IMPORTANT DATES!
PRINCIPAL’S MESSAGE
What a week it has been at RGLPS. We certainly seem to be catching up on some mixed activities. This week we had students attend district swimming, a year 3 – 6 athletics carnival, dance and production practice and life education sessions. It is just amazing to be able to see students having typical experiences again. Let us all hope that it continues.
Student Leaders
We welcome our 2021 Student Representative Council (SRC).
Congratulations and gratitude is sent to the following students;
Thanks are also extended to those who put their hand up to be Environment Leaders.
Congratulations to the following students.
It has been wonderful to see how many students take such an active interest in our school and the community we live in.
Training Band Information Session and Try Outs
It is with great pleasure and extreme excitement that I announce to you the training band information session and try outs. Every year students from Year 3 have an opportunity to hear all about our band program. Then they get to try out instruments and settle on top 3 preferences. This year our Senior Band will be performing at our information session on Monday the 21st of March. Due to the COVID associated risks associated with our traditional instrumental trials we will not be able to follow the information with a tryout of the instruments. Instead we will give interested students an opportunity to hear each instrument and get an up close discussion and demonstration from a music teacher. Further information will be provided through Compass. Do keep a look out.
Annual General Meeting
On April the 7th at 6:30pm we will be holding our Annual General Meeting. This meeting is held every year and is an open meeting for our community. During this meeting we present our Annual Report to the School Community. The 2021 report is presented at that time and will then be uploaded to our Website so that our entire community can access it.
Take care,
Kirrily Lamers
Principal
STUDENT OF THE WEEK
ASSISTANT PRINCIPALS’ REPORT
National Day of Action Against Bullying and Violence
Planning for a safe and supportive school community
Next Friday Rosanna Golf Links is participating in the National Day of Action against Bullying and Violence (NDA). The NDA is Australia’s key bullying prevention initiative, connecting schools and communities to find workable solutions to prevent bullying.
The theme for the 2022 NDA is Kindness Culture. RGLPS will demonstrate Kindness Culture by creating kindness walls in each classroom and wearing orange to promote inclusion, respect and community belonging for all students.
Planning for a safe and supportive school community requires a whole-school community approach. Whole-school responses to bullying prevention build positive and supportive school environments by incorporating strategies for intervention at all levels, inclusive of students, teachers, parents and carers.
Three key characteristics outlined in the national definition of bullying distinguish bullying behaviours from other forms of peer aggression behaviours which do not constitute bullying. The key characteristics of bullying include:
- power imbalance
- deliberate intent to cause harm, and
- ongoing and repeated behaviour.
While the following behaviours of peer aggression do not constitute bullying, these behaviours may still be serious and require intervention at home and at school:
- arguments and disagreements (where there is no power imbalance)
- single acts of social rejection or meanness, or
- isolated incidents of aggression, intimidation or violence.
It is important for our entire school community, including our staff, parents, carers and students to have a clear understanding of the definition of bullying to be able to distinguish these behaviours from peer aggression, and correctly identify and respond to incidents of bullying.
The full national definition can be read here. What is bullying? National definition of bullying.
Knowing the types of bullying behaviour can also help you identify if the incident is bullying, or peer aggression. While neither of these behaviours are tolerated at RGLPS, they do require different management strategies, and the first step for responding is to correctly identify the behaviour.
If you have concerns that your child is being bullied, please contact the classroom teacher in the first instance. You will be referred to a member of the leadership team, if a satisfactory outcome is not achieved.
To learn more about our school’s process for managing incidents of bullying, the 2018 RGLPS bullying prevention policy can be found here. The Wellbeing and Policy Sub-committee of 2021 updated this policy late last year. The updated policy is now ready to be presented to the School Council at the April meeting.
You can visit the Bullying. No Way! website for additional resources.
Smart Devices at School
It has come to my attention that there are many students wearing smartwatches to school. This type of device is not allowed to be worn or used during school hours as stated in the Department of Educations Personal Mobile Device Policy (https://www.rosanna-golflinks-ps.vic.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/RGLPS-Student-Mobile-Phone-and-Personal-Mobile-Device-Policy-26.3.2020-002.pdf)
We understand that some of these devices have a school mode which deactivates some features. Whilst we understand that in school mode the device does comply with this policy, the time it would take our teachers to ensure this is set up correctly is unmanageable.
The school offers a secure place to store these devices in the office. All students should turn off and hand in their devices when arriving in the morning. They can collect these at the end of the day to head home.
As you know this is a Department of Education policy and we must enact this. Thank you for your understanding and assistance in this matter. Should you feel that your child’s device is exempt from this policy, please contact Luke Franklin.
Some examples of smartwatches our kids are wearing.
Luke Franklin & Denisse Lobos
Assistant Principals
TEACHING AND LEARNING
Overlearning and Mastery
Today, I want to share some recent research about the power of ‘Overlearning’ (Turner, 2017).
‘Overlearning’ occurs when we learn and practise a new skill so many times that it becomes automatic, even beyond the point of mastery. At this point, we don’t need to think about how to do something and we can apply the skill to multiple, new contexts. This is the level we want our students to attain with knowing their letters and sounds, to reduce their cognitive load. This ‘automaticity’ allows children’s mental energies to fully focus on their reading comprehension and understanding.
One of the biggest challenges in teaching is finding interesting, varied ways for learners to revise and practise skills while maintaining engagement in the task. Games, use of digital resources, ‘hands on’ activities, group work, investigations, problem solving and searching for patterns are all simple ways to keep children motivated in learning.
If you are supporting your child to learn their letters and sounds, here are some activities you can try:
- Search a book for words in their reading starting with a letter, spelling or sound combination eg. ‘b’ words, words with a ‘ch’
- Similarly, think of words that begin with or that have a specific sound
- Login to Reading Eggs, Bug Club or Epic and ask your child to do some of the activities and games attached to the books
- Ask your child to read to or with someone to practice their decoding and reading skills. It could be parent, a sibling, relative, pet or even a teddy!
- Match words with their starting letters
- Play iSpy to practice alphabet awareness and sound recognition
- Trace or draw letters on an iPad, whiteboard, in the sand, chalk etc
- Do a sound swap. An example would be to swap the sound before ‘op’ – p/op, t/op, m/op, sh/op, fl/op
It also helps to keep practice sessions short and in regular cycles. This ongoing practice helps help the brain to build the neural pathways needed for automaticity. Keeping the practice sessions short and targeted helps avoid boredom and disengagement.
I encourage parents/carers to speak to your child’s teacher for further information about how you can best support them with more specific learning goals.
Maths Olympiad 2022
Last week, our 2022 Team commenced their weekly Wednesday morning practice sessions for this year’s Maths Olympiad. Sessions focus on solving maths problems and sharing and reflecting on the strategies and knowledge that helped us to successfully solve each question.
The first Olympiad for 2022 will be held on Wednesday 23rd March – we wish all RGLPS students participating in this year’s challenge the best of luck!
Have a wonderful week everyone and enjoy the upcoming long weekend!
Kerron Worsdell
Learning Specialist
MATHEMATICS NEWS
Maths Riddle
Well done to those who solved last week’s ‘Cross the River’ challenge. The answer to the problem is…
- The farmer takes the rabbit across the river
- The farmer goes back to collect the fox and takes it to the other side of the river
- The farmer leaves the fox, but takes the rabbit back with him to the start point. He collect the carrots to cross the river, but leaves the rabbit behind.
- The farmer leaves the carrots with the fox while he travels across the river to collect and bring the rabbit to the end point.
Here’s this week’s challenge. I’ll share the answer in next week’s newsletter.
Ladder Challenges
Start at the bottom of the ladders. Work through each step to reach the top and solve the answer for each ladder. Start with the green ladder and if you solve it, work up to the more challenging orange ladder.
Hint: Record your working out on paper as you go to track where you are up to or use a collection of objects to act out each step of the problem.
Extra challenge: Create your own ladder challenges.
If you’d like to share your response or have your working out featured in our newsletter, please send your solutions to sarah.mclellan@education.vic.gov.au
SUSTAINABILITY NEWS
Rosanna Golf Links is a five star rated sustainability school. This was recently renewed and in recognition of student and staff efforts, we have received the following certificate from Sustainability Victoria. RGLPS prides itself on avoiding waste wherever possible, such as the Nude Food policy, re-using paper, avoiding laminating, turning off lights and other simple every day actions that when done consistently in our learning community, add up to a big difference.
Please continue to support our community focus by actively avoiding sending packaging around students’ food and providing home bottled water rather than purchasing water bottles from canteen.
SPORTS NEWS
Swimming
On Monday the 7th of March, eleven of our students participated in the Division Swimming Carnival at Watermarc in Greensborough. All of our students put in their very best effort and I was so proud of the way they all supported each other and celebrated their achievements. I am pleased to announce the Will B and Matilda K have both qualified for the Northern Metropolitan Region Final in a fortnight and I wish them every success in their races to qualify for the Victorian State Final!
A special thanks must also go to Kristina Sikich, Lauren Borschmann, Kim Mansfield and Penny Newland for driving our students to and from Watermarc today!
Darren Peters
PE and Sports Coordinator
Athletics
FUNDRAISING
Vision Portraits
Please book at the following link: https://rosannaglps2022.eventbrite.com.au
SPECIAL RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION (SRI) NEWS
We held our first Special Religious Instruction – Christianity (known as SRI) session for the year yesterday, in the Library, during the second lunch break (2 – 2.30pm). It was lovely to see some familiar faces and meet some new children as well. The sessions will be on every Thursday from now on. It would be great if families who have given their permission for their children to come, could remind their children on the Thursday morning, so they don’t forget. I’m looking forward to getting to know the children more, having some fun and doing some good thinking and learning together. Permission forms are still available on Compass or at the Office, if there are others interested in attending. If anyone has any questions about the program, please give me a call.
Thank you!
Cathie Clarke
Ph: 0411 883 904 or 9459 2278
WORK AT THE ELECTIONS
Please follow the link for further information and how to register.
- – Elections casuals can work before, on and after election day.
- – Work in election offices, early voting centres and mobile voting centres.
- – Paid an hourly rate.
CANTEEN
Dear Parents.
From today you will no longer be able to order snacks through Flexischools at recess and lunch. Students are able to buy over the counter now that some of the COVID rules have changed.
Please send money with your children if you would like them to buy snacks over the counter.
When ordering on Flexischools please make sure your order is confirmed. We have had a few children who are ending up with no lunch order or one child’s has gone through but not the other.
Have a nice long weekend.
Margaret Groves
Canteen Manager
COMMUNITY NOTICES
Disclaimer: Rosanna Golf Links Primary School (RGLPS) does not endorse any product or service advertised in this newsletter. RGLPS takes no responsibility for the content of advertisements or the quality and reliability of products or services offered in the advertisements
