5 July 2017

Newsletter Articles

From the Principal

Hello everyone,

As we head into the last week of term I would like to acknowledge the work of our teaching staff and thank them for their continuous efforts to ensure the students of Exeter Primary School are given the best opportunities for learning. This term in particular, is a busy term for teachers with many major events such as NAPLAN, Swimming and Water Safety, reporting and excursions and performances. Teachers dedicate many hours to the assessment and monitoring of student progress and then writing reports to detail individual learning progress. I urge all families to attend to what has been written in reports and take up the opportunity of a Parent and Teacher conversations to discuss your child’s learning progress. Teachers are only one part of the picture. “Research shows that parents have significant impact of their children’s educational achievements. In fact, parental engagement overrides all other factors that have been shown to influence a child’s achievement. It is therefore critical that teachers and parents develop effective relationships to bridge the student learning between home and school.” Perkins, Kate. (June 2015) 'Parents and teachers working together', Research Developments, ACER.

Parent/ Teacher/Student Conversations

It was really pleasing to see so many families at last night’s Parent/ Teacher/ Student Conversations and have the chance to talk with many of you. If you have not had the opportunity to make an appointment with your child’s teacher please contact the office and set up an appointment for early next term.

Thank you

Exeter Primary is fortunate to have the support of some generous sponsors who help out from time to time with monetary donations towards extra activities or events. Recently we received a donation from The Heritage Isle Credit Union for our Breakfast Club and a generous donation from the Exeter Community Group towards the Festival of Voices trip to Hobart. This group has also supported individual families through our School Social Worker and we are very grateful for their support. I would also like to thank the Legana Banjos store for their support of our Breakfast Club.

Festival of Voices

Many of you will have seen the write up in last week’s Examiner about our choir and their upcoming performance in Festival of Voices. We are all really excited about this opportunity and the students in the choir have been working really hard this term to learn the very complicated pieces they are required to sing. Mrs Alcock has done a tremendous job preparing the choir and her expertise in this area has been very apparent. Thank you Mrs Alcock. I would also like to acknowledge Mrs Emms for supporting the choir and taking on the organisation of the trip. As you can imagine it requires a great deal of organisation to take a group of students away on a trip like this and Mrs Emms has worked hard to ensure that it will be a great success. Thank you also to Mrs Susan O’Leary for volunteering to go along on the trip as parent helper. Mrs Alcock, Mrs Emms and Mrs Peart will be accompanying the choir to Hobart this week and we wish them all the very best and look forward to hearing how the choir performed.

Physical Education

Term 2 is always a busy term for Mr Habel and his Physical Education Calendar and I would like to acknowledge the work that he does in ensuring our students have the chance to participate in high quality physical education lessons, daily fitness, 5/6 sports exchanges, Swimming and Water Safety and cross country events. Mr Habel’s role goes beyond our school as he holds a position on the Tamar Primary School Sports Association (TPSSA) and so plays a significant role in the organisation of inter-school sporting events. What looks easy is often the result of many hours of preparation and liaison with other schools and organisations. Thank you Mr Habel.

Student Attendance

Currently our records show there are a number students who have accumulated an unacceptable number of absences and this impedes their learning progress and can also negatively impact their ability to form positive social connections with other children. After July 10 2017, when the new Education Act takes effect, new measures will be enacted to deal with chronic absence. This week we will issue warning letters to families and ask that they make a greater effort to ensure that children are at school every day. Of course there are times when children are unwell and cannot attend school. Please ensure that you notify the school office about any absence and explain the reason. Schools are required by law to keep accurate attendance records and all absences must be explained by a parent or carer. If your child is unwell for a prolonged period of time the school may ask for a doctor’s certificate to verify this. If you have any questions or concerns please contact me to discuss.

Achievement Assembly

In the second week of Term 3 we will be holding our first Achievement Assembly. The purpose of this is to acknowledge those students who have made significant achievement in the first half of the year. This may be demonstrated by achieving an A in their Mid-Year Report, making a significant improvement in learning as a result of consistent effort and having a Growth Mindset or being at school every day and ready for learning. At the assembly these students will receive commendation for their achievement. Parents of those students receiving a commendation will be notified and invited to the assembly to share in their child’s achievement.

Reminder

I would like to remind all our families that Monday July 24 is a Professional Learning Day for teachers and other staff at the school and therefore a student free day. On this day our teachers will be looking more closely at the teaching of reading and developing whole school strategies to strengthen and grow our reading program.

As we head towards the holiday break I wish all our students and families a restful and enjoyable break. I hope you are able to make the most of the time and share some quality time together as a family.

Kind regards

Assembly Awards

Growth Mindset Awards

We congratulate:

Luke Cocker, Ashton Joyce, Emily Rossiter, Flynn McEvoy

Class Awards

We congratulate the following students:

Respectful Schools

The Zones of Regulation® is a program we have incorporated into our school life at Exeter Primary School and we have shared many aspects of our journey with you through our newsletters and Facebook page. Here are some excerpts from an interview Leah Kuypers, the author of the program shared with Tauna Davis of the Crisis Prevention Institute. The full interview can be viewed from the link below and is well worth listening to.

Leah Kuypers is an Occupational Therapist, with a Graduate Certificate in Autism, and a Master of Arts in Education. She has practiced as an OT/autism specialist in school and clinical settings, specialising in self-regulation and social learning, and has worked with students of all ages and challenges, including anxiety, ADHD, and ASD. Leah created The Zones of Regulation®, a framework designed to teach self-regulation, and is author of the book and two apps by same name (2011, Social Thinking Publishing; 2013, 2016 Selosoft, Inc). In addition to working with students, she provides trainings and consultation to parents and professionals on self-regulation and challenging behaviour, as well as conducts workshops on the Zones to groups across North America.

What is emotional self-regulation?

Emotional self-regulation is the ability to monitor and manage our own behaviour. With self-regulation, we can calm ourselves down when we’re distressed, and pick ourselves up when we’re low. Self-regulation is developmental in nature, just like learning to walk, talk, and read.

Why teach self-regulation strategies?

When Leah started working with students in public schools, she felt driven to provide kids with more support. A trained occupational therapist, she had no shortage of skills to address students’ sensory regulation challenges, but she felt something was missing when it came to addressing students’ behavioural challenges. Whether students were struggling with anxiety, ADHD, ASD, or another condition, they often couldn’t focus on learning because they had little ability to manage their emotions.

“I was watching a student explode because they missed the first five minutes of math,” Leah says, “and the teacher’s looking at me like, ‘Well now what do we do?’ and I’m looking at the teacher thinking the same thing, and I realised that there were a lot of us looking at each other really unsure how to support these kids when they had these big emotional experiences that often manifested themselves with disruptive behaviour.”

What often resulted from these outbursts was not uncommon, but ultimately unproductive. Students were given negative consequences such as no recess or being removed from the classroom. The expectation was that the students would learn a lesson. But as many educators do, Leah saw time and time again that punishment does not often teach. It usually just hurts. It perpetuates. And then crises repeat. So Leah felt impassioned to help students develop more adaptive, prosocial behaviour. Ideas started flowing as she began graduate classes and explored social learning, executive functioning, and emotional regulation in children. As she began putting practices into place with students, her colleagues started getting excited by what they were seeing. Students were engaged in learning. When she got her master’s in education, her culminating capstone became The Zones of Regulation curriculum.

What many people don’t know about self-regulation and emotional control

Just like learning to walk and learning to read, self-regulation is developmental in nature, Leah says. “All too often, our approach for a child with lagging skills in self-regulation is a more disciplinary model—where we would never take that approach with a kid who has a motor impairment or a reading delay.” So to support a child who has self-regulation delays, we need to meet them with an empathetic mindset and skill-building so they can be more adaptive and functional.

The Zones of Regulation

The Zones of Regulation is a systematic framework that gives kids ways to categorize how they’re feeling. The colours blue, green, yellow, and red represent four zones that students can identify with.

• Blue zone
  Sad, sick, tired, bored. “Down” emotions.
• Green zone
  Neutral emotions, organized states. Calm, focused, happy, OK.
• Yellow zone
  Intensified emotions with cognitive control. Frustrated, silly, excited, wiggly, agitated, sensory overwhelmed, nervous, embarrassed.
• Red zone
  Intense emotions that overwhelm. Panicked, enraged, elated, crying, screaming.

“We’re taking a rather abstract concept and putting it into four categories or zones that allow students to cognitively be able to conceptualise more easily, ‘How am I feeling?' Leah

says. “And once they get that general zone, they have a bank of emotions that fall into each of the four zones, so they’re building that awareness of where they’re at, we’re giving them a very visual structure to use to support that, as well as a very easy way to communicate it—with the caregiver, with the teacher, which will assist in that co-regulation between student and caregiver.” And as students build awareness of their emotions, Leah’s system gives children matching tools for each of the four-coloured zones.

Teaching self-regulation in the classroom and beyond

The first step is teaching students that it’s OK to feel the way they feel. “It’s natural to experience emotions,” Leah says. “But we don’t have to be at their mercy.”

Leah advocates teaching students to read their bodies’ signals, asking themselves:

• What are the cues my body gives me?
• Are my muscles tighter?
• What’s going through my mind?
• Has my voice volume or rate of speech changed?

Once a student can identify physiological cues, they can start to identify their triggers, and apply tools for managing each zone.

Collaborating across disciplines

It’s important for everyone to work together to teach self-regulation, Leah emphasizes. This includes all the key players in a student’s life, including:

• Teachers
• Caregivers
• Administrators
• Occupational Therapists
• Speech and Language Pathologists
• Social workers
• Psychologists
• Assistants and paraprofessionals
• Mental health professionals and others

“Working in collaboration,” Leah explains, “It’s profound for the student to be able to move between contexts and environments and amongst different people supporting them, and hear the same language, that the visuals are there, that the environment is embracing them and setting them up for success as they travel between the cafeteria and the classroom and their specialist and their resource rooms.”

Birthdays

Launching into Learning

Our Learning Community

Support Services

Personal Growth and Development Program 2017

During Term 3, age appropriate Personal Growth and Development classes will be taught at Exeter Primary for our Grade 1 to 6 classes. Prep classes will begin in Term 4. These classes will be facilitated by our school nurse, Juanita Du Vergier. Each session will run for 45 minutes over 2 - 4 weeks.

Prep to Grade 2 students will learn the correct name for body parts, identify the difference between private and public body parts and learn about the difference and similarities between boys and girls.

Grades 3 and 4 students will be have a brief introduction to puberty. They will learn about how they have grown and developed since they were babies and what to expect as they continue to develop over their life. These sessions will also include discussion around personal safety and trusted adults.

Grade 5 and 6 students will cover more in-depth information about puberty, adolescence and healthy relationships. There will be an emphasis on learning to respect yourself and others, personal responsibility and how to stay physically and mentally healthy throughout life.

Parents are acknowledged as the primary providers of growth and development education. The aim of the school program is to increase parent and child communication about a range of topics. At times during these classes homework sheets will be sent home. The purpose of homework is to provide opportunities for discussion between parents and their children.

A parent session will be held prior to the commencement of the Growth and Development classes to provide parents with more information and the opportunity to ask any questions. This session will be on Tuesday July 25 at 9-10 am in the Foyer of the PAC. We welcome you all to attend.

Music

Music-Drama at Exeter Primary School

This year at Exeter Primary School we are learning all about Drama and Music. All classes from Prep to Grade 4 participate in Music-Drama lessons with Mrs Emms. We are learning lots of funny songs, Mrs Emms loves to sing and play guitar for us.

In Music-Drama we participate in a range of activities each week:

• developing skills in listening and speaking
• performance and audience behaviour
• singing and choir
• dance and movement

We learn to work in cooperative groups to create performance items for our class, sharing our work and ideas with others. Our team work has improved and we are learning to show respect through attentive listening and appreciating the efforts of all performers.

Being part of a team is a great feeling and we celebrate everyone’s contributions each lesson. We sing some nonsense songs and some modern songs. The exciting thing about music and drama is that we get to perform for others, even though we were all nervous to begin with. We all support each other to grow and be our best. We have completed short skits based on nursery rhymes, instrument work creating simple repeated patterns and body percussion movement pieces. It has been a busy and creative first half of the year in Music-Drama.

Sport

Tasmanian Primary Schools Cross Country Championships

Tuesday 27th June

Congratulations to the 19 Exeter students from Grades 3-6 who took up the challenge to run in this State Event. Running in age groups, our athletes had to run 2km(9 & 10 yrs) or 3km(11 & 12 yrs) against fields which contained on average 250 of the State’s best long distance runners.

For detailed race results and photos you can check out the web page by putting in Athletics Tasmania.

Results with position and time alongside name. Winning time under age group.

Thanks to all the parents who supported on the especially Allison White who accompanied the team on the bus.

5/6 Sport

Last Friday the first round of our revamped 5/6 sport exchanges began at Blue Gum Park, George Town. This year the Tamar Association decided that to make our 5 exchanges more fun, competitive and maximise participation, we would schedule three teams at a venue for the whole day rather than playing one team and using up most of a day. Exeter was pooled with Port Dalrymple and South George Town. This meant that students were able to play between four and six round robin matches increasing game time by over an hour. Coaches could ensure all team members played a range of positions and develop their confidence as the day progressed. Despite the cold winds ever present at George Town the day was a success with children enjoying the multiple fields that Blue Gum provides. This system also ensures the extra numbers and teams that Exeter has over other schools are guaranteed matches. Thanks to teachers and parent helpers in supporting the teams. Our next exchange is July 28 against South George Town and Star of the Sea at SGT.

Peter Habel

Parents

Parent/Teacher/Student Conversations Survey

At Exeter Primary School we value parent feedback and are seeking this from you in relation to our recent Parent/Teacher/Student Conversations. We would appreciate you taking the time to complete the following short survey:

This survey will close on Friday July 17 2017.

Looks what is coming back..

What’s Happening in Our Classrooms?

School Association

Snowflake Making Fun

P&F held a snowflake making workshop at lunchtime, Friday 30/6, to give children from Grades 3, 4, 5 & 6 the opportunity to create paper snowflakes. The snowflakes will be used as part of our winter themed ‘Ladies Night’. Thank you to all the children who, with scissors and their imagination, changed plain copy paper into beautiful works of art.

Looking forward to seeing all our Mums, Grandmothers, Aunts, Carers, Neighbours.

Ladies Night –

shopping, prizes, relaxing and chatting! Friday 28th July in our school PAC.

Plans for ladies night are going really well and it promises to be another fantastic evening and fundraiser for our school. We have over 40 stalls booked and some great prizes coming in.

Accommodation, meals out, flowers, supermarket and shopping vouchers to name just a few!

If you know someone with a business or service who may contribute a prize please ask them and let us know via the school office. The proceeds will all get poured back into our school!

We also would love some pairs of hands to help set up on a Thursday July 27 in the PAC at school from 1pm and on Friday afternoon too. Please come along if you are able.

Otherwise, hope to see you there on the evening supporting our fundraiser and having a great night!

Many thanks, The P&F!

Community News