Active School Travel

 Walk to School Bus

Every Friday is Active School Travel Day at New Farm and our school continues to see more families actively travelling each week. Well done to all our families and staff for continuing to support our Active School Travel program. Last week, saw 64% of students actively travelling to school. Congratulations to our most active classes 5B, who won the trophy this week!

Why not join our Walk to School Bus?  This supervised fun group, walks to school every Friday and meets at New Farm Library, between 8 a.m. and 8.15 a.m.

Technology at School

Over the past few weeks, we have had a number of incidents where students have used a BYOD device to communicate with parents and friends during school time.  We also have had students responding to messages received from parents.

Such communication is at best disruptive to learning and can cause distress to students and parents.  An example would be if a child is having a friendship issue, or is feeling unwell and messages a parent who is possibly not able to help.

It is very important that any communication comes through the office and that students use their device for learning only.

Our staff are addressing these issues with their students, we will be reviewing out digital citizenship lessons and auditing settings over the next few weeks.

Group chats that students are involved in outside of school are also becoming more common.  It is very important that these are supervised by parents.  If there is inappropriate content that is ongoing and involves New Farm students, we may be able to become involved if it is impacting school life. The school may consider consequences for specific students.

Key messages to parents:

• Actively monitor your child’s online activity.
• If you read or see content in a group chat, be confident in getting involved.
• If you have to contact your student at school, call the office.
• Reinforce the message, that using a BYOD for personal communication during school time, is not allowed. 
• Contact the school if you believe a group chat has become inappropriate and will impact students’ learning.