Principal's Report 

& School News

From the Principal...

ANZAC Day Commemorations

On Monday at a whole school assembly, a group of Year 5 students stepped up to run an ANZAC Day assembly. This was due to our Year 6 leaders being on camp. Tim, Oscar and Austin ensured our technology was working and we had access to the anthem, microphones and links to the ‘Last Post’ via the front office. Adrian and Susie led the proceedings at very short notice but the leadership qualities they demonstrated were outstanding! I want to thank these students for their enthusiasm and bravery in front of the entire school. It was very important for the school to acknowledge this significant day and to pay our respects.

Student Voice & Agency

Learning is at the core of what we do; we are all learners including myself and staff. Improving student outcomes is dependent on students developing confidence to take risks. At Ormond PS, I want our students to be well rounded, resilient and uphold our school values at every opportunity. I want children to have more of a say in their learning and what is happening around the school. Developing leadership skills in our students is something we will continue to do. Evidence of children taking initiative and displaying agency comes in many forms. One example, being a student coming to me with a proposal to reinvigorate a gardening club at Ormond PS. I was impressed by her written proposal and the ideas she had carefully prepared. Well done Maeve and the school will certainly take this matter further! 

Staffing News

Ormond PS is very fortunate to have quality teachers, and our recruiting process is integral to that. Our teachers are caring and engaging and proficient at delivering high impact teaching strategies to the children. Ensuring that the school is delivering a comprehensive and rigorous curriculum designed by the teachers and students is a priority. 

We acknowledge the most recent change in staff due to Mr. Justin Ward leaving the school to return overseas with his family. To ensure a smooth transition and a comprehensive handover we have decided to bring forward his parent teacher interviews so that families can meet the successful applicant for this classroom teaching position. Both staff members will be present to share information. 

We welcome Ms. Jessica Dijanesic who will commence on 10th May as the teacher of Grade 3C.  Jessica has worked throughout the school this year as a Casual Relief Teacher and is currently working this week in place of Emma Milliken who is attending the Year 6 camp. During the week, Jessica has also had the opportunity to work with Justin in the classroom and familiarise herself with the Year 3 teaching team and students. Prior to taking up this position, Jessica has worked in the education system in both England and Australia. The school is delighted that Jess accepted the position as she was ranked the best candidate after a rigorous interview process. She has already bonded well with staff and students and she is very familiar with our school processes and procedures. She forms part of a very experienced teaching team who are willing to support and assist her at every opportunity. 

Mid Year Parent/Teacher Interviews

This year we will be holding our Mid Year Parent/Teacher Interviews earlier than previous years as a way to inform families of how their children are tracking prior to the formal reporting process. Although not every ongoing assessment may have been completed, as per our whole school assessment schedule, there will be an opportunity for staff to share information regarding how your child is progressing at this time. We encourage parents/carers to use these interviews as an opportunity to ask questions and seek clarification about learning and teaching processes at OPS. 

Interviews will be held onMonday 18th May 2:30pm to 6:30pm and Tuesday 17th of May 3:40pm to 5:30pm. Interview times will be made available for booking on Compass next week. Families will receive a notification when this has been activated. 

Supervision & Attendance 

Hours of supervision at Ormond Primary School begin at 8:45 am and conclude at 3:45 pm. While we understand that some students arrive early, there is no yard supervision until 8:45 am and parents are encouraged to drop students off at school as close to this time as possible. Likewise in the afternoon, parents are encouraged to collect their students as close to 3:30 pm as possible. In the event that a child is not collected by 3:45 pm, they will be sent to the office to await collection. Parents are also reminded that school begins at 9am and it would be appreciated if students could be here on time. In the event that students are late to school, they must report to the office to be signed in. There are strict regulations in place across all schools relating to attendance and record keeping and therefore we ask you to also abide by our processes and procedures when taking students to appointments or leaving early for holidays or family events. Out of School Hours Care is available for families who required supervision for their child/ren before and after school. Please contact the program on 03 9578 5826.

Reading at Home 

By now all of our students will be bringing home books to read to you or with you. Please take the time to sit and read with them. Like anything, practice will improve performance. If your child gets “stuck” on a word, instead of telling them the word, suggest they look at the picture, go back to the beginning of the sentence, think of a word that would make sense, look at the beginning of the word, think of a word that looks like that. Children need more than one strategy (e.g. “sounding it out”) to help them when they come to an unknown word. The more strategies they have to call on, the more independent they will become as readers. Most of all, reading should always be fun. No child should go to bed at night without a book in their hands and better still, a story from a carer, parent or guardian.

Cross Country

Ormond PS held their house cross country event on Thursday April 22nd. The junior classes from Prep – 2 began the morning with a colourful parade around the back oval. They then completed their events with parents and staff cheering them on. The senior grades then participated in their races at a local park with many great achievements taking place. It was a day of team spirit and an opportunity for students to attempt their personal best to access the district event on Friday May 21st. 

Year 6 Camp

Our campers return today after a memorable week at Camp Coonawarra. The weather was perfect and by all reports, the students have had a wonderful time. Mr. Workman continued to update me in regards to how the camp was going. The students particularly enjoyed canoeing and the flying fox. We look forward to hearing more camp news on their return this afternoon. Thank you to all staff who attended. The school appreciates you giving up time away from family and loved ones. Thanks also to Gregg Workman for your leadership this week.

NAPLAN

We are fast approaching NAPLAN testing time and I continue to reassure students about this. NAPLAN is an assessment conducted in one week of the school year. It is a snapshot of performance at a given time and results are shared way later in the calendar year. The school values the information it can provide particularly learning growth results between Years 3 and 5. The school also utilises a number of different formative and summative assessments that truly capture where your child is at both academically and socially. If any parents require further information regarding NAPLAN – please contact your class teacher or I am happy to discuss this further with you. Likewise, if you have any concerns around your child sitting the NAPLAN assessments – please have a discussion with your class teacher as soon as possible.

School Tours

School tours have commenced and we are seeing great interest in enrolling at the school in 2021. Families are interested in looking at the types of programs we run and observing the children working in their classrooms to get a feel for the school and its’ culture. It is a big decision on where to send your children for their first year of schooling and this is the first step in the process for parents with young children heading in to Foundation in 2022. A full list of dates and times are available on the website or in this newsletter (pg3). Bookings are essential, and are limited to 5 adults per tour. Please contact the office to book your tour on 03 9578 1327

Mid Year Parent/teacher Interviews

Kerri McLeod

Principal

SRC Fundraiser - Mother's Day Pink Day

As Mother’s Day approaches we are reminded about how thankful we are to those special women in our lives. On Monday the 10th of May we are going to be celebrating those special women by wearing pink and donating a gold coin which will go towards the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in Australia. Approximately 57 Australians are diagnosed each and every day. That equates to over 20,000 Australians diagnosed with breast cancer each year. 1 in 7 women are diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime and 1 in 716 men are diagnosed in their lifetime.

For more information or support please follow the link provided: https://nbcf.org.au/

Date: Monday, 10th of May

Cost: one gold coin

Dress Code: We hope to see you with a dash or a splash of pink! 

PE/Sports News

House Cross Country

Foundation to Year 6 students participated in the House Cross Country on Thursday the 22nd of April. It was a cold morning and the students certainly gave it their all. It was fantastic to hear everyone cheering for their house groups when watching other year levels.

Over 250 students in Year 3 to 6 ran 2km or 3km to support their house and become eligible for the District Cross Country team. Thank you to the staff who have assisted with the trainings on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. 

Congratulations on the winning house MacKillop.

The Ormond Primary School District Cross Country team consists of the following students. The district cross country is on Friday 21st of May at Dendy Park, Brighton and the first race is starting at 12:30pm.

U9/10 Boys 

Flynn  -  3B

Alex  -  4B

Jackson  -  4A

Teo  -  4B

Marton  -  3B

Oliver  -  4B

Finn  -  3A

Cooper  -  4C

U11 Boys

Noam  -  5A

Harry  -  5A

Morgan  -  6A

Kynan  -  6B

Rex  -  5C

Alex  -  5C

Louis  -  5C

Ryan  -  6B

U9/10 Girls

Sophie  -  4B

Gigi  -  5A

Eden  -  3A

Claudia  -  5A

Eva  -  4B

Emma  -  3B

Helena  -  3B

Rosette  -  5A

U11 Girls

Susie  -  5B

Adelaide  -  5A

Sienna  -  5C

Luckshya  -  6B

Zoe  -  5A

Maia  -  5C

Hayley  -  5A

Lia  -  5B

U12/13 Boys

Cade  -  6A

Justin  -  6A

Alex  -  6A

Ethan  -  6A

Sebastian  -  6B

Johnathan  -  6A

Stefan -  6B

Sam  -  6B

U12/13 Girls

Evie  -  6A

Georgia  -  6A

Clea  -  6A

Evelyn  -  6B

Clementine  -  6B

Matilda  -  6B

Zoe  -  6B

Ruby  -  6A

Visual Arts News

Welcome back to Term 2 Visual Arts! 

Foundation students finished off Term 1 by exploring colour mixing to make some tasty icypole artworks. This term they will be looking at artist Henri Rousseau as well as the drawing style of Ed Emberly. Year 1 and 2 extended their knowledge of colour theory by drawing fruit using oil pastels and created wonderful ink paintings of still-life objects. This week they have been learning about the ‘secrets’ artists use when drawing portraits of people.  Year 3 and 4 are completing their Jocelyn Proust inspired artworks with year 3 finalizing their dry-needle felted bird compositions and year 4 finishing their mixed-media landscape collages.  Year 5 are on their way to extending their artwork digitally through the ‘Sketchbook’ App, once they complete their amazing Super Hero or Super Villain Comic Book Covers. Year 6 are currently working towards completing some inspiring Silk Paintings of Geishas or Kobuki Actors before moving towards using the ‘Stop Motion Studio’ App. 

Keep an eye out for future photos of their work as they continue to add to their folios. 

Happy Creative Days! 

Helen Kupfer 

Visual Arts Specialist 

Foundation News

Foundation have had a wonderful start to term 2. We have begun our new Science topic where we will be looking at the Weather in our World. This week we started looking at weather symbols. Students brainstormed words to describe the weather and then came up with their own symbol to represent that word. We are really looking forward to this Science topic and cannot wait to learn more about Weather in our World!  

Year 1 News

On Tuesday 20th of April we went to Como House with 1C and 1/2A for an excursion. First, we went on the bus to Como House. We met Mark and Sarah and ate recess and fruit. Then, we broke up into our groups. The first two activities were the Olden Day Games and the Mansion Tour. Next, we had lunch and it was raining. We only had 30 minutes and we couldn’t play on the grass because it was raining. After that we had two more activities called Garden Mystery and Servant Training. Finally, we got on the bus back to school and then we did mindfulness and then we went home. We really enjoyed the excursion and some of us were tired and cold and wet. 

Year 3 News

Year 3 students have been busy this week exploring the average length of each step they take. This was in response to our participation in the recent Cross Country event.  Have a look at their photos where they cooperatively measured and recorded the distance travelled when taking 5 steps. The total of the 5 steps was divided by 5 to determine each average step length. 

Year 4 News

In Respectful Relationships this term the students in 4C are learning to build team strengths through cooperative games. We had a great time playing the Balloon Game! The children put themselves into pairs and were given a balloon. Each pair had to hold hands and work as one to keep their balloon in the air without

releasing the grip of their two hands. At the conclusion of the game we discussed what skills people used in the game, what skills helped to make a good working partnership and can we used this skills in the classroom and playground?

Year 5 News

After a relaxing two weeks its back into learning! In writing this week we have been looking at persuasive texts. With a real focus on our introductions, making sure they grab our readers attention. We began by just walking around the room and introducing ourselves to one another, to see who could make the most impact with just an introduction. The only catch was, it had to be a different introduction each time! Some of us started off with a bang to make themselves more memorable and others including actions and fun facts in their introductions.

We then spoke about what makes an introduction memorable, which of our classmates made the most impact with their introduction? Some mentioned interesting facts made the introduction more memorable, others said the way they were first greeted made an impact. We also spoke about ‘magpie-ing’ one another’s ideas to help our introductions stand out above the crowd.

We then had a go at writing our own introductions to the topic “Children should be able to choose their own bedtime” a very interesting topic for some of our students with quite a few voicing some strong opinions! As the students realised, as children, they were already pretty good at persuading others to their line of thinking naturally so now it was just about putting it into a formal text. We look forward to seeing what these arguments will look like over the coming weeks!