Principal's Report

Principal Report 

World Teachers’ Day is tomorrow, Friday 25 October.

World Teachers’ Day is an opportunity for our community to celebrate the outstanding work of our teachers at Albany Rise. Each of our teaching staff commit 100% to ensure the best outcomes for all our students through their passion and dedication.

World Teachers’ Day is Celebrated in Australia on 25th October in 2024, and internationally in the first week of October each year in more than 100 countries world wide. We hope that our community takes this opportunity to recognise and celebrate the wonderful work of our teachers at Albany Rise.

We will be celebrating World Teachers’ Day by having some special recognition opportunities at Assembly on Friday 25th October as well as a special morning tea with staff.

Families are encouraged to share positive messages for World Teachers’ Day through social media and tag the Department of Education on LinkedIn or X and use the hashtag #WorldTeachersDay2024.

Head to the department’s World Teachers Day webpage for resources to help you celebrate World Teachers’ Day 2024, including ‘Thank You’ card templates.

CLASS PLACEMENT 2025:

I would like to thank all the parents who have taken the time to share information with me recently via the online information form, regarding their child’s class/group placement for next year. 

Our staff are working  hard to set up balanced, fair and productive classes across the whole school. As staff continue with the thorough process of allocating children to class groups, many meetings occur and all children will be placed into a class group for next year, with at least one friend of their choosing. 

PLANNING FOR 2025:

We are currently putting together our plans for 2025 student classes.

We will be running 9 classes next year. This is based on the funding that we get from the Department of Education and 9 is the maximum that we can afford. Numbers and logistics wise, most year levels will be a combination of multi-age classes, apart from Foundation which had a ‘straight’ and a multiage class.

Classes will be as follows:

1 x Foundation class

1 x Foundation & Year 1 Multiage class

2 x Year 1/2 Multiage classes

2 x Year 3/4 Multiage classes

1x Year 4/5 Multiage classes

2 x Year 5/6 Multiage classes

A total of 9 classes.

DIFFERENTIATED LEARNING:

It is important to recognize that all classes are effectively multi age classes, in that the teacher must cater for a broad range of abilities. This is called differentiation of the curriculum. This means that the teacher must assess your child’s ability in English and Mathematics, Personal and Social Capabilities and provide each student with learning opportunities which will be appropriate to their level of understanding, but also allow them to be challenged and grow in their learning. This approach happens in ‘straight’ classes and ‘multi age’ classes regardless of the age of the child. Therefore, straight or multi age classes makes little difference.

I also believe that there are great social benefits from having multi age classes in that the children get to make friendships with children in the year above and the year below and not just the children in that year level. A wider social network of friends leads to happier children.

Whether we have multi age classes relate to how the Education Department provides us with funding and set number of buildings based on the total number of students. Based on our current numbers, as mentioned above, it is anticipated that in 2025, we will have some muti-age classes across the school.

High Abilities Program

Each term, a number of students which strong academic results are involved in the High Abilities Program at ARPS. The Victorian High-Ability Program (VHAP) is an enrichment program that addresses the needs of high-ability students to engage with challenging material in either English or mathematics, and also to meet and exchange ideas with other students like themselves.

All Victorian government school students in Years 5 – 8 (inclusive) are eligible to be selected by Student Excellence in the Department of Education to participate in the Victorian High-Ability Program.

Each course runs for ten weeks each term with nine synchronous lessons and one asynchronous lesson.

Last week, some of our students in the VHAP program were awarded certificates for their learning efforts during Term 3 this year. What a great achievement! We are now looking forward to seeing what this term’s HAPL learners will achieve in the program.

You can find more about the VHAP program here: https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/high-ability-toolkit/Pages/Courses-in-the-Victorian-High-Ability-Program.aspx

Day for Daniel- Wear Red - TOMORROW 25TH OCTOBER

On Friday October 25th, students will be encouraged to WEAR RED❤ for Day for Daniel. This day is Australia’s largest child safety education and awareness day.

Australia’s largest child safety education and awareness day

What is Day for Daniel?

Held annually on the last Friday of October, Day for Daniel honours the memory of Daniel Morcombe. We ask all Australians on this very special day to Wear Red, Educate and Donate.

Parents, carers, and educators are encouraged to start a conversation with children and young people about personal safety. Schools and early learning centres conduct child safety education activities. Businesses and community come together to raise awareness of child safety issues. 

Day for Daniel is the Daniel Morcombe Foundation’s biggest fundraiser each year. Free resources and programs for parents, carers, and educators to teach children how to stay safe are available on the Day for Daniel website. Funds also contribute to supporting young victims of crime.

YOU CAN FIND MORE ABOUT ‘Day for Daniel’ here: https://danielmorcombe.com.au/day-for-daniel/

Smile Squad Dental Program

As you might be aware, we have had the School Dental Program - ‘Smile Squad’ – attend our school to give the students information on good dental health, undertake dental examinations and, where required, organise follow-up treatment. While the program is voluntary, many of you consented for your child/children to participate in the Smile Squad program. 

To better understand the delivery of the Smile Squad program including benefits and challenges, an independent firm (Abt Global) has been engaged to evaluate the program. This is your opportunity to provide feedback on your experience of the program. If you didn’t consent for your child/children to participate in Smile Squad they are also keen to hear from you.  The evaluation team want to understand why you chose not to participate. So, whether you participated or not, this is an opportunity to provide feedback so that improvements can be made to the Smile Squad program.

To participate in the evaluation, you can complete a confidential 5–10-minute survey. The survey does not require you to provide any information to the evaluation team that identifies you, however the survey does ask what school your child/children attend. Here is the link to the survey.

https://abtassoc.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bf6YJUMs3NkfHWm 

We encourage you to participate in this short survey and provide valuable feedback on Smile Squad. If you would like to provide more detailed feedback to the evaluation team, please contact Eleanor at smilesquad_eval@abtglobal.com .

The Smile Squad Dental program for next year will be at ARPS from 10th February to 21st February 2025.

Parent Contributions and Booklists 2025

By early November, we will inform the school community of the Parent Payments for 2025. The Department of Education has asked schools to itemise the payments. The cost for Parent Payments was discussed and approved at our Finance and School Council meeting this week, prior to being announced to the school community.

As per previous years, books and stationary will be available to purchase (and be delivered to school ready for next year) through Ross Office Supplies. More information will be provided with the upcoming Parent Payment information which will be distributed next month.

Swimming Term 4 - Now on Compass for permission and payment

All students from Foundation to Year 6 are strongly encouraged to take part in the school swimming program, which will commence on 9th December this year. Information sheets are to be returned to school; these were provided to families last week. These forms need to be completed to assist with the planning of our whole school swimming program. 

Payments, permissions and the swimming schedule is available on Compass now.

Judith Drew

Principal