Child Safeguarding Corner

The Child Safe Standards provide us with tangible guidance about how to create cultures, adopt strategies and act to put the interests of children first to keep them safe from harm. Every fortnight over the last two terms, I have presented one of the standards and asked the community to reflect upon how well we’re addressing the recommendations. We welcome ideas and feedback from our families and community! 

This week, we’re looking at the final standard, Standard 10: Policies and procedures document how the organisation is child-safe.

The aim of this standard is to ensure that policies and procedures are championed by leaders, localised, understood by staff and clearly communicated.  This standard is important because, when implemented effectively, child safety policies and procedures provide guidance and clarity to staff volunteers, parents, and children on how to prevent and respond to child safety issues. 

Our aim is to prioritise this standard for child safety in what we say and do:

• Child-safe policies, Codes of Conduct and complaint-handling procedures are publicly accessible. 
• Staff understand and implement the Child Safe policies and procedures.

We now have a page on our school website dedicated to Child Safeguarding, and we encourage you to view it. If you have any questions or feedback about how we are addressing this particular Standard or about our new Child Safeguarding page, please email me (petra.cole@cg.catholic.edu.au).

Friendology

St Matthew’s is proud to be a URSTRONG school. URSTRONG provides a friendship skills curriculum, Friendology 101, that helps our students to establish and maintain healthy relationships, manage conflict with kindness, and increase their overall resilience. 

One of the first foundational concepts in the friendship skills curriculum teaches our students about the very normal cycle that friendships go through. To learn about this, we use the Friend-o-Cycle diagram. As Friendship Fact #1 teaches us, no friendship (or relationship) is perfect. It’s normal for us to encounter conflict with our friends. Research shows that about 85% of conflicts at primary school are what we call: Friendship Fires. These are normal, low-level friendship issues like misunderstandings, hurt feelings, and disagreements.

The Friend-o-Cycle helps children see that Friendship Fires are a normal part of a friendship and, when they’re put out in a respectful way, can actually make a friendship closer and stronger. 

When trust and respect are central, friendships can survive conflict and get back into the healthy zone of the Friend-o-Meter. The Talk-it-Out phase is where skills come in (and children need to practise these!) to put a Friendship Fire all the way out and move on to Forgive & Forget.

We encourage you to join URSTRONG for free, and support our school by sharing the same messages and teaching the same skills that we teach here at St Matthew’s. URSTRONG provides simple but meaningful language and skills to open up a dialogue with your children.You can join URSTRONG for free: https://urstrong.com/.

Petra Cole

Assistant Principal ┃Child Safe Advocate┃Classroom Support Teacher

Parental Controls

• Parental controls can help keep children and young people safer online by preventing access to harmful content, managing time spent online and who your child communicates with.  
• To be most effective, parental controls need to be set up on all devices your child accesses. They should be revisited and maintained regularly. It is also important that controls are set on devices your child may access while in the care of others (family, friends).
• Parental controls are most effective when used alongside supervision and other online safety strategies.

What are parental controls?

Parental controls are software tools that allow you to monitor and limit what your child sees and does online.  

They can be set up to do things like: 

• Block your child from accessing specific websites, apps or functions (like using a device’s camera, or the ability to buy things). 
• Filter inappropriate content.
• Limit who can communicate with your child, and manage the apps they can use to communicate with others.
• Allow you to monitor your child’s use of connected devices, with reports on the sites they visit and the apps they use, how often and for how long.  
• Set time limits, blocking access after a set time. 

Applying parental controls to desktop and laptop computers

PC/Windows 

Microsoft FamilyExternal link provides the ability to manage your children’s online activity on Windows devices through website blocking, checking in online at any time, and viewing activity reports on sites, apps and games visited. You’ll need to set up a family group of at least one parent and one child, each with their own Microsoft account.  

Mac OS 

The OSX Parental ControlsExternal link allows you to set profiles for each child to do things like limiting access to websites or apps, restrict functions like Siri or the iTunes store, set time limits for days of the week and for bedtime, and hide profanity in the dictionary and other sources.  

Applying parental controls to mobile devices

iPads and iPhones

Apple operating systems from iOS12 enable you to restrict access to browsers and applications, in-app purchasing, social networking, non-child friendly internet content, sharing of data (including photos and location), media streaming and online gaming. Find out how here. 

If you are concerned about your child seeing unwanted images and videos, consider turning on 'Sensitive Content Warning' on their Apple device. It is available to users of all ages. Access it by searching for 'Communication Safety' or 'Sensitive Content' in settings.

Android tablets and smartphones 

Although Android has no general built-in parental control features, Android devices can be controlled using Google Family Link.

You can also set up parental controls on Google PlayExternal link to restrict the content your child can download or purchase.

Other mobile devices

They may not be the first devices that come to mind when you think about online safety, but it’s important to consider all online devices your children might use, including wi-fi enabled sound systems, fitness trackers and smartwatches. Garmin fitness trackers have parental controls, and Fitbits allow parents and carers to manage children’s accounts.

Smartwatch settings are connected to the user account, such as Apple or Google. Some e-readers, such as Kindle, also include parental controls. 

Remember, you will need to set up your parental controls on these and other devices – they are not usually automatic. You should also check them from time to time to be sure your settings haven’t changed if the device software has been updated.

For more information about parental controls, please visit the eSafety Commissioner website. 

Congratulations

Congratulations to Elsie and Alastair on their excellent performance at the ACT Track and Field Championships last Tuesday at Woden Athletic Park. Both of them did very well, with Elsie moving on to Nationals in Sydney later this year. 

Softball Term 4

In Term 4, we have organised a softball clinic with Gecko Sports. The idea behind participating in a range of clinics is to provide our students with he opportunity to experience a variety of sports.

Rugby Registration

Wests Rugby Belconnen is starting its registrations for this sports season. Their club link is below:

https://westsjuniorlions.com.au/

Mixed League Tag Gala Day

I will be taking expressions of interest for the Raiders League Mixed Tag Gala Day which is happening on the 29th October. I am looking at putting together a couple of teams of Years 5-6 boys and girls. 

If your child is interested in participating, could you please email me at Dillon.Payne@cg.catholic.edu.au. I am also in need of a few parents to assist on the day. If you have a valid WWVP card and are available on that day, your support would be greatly appreciated!

2024 Swimming Program

This year, our Kindergarten, Year One and Year Two students will participate in a swimming program at Stromlo Leisure Centre during Week One of Term Four. 

Due to the recent significant increase in the cost of the program, we have decided to focus on giving our non-swimmers and early swimmers the opportunity to experience the benefits of learning to swim.

We request that all families complete the consent forms and return them to school ASAP. 

Please Share

If your child participates in any competitions/sports days over the holidays, we would love to hear about it and place it in the newsletter. Feel free to send any pictures and information through to dillon.payne@cg.catholic.edu.au.

Year 6 Crookwell Excursion

On Monday, 23rd September, at about 8:50am, all of Year 6 boarded the bus and headed to Crookwell. The drive took about an hour and a half and it was a pretty bumpy ride. 

Once we arrived at Crookwell, we drove straight to St Mary's Primary School. Before we got off the bus, we got to meet the Principal of St Mary’s, Mrs Croker. We all got out of the bus and walked into the hall, and met the Year 6 cohort of St Mary’s. In the hall, we got paired with our pen pals who we had been writing to in class. It was very fun to meet our pen pals, and it was very interesting to learn how different our lifestyles are. Then, we went out for recess and played with the other kids for a while. Before we left, Mrs Lowe took us for a tour of St Mary's Church and their school classrooms. We then farewelled our new friends and headed to Mrs Lowe’s farm, which was a 7-minute trip.

Once we arrived at the farm, we met Mr Lowe and their two kelpie dogs, Rocky and Pippy, along with their sheep and lambs. We got to pat the sheep and feel how soft their wool was. I think the wool was the softest thing I've ever felt. Mr Lowe showed us how to drench the sheep. Drenching the sheep involves someone placing a big straw in the sheep's mouth and giving it medicine which helps to prevent worms and other parasites. 

After the drenching, we got to hold the lambs, which were extremely cute. We headed to the shearing shed where Mr Lowe and Mr Hunt sheared a sheep. It was mind-blowing to see how much wool was removed from just one sheep. Then Mr Lowe put all the wool into a big hydraulic press, which pressed 164 kg of wool. Mr and Mrs Lowe took us for a walk around some of their property, and from afar, we saw some cattle and bulls. 

There was so much poo all over the paddocks that there was no point in trying to step around it. After the walk around the fields we enjoyed our lunch together. Then we said farewell to Mr and Mrs Lowe, their two dogs and all their sheep and headed back to St Matthew’s. 

Overall, the excursion was very enjoyable, and I know that all of Year 6 a lot took away from it.          

Sean - 6B    

Monday, 23rd September, was an exciting day for Year 6. At 8:45am, we boarded the bus, and we were on our way to Crookwell. The trip took an hour and 45 minutes, so during that time, we got to see wind and canola farms while we were passing through Gunning. 

We arrived at our first stop, St Mary’s Primary, where we met the pen pals that we had been writing to in class. We also got to play an icebreaker game that allowed us to get to know everyone better.  We had recess and played with our penpals in their paddock, which is equivalent to their oval. We had a quick tour of St Mary’s Church, which was across the road from the school. The Church was built in 1882, and it was constructed using bluestone. Sadly it burnt down in 1950. Mrs Lowe also took us on a tour of the school, which was renovated recently.  

Afterwards, we went on a 7-minute bus trip to the farm, where we were introduced to Pippy and Rocky, Mr and Mrs Lowe’s sheepdogs. We got to pat the sheep and classify the different types of wool. Mr Lowe showed us how to drench a sheep, and we got to hold the lambs. We headed into the shearing shed where Mr Lowe sheared a sheep and taught Mr Hunt how to shear, which was fun to watch. It was incredible to see how much wool could be removed from a sheep, about 5 kilograms. 

Then, everyone headed on for a walk around the farm to see the cows and bulls that they have. Afterwards, we had lunch on the paddock and headed back to St Matthew’s.

I absolutely enjoyed going to Mrs Lowe’s farm and to St Mary’s, but especially going to Mrs Lowe’s farm because we got to learn more about the sheep and the different varieties of wool. Sheep wool is one of the best fibres because it is good for your skin, and it can be used for a long time if looked after properly. 

Stephanie - 6M

Rubrik Cube Whiz!

A huge congratulations to Lucas in Year 5 M on his recent success at the Wollondilly Speed Cubing Competition.

Lucas competed in the 2x2, Pyraminx and 3x3x3 events and took out third place in the 3x3x3 Newcomer event.

What a whiz!

  

Holiday Basketball Training Camp

Holiday happenings- Kippax Kids

Football skills