Principal's Report

Welcome back to ACPS! I hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful Christmas and New Year, filled with quality family time. As a staff, we're refreshed and excited to kick off another fantastic year at ACPS. It's been great catching up on the holiday adventures of our returning families and extending a warm welcome to our new families joining our ACPS community. Our youngest students have had an excellent start to their first year of Big School, exploring the grounds with big smiles and making new friends. It makes me so proud each start of a school year when I see how well our older students welcome and support the Preps.

If you've heard your child excitedly saying "Dis" while pointing at things, they've likely shared about the exciting new addition to the ACPS THRIVE program—The Resilience Project! The Resilience Project (TRP) is an evidence-based social-emotional learning and wellbeing program focused on Gratitude, Empathy, Mindfulness (GEM), and Emotional Literacy (EL). In 2025, TRP will play a pivotal role in our dedicated THRIVE lessons each week, providing all students from Prep to Grade 6 with essential social-emotional skills. We invite you to learn more about the program and the vital role parents play in maximising its benefits by joining myself and the THRIVE Team on Tuesday, February 18th at 6:30 pm for our TRP Parent Information Session.

In the classrooms this week, I've been incredibly impressed by the positive start our students have made in their learning and attitude. There's a palpable energy as students settle back in and eagerly engage in their lessons. This year, we're embracing significant statewide changes in Victorian Government schools, including the new Maths and English Curriculum and Victoria's Approach to Teaching Reading model. This model emphasises systematic and synthetic phonics instruction from Prep to Grade 2, building upon our existing phonics approach with a renewed focus on explicit teaching. This will also incorporate key components from an evidence based reading approach called Initialit. We will send information out in the coming weeks to invite families in for an information session on both Initialit, Victoria’s Approach to Teaching Reading and how this looks at ACPS. 

Our ACPS House Swimming Carnival was a fantastic way to cap off our first full week back. With perfect weather and enthusiastic participation, our students enjoyed a balanced program of competitive races and fun activities, including 50m swimming events, free swim time, and water slides. The day ran smoothly thanks to the hard work and support of our dedicated staff and parent volunteers. Swimming 50m is a big deal when you are aged between 7-12!! I was just so proud to see students giving it a go, whether they were pushing themselves to swim a personal best, pushing themselves to just hop in and give it a go, taking on the challenge of the Big Green Slide or simply just celebrating their peers achievements. Thank you to students, staff, parents and Grandparents for coming along and making this such a fantastic day.  

NOTE: More swimming photos to come once they have been processed. 

Thank you all for contributing to such a positive start to 2025. I look forward to meeting with families at our Meet the Teacher BBQ/Family Afternoon on Tuesday, February 18th from 3:30 to 4:30 pm.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Daniel Webber

Principal