin to share our model with you through examples in future school newsletters.

We will also continue to strengthen our whole school approach to inquiry learning, Visible Thinking and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths) to develop critical and creative thinking skills. Our success in this aspect of our practice to date has been recognised with an invitation to join the New Metrics for Success project as a Melbourne Assessment community school, the only public school in Western Australia taking part in this forward-thinking model.

New Metrics for Success is a collaborative research venture, from the University of Melbourne Graduate School of Education, exploring how we can assess and recognise a broader set of competencies than what we currently do. We will always need to explicitly teach and assess core curriculum areas such as literacy and numeracy to ensure we are equipping students with the foundational skills needed to thrive at and beyond school. This project aims to expand how we define ‘success’ for a learner and recognise student progress in new ways. Your children have an array of talents and unique qualities, which we are focused on nurturing and extending. Being able to empower our students to see the growth in their thinking is an exciting feature of New Metrics. Our staff will begin to engage with this work in 2023 and I look forward to sharing updates with you in the future.

I have touched on just two elements of our strategic direction above which form part of the ‘High Impact Teaching, Learning and Leadership’ pillar. An ‘Inclusive and Supportive School Culture’ and ‘Positive Community Partnerships’ are also integral to our vision. I encourage you to read our Business Plan and engage with what will drive the school forward.

A huge thank you must go to parent Trisha Davies who generously donates her time to the school to produce the highly professional graphic design for our Business Plan and school policies. We are so very grateful for your support and endless patience on all the revisions as we drafted this plan.

You can read the Wembley Primary School Business Plan 2023-2025 on the school website here.

You can also find our updated Behaviour Management Policy here which has a simplified matrix for understanding how challenging student behaviours are managed at the school level. This policy has been endorsed by the School Board.

Digital Home Learning Tools

In previous years, the school has included digital home learning subscriptions on the annual contributions and charges. These tools such as Reading Eggs, Nessy, Mathseeds and Mathletics were intended to provide the different year levels with access to a developmentally appropriate tool to reinforce learning at home through game-based and engaging digital apps.

As our teaching practice has shifted to align with the evidence-base, we have also made intentional decisions about which online tools we use. In addition, data has shown that home usage of these programs decreased and many parents opted not to pay the cost associated with the subscription. When purchasing subscriptions at a whole school level, the school is required to purchase a subscription for every student and if a parent opts not to pay, the school is still required to pay the provider. Last year, this amounted to several thousand dollars in unexpected cost to the school. This year, we have reduced the list to just one tool – Mathletics for Year 1-6 students. This aligns with a whole school focus on numeracy and it is hoped that the one program and cost will prove more manageable for families.

For those families that wish to continue using evidence-based apps to reinforce learning at home, particularly in the Early Years, you may wish to consider apps such as ‘Initial Code Full Version’ by Sounds Write or ‘Teach Your Monster to Read’ by Teach Your Monster. These are one-off low-cost apps that will still enable your child to practice segmenting and blending and progress through levels to build on their acquisition of sounds and support phonics and spelling.

School Board Parent Representatives

At the end of March, the terms of three (3) current School Board parent representatives are expiring; Scott Crawley, Paul Wallman and Evita Soldo.

These parent representatives have all been exceptional contributors to our school community and have the option to re-nominate for their positions. However, all vacancies are advertised to give the parent community the opportunity to consider nominating. You can see our current School Board Members on the school website here.

The WPS School Board is an unincorporated Board. Board members participate in school governance by supporting the principal and school staff to implement the strategic directions outlined in the Department’s 2020-24 strategic directions ‘Building on Strength’ and the WPS Business Plan 2023-25 to achieve year-on-year school improvement. Some of the responsibilities of the Board are listed below.

• Endorsing and reviewing the Business Plan and noting the school budget
• Annually approving charges and contributions to the community

• Positively promoting the school in the community

• Evaluating the school’s performance in achieving strategic directions and priorities

• Input into policy development

• Communicating with the broader community the functions of the Board

The Board is seeking parents with diverse skill sets and life experiences. In particular, the Board is keen to improve the cultural diversity to reflect the multicultural profile of our community. Did you know 35% of WPS families have a language background other than English? Ensuring diversity on boards contributes to effective school governance, and leads to better informed decision-making, new ideas, opinions, solutions and stronger connections with the school community.

The School Board meets twice per term (Tuesday evenings at 5:45pm in week 3 and 8 of each term) in the School Library. Each representative will be committing to a term of 3 years if successful (Term 1 2023 – Term 1 2026).  An election will be held if more than 3 nominations are received.

Nomination: Please consider nominating using the online form here.

You can contact the principal, Tamara Doig at the school (08) 9253 9400 or by email tamara.doig@education.wa.edu.au for further information. The Board Chair for 2023 is Professor Tama Leaver and he can also be contacted in relation to the nomination process – tamaleaver@gmail.com should you have any questions.

Nominations close on Friday 10 March at 4pm.

 

New Drinking Fountain

We have a brand new refrigerated and filtered drinking station being installed on the side wall of the sports shed at the moment. Thanks to Mrs Kathy Watson, one of our amazing Phys Ed teachers, we were the successful recipients of a grant for the drinking station. The school paid for the installation, upgrading to a refrigerated unit and the addition of our commissioned indigenous design by Rosie Paine. This will be a welcome addition to our facilities and ensures we have access to cold drinking water near the oval and junior playground. The installation is being finalised over the next few days and we hope to have it operational next week.

 

Important Dates

Year 4-6 Faction Swimming Carnival: Wednesday 8 March (HBF Stadium – Outdoor Pool)

Parent/carers – please use Compass to give consent and pay for this excursion by Tuesday 7 March at the latest so your child can attend. A reminder will show on your Compass homepage for those who have not paid and given permission.

ANZAC Day Service: Thursday 6 April at 9am

A reminder that our half day school closure to facilitate parent-teacher meetings will take place on Wednesday 3 May (Week 2, Term 2).

Parent-Teacher Interviews ½ day school closure: Wednesday 3 May 12pm

Connect, Collaborate, Communicate, Care

Yours in learning

Tamara, Milani, Scott, Stacey and Natalie