School Vision

St Matthew’s School empowers children to embrace life-long learning, and grow and develop as God intends.

Dear Parents & Carers,

Half way through the term, and what a busy term it is!

Mary Poppins – 4 Sleeps to go!

The school performances of Mary Poppins are fast approaching. The children and staff have been working very hard and it is proving to be, yet again, an epic performance. I would like to thank all of the parents and community members for their support in organising costumes, making props, practising lines and choreographing dances. I would especially like to thank Mrs Fiona Hastie for enthusiastically sharing her talents through directing this wonderful musical. We are very fortunate at St Matthew’s to have such a talented and committed staff member.

Please see below for information regarding the final practices and the arrangements for the performances:

Monday 14 November
· All costumes to be brought to school

Wednesday 16 November
· Students will get dressed in their costumes at school, prior to walking to the Narrogin Town Hall at 10:15am. This includes Kindy students.
· Students return to school at approximately 1:00pm
· Students will conclude the day at 3:00pm as usual

Thursday 17 November
· Students will get dressed in their costumes at school, prior to walking to the Narrogin Town Hall at 10:15am.
· Kindy students are not required for this rehearsal, however, parents are welcome to bring them if they would like to be involved.
· Students return to school at approximately 1:00pm
· Students will conclude the day at 3:00pm as usual

Friday 18 November Matinee – 11:30am
· Students will get dressed at school prior to walking to Town Hall at 10:15am
· Kindy students to assemble at the Reception Centre by 11:00am
· Students perform at 11:30am
· Students return to school at approximately 1:00pm
· Students will conclude the day at 3:00pm as usual
· Students will take their costumes home

Friday 18 November Evening – 6:00pm
· Students will need to come dressed in their costumes to the Reception Centre (next to Town Hall) at 5:45pm
· Kindergarten students may join this performance, but it is not an expectation.
· Parents to collect their children from the Reception Centre as directed at the end of the performance. Children will only be released to their own parents unless class teachers have been informed in writing of an alternative arrangement.
All ticket holders must produce their ticket to gain entry to both the matinee and the evening performances on 18th November. There are still tickets available for the Matinee. Please use the link to secure these.
https://www.trybooking.com/CCJMZ

Congratulations Gibney!

Gibney students have reached their major faction award. This is achieved by children earning Ping Pong points for positive behaviours. On Monday 21 November, students in Gibney may wear free dress to school. Well Done!!

Pre-Primary to Year 2 Swimming Lessons

Interm swimming lessons for Pre-Primary to Year 2 students are scheduled to take place this term; however, we are unfortunately waiting for confirmation about the dates and times of these lessons. Due to a lack of swimming teachers, we have been informed that there may be the necessity to reduce from 10 days of lessons, to 5 days of lessons. We will inform parents as soon as the times and dates of these lessons are confirmed.

In the meantime, we request that parents fill in the enrolment form that has been sent home with your child/ren today and return this to school by Wednesday 16 November.

Volunteers’ Morning Tea

On behalf of all the happy St Matthew’s staff and students, I would like to invite all of our hard-working and generous volunteers to a Thank You Volunteers’ Morning Tea at 10:45am on Wednesday 23 November in the Undercover Area. We look forward to thanking you all in person.

Staffing 2023

Staffing for 2022 will be announced in the Week 8 newsletter.

Principal Focus – Friends forever?

As a parent, I know how difficult and heart wrenching it can be when your child comes home in tears after dealing with a friendship issue during the day. Although we would ideally love to protect our children from all and any hardship, I would suggest that, apart from offering comfort, we also use these opportunities as a means of helping our children develop the skills necessary to navigate through our complex, social world.

Maggie Dent offers some very good advice on the role of parents and teachers in helping our kids form good friendships.

8 ways to help children form good friendships

1. Beware of some of the definite differences between most girl and boy friendships. Boys often use less verbal communication to build their friendship bonds so they actually need to spend more face-to-face time playing together doing physical stuff. Creating ‘adventure type’ opportunities for young lads that stimulate lots of ‘dopamine’ — the brain chemical that makes boys feel alive, engaged and interested — helps build stronger connectors of affection. Think games with balls, sandpits, building things, climbing frames and of course sports activities.
2. Boys’ are often more fragile around friendships than girls — meaning that when they are able to have a good mate accompany them to kindergarten, pre-school, Year 1 and even high school – they will be happier to attend. Without a close, loyal friend they can struggle more. If boys have no friends they often display aggressive behaviour towards other students and staff because they feel isolated and disconnected.
3. Be careful when considering separating key friendships thinking, “my son or daughter seems popular with lots of other students” — underneath, many children may have a strong affection for only one or two best friends and can feel terribly wronged and wounded by the forced separation. Indeed such a move has seen students leave schools and cause enormous long-term challenges.
4. Create a ‘Friendship Chair’ initiative, which is happening in some schools, where children can come and sit if they don’t have anyone to play with. When managed well by older students, this has been shown to be a powerful transformative initiative in the school playground.
5. Girls can be like butterflies – flitting around being friends with lots of girls. This is helpful because girls can tend to be much more manipulative in their friendship dynamics – best friends today, worst enemies tomorrow and in a few days back to being besties! As adults you can help by not stepping into girl friendship dramas and sorting them out – just be quietly supportive and encouraging, reminding girls about empathy, and exploring how others may feel when we are mean and unkind.
6. Teach children about what bullying really is — a concerted, repeated choice of behaviour that involves an inappropriate use of power, which impacts another child’s wellbeing. Some childhood nastiness, when a spontaneous moment of unpleasantness occurs, is not bullying.
7. Having shared interests is ‘glue’ that bonds friendships — no matter what age. Endless hours of play helps children build a ‘play code’, which is an innate willingness to play with other children. This code includes learning how to take turns, how to share, and how to win and lose with a degree of grace. Encouraging play activities in recess and lunchtime helps to build the ‘play code’ learning. Nothing works better at building positive affection and companionship in childhood than real play — in all its forms — imaginative, competitive, unstructured, organised, free range and adventuresome.
8. Friendship conflicts, much like sibling rivalry, are a normal part of life. It is part of our job as parents and educators to help our children resolve these conflicts by making them aware of how to manage different wants, needs and big ugly emotions. The key is to always remember that when we feel unloved and rejected our ‘primitive’ brain can hijack our ‘upstairs’ brain and we can get angry or frustrated very quickly. Children are children and still developing their emotional and social competence.

As teachers, we are all very aware of how important our student’s friendships are. We know that it is when children are feeling happy and safe that the best learning takes place. To help create the best opportunities for our students to make and maintain friends, St Matthew’s employs many different strategies:

• Buddy bench – when students are feeling lonely, vulnerable or just not sure what or who to play with, they can sit on this bench to let others know they need a bit of help.
• Keeping Safe: Child Protection Curriculum (KS:CPC) – encouraging students to think in helpful, positive ways promotes resiliency. Students learn a range of problem-solving strategies using relevant age appropriate scenarios. Assertive communication, persistence and resilience are all explored in this process.
• Different play opportunities – children are provided with materials to promote many different play opportunities at break times. This includes sandpit toys, loose parts play, sports equipment, nature play, lego, board games and climbing apparatus. All of these items encourage creative, collaborative play.
• Restorative practice – focuses on building, maintaining and restoring positive relationships, particularly when incidents that involve interpersonal conflict or wrongdoing occur.
• Principal Kindness Award and Positive Behaviour Management Principles

I would like to conclude by providing a link to a very helpful audio recording “Maggie Dent talks developing grit and resilience in girls”. In this interview Maggie explores many topics particularly focused on female friendships.

Stay friendly,

Susan Milton