Message from the Principal 

CONGRATULATIONS VICTORIA HARRIS

Congratulations to Victoria Harris for being awarded Outstanding Business Manager at the 2023 Education Excellence Awards on Friday night. You could not find a more deserving winner and how lucky are we to have her at Greenhills Primary School.

Here is the summary about Victoria’s award that is listed on the award website:

Victoria Harris’ outstanding business leadership enables the highest level of teamwork and has strengthened a shared commitment to serving the Greenhills Primary School community.

As business manager, Victoria has been instrumental in establishing strong and supportive organisational systems that enable the school to deliver a caring, well-equipped and engaging learning environment.

At a time where many schools are challenged by the demands of creating a COVIDSafe environment, Victoria has ensured that students experience a highly inclusive and responsive environment where students and their families are supported with every opportunity possible.

Implementing many new initiatives and provisions for students and their families, Victoria’s whole-hearted dedication to providing support for improvements in children’s learning and wellbeing has strengthened the bonds between parents, staff and students.

A well-respected member of the Business Manager Network, Victoria is also sharing her considerable expertise across the system and providing support to other schools in the region.

POSITIVE TRANSITIONS CONNECTION DAY

On Tuesday this week there was a real buzz across the school. As part of our positive transitions program, students were mixed into different groups across their year level to engage with three very different learning and collaborative activities. The focus of the day was to support students to strengthen connections with their peers. You can see from the photos that is was a very active and hands-on experience. Well done and thank you to our staff connection team for developing and implementing this idea. 

STAFF PROFESSIONAL LEARNING UPDATE

This week after school on Monday, our staff worked together in both their teaching teams and a mix of teams to have a detailed analysis and assessment of student writing samples across the school. This moderation session enabled our teachers to develop consistent judgements and then utilize the expertise across our staff to diagnose and plan the next steps in student learning. 

We also used the time to develop a set of annotated writing samples that can be used to assess students at benchmark levels. These samples will be provided to each teaching team next year so that we can hit the ground running and start our writing program with specific focus on the needs of our students next year. These student writing samples are also being used in our current Continuous Reporting program. In this way, you can see what your child has achieved in their writing and read the feedback provided by the teacher. Whilst Semester 2 Reports are not that far away, Continuous Reporting enables more frequent and timely information about your child’s learning and achievement.     

STUDENT AGENCY FORUM

On Monday of this week, Janine Hough, Becc Stephens and myself facilitated a student feedback session with our Year 5 students. The focus of the session was looking at three particular elements of the Student Opinion Survey:

• Effective Teaching Practice
• Learner Characteristics
• Social and Emotional Wellbeing and Safety

We spent time unpacking this data with the students to about to find out more about what they are thinking about. It was very informative and time will now be taken to look for commonalties and priorities in student responses to developing key improvement strategies that will be part of our 2023 plan. 

BUDDY BENCHES HAVE ARRIVED

Our Buddy Bench….well actually two of them have arrived! This was an initiative and partnership between the Sustainability & Environment Subcommittee (parents) and our Sustainability Action Team (Year 5 & 6 students). The bench is made out of recycled plastics so all of the chip wrappers and soft plastics we are putting into our Red Cycle bins – is being used to make outdoor furniture. What a GREAT result and hopefully this spurs us on even more to make sure we are Red Cycling properly! 

TOILETS NEAR THE ART ROOM…..READY VERY SOON!

GREAT news – the refurbishment of our toilets near the Art room is only a day or two away from being completed. This is very exciting as these toilet facilities were very run down and in much need of fixing. You will note from the photo, that the partition doors run all the way from the floor to the ceiling. This is part of the design that will enable them to become gender neutral in the future. For now, they will be kept as separate boys and girls toilets until the other student toilets in the main building are fully renovated as well. This work is due to commence next week! So, by the end of this year, our students will have three very new sets of toilets to choose from – next to the art room, the main building and the toilets in the STEAM / OSHClub room. 

END OF YEAR ARRANGEMENTS

With so much happening over the next couple of weeks, here is some important information to assist your family with planning for the end of the school year and rush into the Christmas. 

Meet the Teacher #1  9.30am – 10.30am Thursday 8th December (*including 2023 Preps)

Meet the Teacher #2  9.30am – 10.30am Tuesday 13th December (*note not 2023 Preps)

Semester Two Reports – sent home via Compass on Wednesday 14th December.

Class of 2022 Graduation – Thursday 15th December

Final Assembly – Farewell Year 6’s – Friday 16th December

Monday 19th December – STUDENTS DO NOT ATTEND. This is a Professional Practice Day for staff. This is part of the Victorian Government Agreement where schools are able to hold a common day for all staff in Term 4. We have selected this day as late in the term as possible (as opposed to an earlier day this term) to minimize the interruption to student learning. 

Tuesday 20th December – school will finish at 1pm (No Assembly).

In making these arrangements, we will ensure that all class parties and special events are held on or prior to Friday 16th December. This will mean that students who do not attend on Tuesday 20th for the short day will not miss out on anything.

Whilst our school office is always open on school days between 8.15am and 4.15pm, we will not be accepting any parent payments after Friday 16th December. This will provide time for the end of school year financial and administration processes to be completed.

James Penson

Principal