Acting Principal's News

Transitioning to 2023

Thanks to families who have contacted the office with information regarding relocation to new suburbs. We wish you much happiness in your new locations. Having accurate student numbers is important as we prepare for our 2023 class allocations. Students are guaranteed to be placed with at least one child that they have selected as learning friends for 2023. The last few years have been really tough for all of our kids, and we do endeavor to give them as many friends as possible, however, with a large cohort population it can be difficult to place all students with all of their friends. We also balance the classes with academic achievement and emotional needs. You will appreciate this is a lengthy process. Thank you for acknowledging the work and time our teachers spend on this process. We will do our best to make the best possible decisions for all of our students.

Thursday evening the Foundation teaching team presented an excellent session to the parents of the 2023 enrolled Foundation students. Thank you to the team for their efforts to help clarify the school’s processes and offer tips for supporting the youngest members of our community to transition into our school smoothly. The final transition session of the year will be held on Tuesday 6th December 9.15-10.30am.

RAT deliveries

The Department of Education (DET) continues to provide a RATs in schools program. We are expecting one final rollout to complete this year. The DET have been extremely generous with their own rollout of this program, and we do find ourselves with more RATs than we need, particularly given that we are no longer testing multiple times per week but only if symptomatic or exposed. We are unable to store any excess over the summer period as they must be kept below certain temperatures. With the 4th wave commencing we want to make sure that everyone has access to tests through the summer period. Wishing you the best of health.

Commonwealth Games 2026

A little advanced notice…

There have been changes to Victorian school term dates for 2026. This will provide an opportunity for Victorian communities to participate more broadly in the 2026 Commonwealth Games.

The 2026 Commonwealth Games will take place across regional Victoria from Tuesday 17 March to Sunday 29 March 2026, with Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat, Gippsland and Shepparton hosting a range of activities and events for 20 different sports and 9 para-sports.

The 2026 Victorian school term dates are:

Term 1: Tuesday 27 January to Friday 13 March 2026 (7 week term)
Term 2: Monday 30 March to Friday 19 June 2026 (12 week term)
Term 3: Monday 6 July to Friday 18 September 2026 (11 week term)
Term 4: Monday 5 October to Friday 18 December 2026. (11 week term)

For the list of school term dates until the end of 2030, refer to School term dates and holidays in Victoria

Moderation is the Key to Consistent Teacher Judgements

Our teachers are currently assessing student learning growth and achievement to inform their Semester Two reports. Other than the ‘face to face’ teaching teachers do, a great deal of time planning, preparing lessons, doing professional learning and as is the case now, working hard to ensure accurate and consistent judgment of student achievement is attained for their end of year reports. All teachers are attending several ‘moderation’ sessions in teams with teachers from different year levels over the next few weeks.

In week 5, teachers met to explore writing samples with the aim of reaching consistent agreement around the achievement level that each student sample demonstrates. Moderation combined with close analysis of other writing samples helps each teacher determine the progression point (or grade represented by the dot) on the student report. The purpose of cross moderation is to make sure that we are consistently and accurately judging student work against the Victorian Curriculum Achievement Standards. In other words, what one teacher judges at a certain achievement level is the same as another teacher in the school and this is in alignment with what is outlined by the Standards and Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA).

Student learning achievement is not always clearcut, particularly in writing. Students may be strong at one skill such as developing their writing ideas but be a weaker speller and inconsistent at punctuating their writing. Another child may be a strong speller but play it safe and use basic words, rather than experiment with interesting and engaging nouns, verbs and adjectives. Some students write pages and pages of writing without revisions or editing, making it hard to follow and another student may write much less but write high-quality engaging sentences. Reaching agreement in what constitutes achievement at each progression point can be highly subjective. Moderation tries to ensure we are as consistent and accurate as possible in the assessment of student work against the expectations outlined in the Standards. This moderation work is also valuable in that it helps teachers deeply understand each child’s writing strengths and areas for growth, as well as more thoroughly understand the Victorian Curriculum.

Over these next weeks, teachers will attend moderation sessions to help them make judgements about Mathematics achievement in Number. Please be reassured that when teachers assign progression points for their end of the year reports, a great deal of evidence, analysis and thought has gone into arriving at these professional judgments.

Semester Two Reports will be distributed to parents on Thursday 15th December via Sentral.

Bike Ed

The Bike Ed program for 2023 continues to ‘cycle’ 😉 through the school with years 2, 3 and 4 riding this week. Learning safe riding skills really is a most important goal for all students. Any opportunity to have to accompany your children on the bike would be valuable in impressing safety and road awareness. Thank you to the teachers and classroom volunteers who have enabled the program to run.

How can I help?

We often have parents asking, how can I help out at school? If you have a Working With Children Check (available here: https://www.workingwithchildren.vic.gov.au/individuals/applicants/how-to-apply-1)

you can come onsite and assist at school. You should contact the teacher to see what help is required in the class. Other options include Library Book covering and Vegetable Garden toil! The class teacher will let you know if/when their class is working in the garden. We also have a team of students who attend to the garden, so if you would like to assist, let the office know and we can share a timetable with you.

All help is welcome! If you have a special skill you would like to share – we would welcome your help. Carpenters, sewers, painters, gardeners, readers, writers, artists, mathematicians and magicians are all welcome!

Year 1 excursion

The year 1 students, teachers and support staff have gone to the Melbourne Museum today for a much-anticipated adventure. Accompanying them is a band of terrific parent helpers, set to enjoy the day. We really couldn’t have ordered a better delivery of perfect weather. I’m sure they will come back with plenty of stories and be inspired by the wonders they will see. Thank you to the entire Year 1 team and parents for enabling such rich experiences for our youngsters.

Kind regards

Leisel Ward

Acting Principal