Beaconsfield Primary School Newsletter

Can you believe that we have less than 4 weeks of school left for 2023! Mrs Amos is taking her holidays a bit earlier – Linda Amos will be commencing leave next week for the rest of the year (she may pop in at the end of the year).  Cara Trott will take on the role of Acting Assistant Principal and join Tyson Buckingham and myself as part of the leadership team.

Assemblies

With only a few weeks to go, we have a couple of assemblies left to acknowledge our students.  Next week we have our regularly fortnightly assembly where we give out our Beacy Spirit awards, specialist awards and make announcements.

On Monday 11^th December, we will have our final assembly for the year.  At this assembly we will acknowledge our students who reached 300 nights of reading, announce the winners of the Christmas raffle, say our ‘goodbyes’ and lots more.  This assembly starts around 2:45pm in the shed.  I hope you are able to come along and celebrate with us.

School Concert

I am sure you have heard from your child how they are getting ready for the concert (or are they trying really hard to keep their performance a surprise for you?).

On Thursday 7^th December we have two concerts. 

• Junior (Prep, grade 1 and grade 2) Starting time – 1:45pm
• Senior (Grade 3, grade 4, grade 5 and grade 6) Starting time – 4:00pm

We all know that these events will be well attended so make sure you give yourself lots of time to park, walk to our school and get seated.  We will open up the school gates on Lyle ave at 1:30pm for families to access our school.  We will open the gate closest to the shed area.

There will be clearly designated areas for people sitting on rugs and where you can sit if you have brought a chair.  As a school, we will provided limited accessible seating for those with additional needs. If on the afternoon, you need additional support, please see a staff member.

It will be a very exciting and busy afternoon for everyone.  Please remember for the junior concert that your child is at school and in the care of their teacher, so we need them to stay with their grade at all times.

You were sent a very informative brochure regarding all the details of the concert on Sentral for Parents app.  Please make sure you are familiar with it. We will be attempting to provide a live stream – let’s hope technology is working.

It is a timely reminder about our ‘Photographing, Filming and Recording Students’ policy.

Beaconsfield Primary school requests that parents/carers, students and invited guests who photograph, film or record school activities only do so for their own personal use and do not publish the images in any form, including on social media, without the prior consent of persons whose children also appear in the images.

We will also be recording our school concert and grade 6 graduation for DVD sales, and if your child participates, they may appear in these recordings which will be available to the whole school community.

Curriculum Days for 2024

We have decided our curriculum dates for 2024.  These days students are not required at school.  OSHClub is available for supervision of students.  You can also access school dates on the calendar on the Sentral for Parents app.

• Term 1 – Tuesday 12^th March
• Term 2 – Friday 7^th June
• Term 3 – Monday 15^th July – Professional Practice Day
• Term 4 – Friday 1^st Nov

I promise my last mention of the cricket for 2023.  How exciting was it on Sunday night/Monday morning to see the men’s Australian cricket defeat India to win the ODI World Cup!  They were certainly the underdogs going into the game, but it just proves that when everyone works as a team in all aspects of the game, you can achieve amazing things.

Have a great weekend,

Heidi Inglis

Today our Student Representative Council hosted our Remembrance Day ceremony.  It is a very sombre time for our community to take a moment to reflect on our history and acknowledge the sacrifices that people have made.  Our SRC did a fantastic job of hosting the service.

Transition

Change is a coming and this make some people nervous and anxious.  We all know that it is inevitable that change happens in life.  As part of education, every year at Beaconsfield Primary School, we say goodbye to their grade and teacher for the year and move to the next stage in their education.  This is a time of celebration as they have achieved to move on and they are ready for the next challenges.

However, we must be aware of what change does to us and our children.  For some people, it comes much easily and they have the resilience to deal with it well.  This is what we hope for all our students.  We have supported them all through the year to deal with issues and worked with them on their mental wellbeing. 

To support your child, here are some suggestions:

• Make sure that you are talking about their next stage in a positive way – how exciting, you are ready, this is a good thing, you can do this.
• Be mindful of how much you talk about it – sometimes it might be too much.
• Support your child to see what they can control.  Some things are not in their control so there is no need to worry about it.  They need to trust the process and they will be able to deal with the outcome.
• Be mindful of how you are feeling about it as you are their role model.  If you are nervous or anxious, this is contagious and your child might be ‘catching’ your emotions.
• Take moments to check in with your child as to how they are feeling and see if they are able to state what they are wondering or concerned about.  Answer their questions honestly and if you don’t know what the answer is, try problem solving as to how you find out the solution – who could we ask? 

As a school, we are constantly working with our students to deal with ‘change’ in a healthy way.  As we get closer to the end of year, your child will have transition sessions in their grade for next year.  Yesterday, we held sessions for our 2024 Preps at our school.  They had opportunities to see our school and meet some of our staff.  Our grade 6 students will have visits to their secondary schools in December to have similar experiences.

If you feel your child’s emotions are making them struggle with transition, please seek support and reassurance from your child’s classroom teacher.

2024

This time of year we begin to plan for 2024.  This involves working out our workforce.  If you know that your child will not be attending Beaconsfield Primary School in 2024, can you please let the school know by sending an email to the school or coming into the office.

Often parents worry about how their children will cope in a new classroom with a new teacher and with new friends. From experience, we have found that our children are far more resilient than you think and actually revel in the opportunity presented in experiencing new things.  Our teachers benefit from being moved around the school too. 

Should you have requests for 2024 they must be put in writing and submitted to the Office by November 20^th. Any requests based on sound educational reasons will be considered but this does not necessarily mean that they will, or can be accommodated. Our teaching staff always take into consideration friendship groups, social/emotional implications and educational reasons when placing students in classes. Requests for individual teachers or requests based on gender will not be considered.

The student will have or will be asked to list a group of approximately five friends. It may prove useful for parents to discuss this with their children.

Only this year’s requests are considered therefore any requests need to be put in writing each year.

For those following the Cricket World Cup ODI, what an amazing performance we witnessed from Glenn Maxwell.  The resilience and perseverance to stay at the crease and achieve a team win and personal best, is one that I do not think I will witness again.  Let’s hope the team reachs the finals and come away with a win.

Heidi Inglis

Principal

Happy Friday!  Next week we have our Curriculum Day on Friday 3^rd November.  We hope you are able to enjoy the extra long weekend and my fingers are crossed that you have lovely weather to get out and about.  Our teachers will use the Curriculum Day to spend time learning about ‘How Students Learn’ – looking at strategies to engage and motivate students and Assessment and Reporting.

Grade 5 and 6 camp

Last week we held our grade 5 and 6 camp to Camp Coolamatong.  I had the pleasure of joining the grade 5s on their camp.  Both camps were fortunate to have great weather.  This camp is down on the coastline and many activities are on or near water as well as on the farm.  The students took part in working on teamwork, respect and gratitude.  The catchphrase for the camp was ‘respect and gratitude are contagious, it’s like a boomerang that comes back to you’.  We all had a great time together and the camp staff feedback to me was how respectful our Beacy students are, they were all very impressed with their behaviour.

The view at camp!

A students take on their experience of camp.
” At camp Coolamatong, the staff reminded us of the value of respect and gratitude, which was their theme. Most of the activities at camp involved teamwork, for example one of the activities, we had to move some tires using certain rules, and respect played into that as you needed to respect each other’s opinions. My favourite activity at camp was the boat trip because we went to the beach and played games. Camp was a great experience, the bonding with friends, activities and the food made it the best – Dom Grade 6

Village Green Playground

The Shire of Cardinia have reached out to ask for our community’s voice asking for your feedback on the Village Green playground renewal.  This is a great opportunity for you to sit with your child and have their voice heard by their local council.  They have developed design options and they would like you and your family to choose your favourite one.

I have attached the information flyer and you will need to send in your feedback by 5^th November.  All information is on the flyer.

Prep transition 2024

We held our Prep 2024 Information night on Wednesday and in a couple of weeks we will begin our onsite program that sees our 2024 Preps visiting us for a few hours.  As part of the program, our grade 5 students will come down and help us with our new friends.  It is lovely to see our future leaders of our school caring and supporting our new students. 

World Teachers’ Day

Today is World Teachers’ Day.  At Beaconsfield Primary School we are so grateful to have such dedicated teachers who come to school every day to make a difference to your child.  The commitment they make to ensure they are meeting the learning and wellbeing needs of every child is amazing.

The staff at Beaconsfield Primary School would like to thank our community for the support you have shown in the past two weeks.  We knew we were part of a special community but this has been evident with the display of compassion that you have given us and each other.

Heidi Inglis

Principal

Welcome to term 4!  I hope you had a nice break with your family. 

Beacy’s Got Talent

Last Friday our school community sat down to enjoy the amazing talents of our students.  We watched performances of singing and rapping, dancing and acrobatics, instrumental pieces and ventriloquism.  What a wonderful diversity of talents we have at Beacy!  The students did a wonderful job of getting up in front of the large audience to perform their acts and the audience did a terrific job of being appreciative and supportive.

Thank you to our Student Representative Council for organising the event and introducing the items and to Mr Jeffries for working with our students to help get this event from concept to performance.

Building works on the holiday

You may have seen we had lots of workers at our school over the holidays.  We were able to resurface our basketball court, replace fencing at our wetlands, build a retaining wall and seating at the Princes Hwy gate, and extend the retaining wall along Lyle ave and plant a new garden bed.  It was very exciting to come back to school to see the improvements in our school grounds.

‘End of Year Celebration’ concert

We have decided on the date for our ‘End of Year Celebration’ concert.  We hold a concert where all our students will perform a couple of items to an audience.  Due to the size of our school we split our concert up into junior – Prep, grade 1 and grade 2 and senior – grade 3, grade 4, grade 5 and grade 6.  This year we will hold our junior concert at the end of the school day and the senior concert after school.  The day and times are:

Thursday 7^th December

• Junior (Prep, grade 1 and grade 2) 1:45pm to 3:00pm
• Senior (Grade 3, grade 4, grade 5 and grade 6) 4:00pm to 5:00pm

The concert is held in the shed and parents and families are invited to attend.  More information about the event will be sent out closer to the date but mark it in your calendar.

Medical information

As we have changed into Spring (even though we have still experienced some wintery days), it brings different health concerns.  There is an increased risk of seasonal asthma, hay fever and epidemic thunderstorm asthma as we are in a season with increased grass pollen levels.  It typically occurs between October and December.

We are reminding our families to ensure that their child’s asthma is being managed well with visits to the doctors if requiring relievers frequently and ensuring their child is using their preventers.  Also make sure that the school has your latest action plan and a reliever in the event of an attack.

Curriculum day

We have our final curriculum day on Friday 3^rd November.  This is our fourth curriculum day this year and we had one additional Professional Practice days. 

Next year the first curriculum day is the day before students return to school, Monday 29^th January 2024, with grade 1 to 6 students returning to school on Tuesday 30^th January.

2024

This time of year we begin to plan for 2024.  This involves working out our workforce.  If you know that your child will not be attending Beaconsfield Primary School in 2024, can you please let the school know by sending an email through to the school account or coming into the office.

Enjoy your weekend and hopefully we will see spring weather soon.

Heidi Inglis

Principal