Principal Message

Dear Families,

Cinema Night: how good was Friday night!!! The amazing P&F team have done it again! Food trucks, Lions club BBQ, popcorn, Jaxon’s Welcome to Country and a movie!!! Thanks to all involved on the planning and delivery (Georgia and the P&F team), Logical Property Services who supplied a cleaning crew for the night and to Mrs H for staying until everyone was safely on their way and ensured our school was secured. Another great community event. Thanks and congratulations to all involved. 

NAPLAN: our amazing year 3 and 5 Students have completed the 2024 NAPLAN testing and can now get back into the regular routine of school. We sincerely hope the students were able to perform at their best and we eagerly await their results to share with them and families. Thanks to Cindy and Kerryn who coordinated NAPLAN this year. 

eSmart: frequently we hear from Mr KT about all things IT and he reminds us of being cybersafe. While there are so many benefits to the online world, there can also be pitfalls we need to be aware of and prepare for. As parents, if we think our children will never be exposed to a negative aspect of online life, we are naive. While we do our best at school to teach and provide information, we still need families to be diligent and proactive in this space. We will be having Robbie Noggler from VicPol come and speak with our students in Year 5 & 6 very soon to help our young people be better digital citizens. 

Harmony Day: Thursday is World Harmony Day with the theme of ‘Everyone Belongs’. This aligns with all the work we have been improving in the area of Inclusion across the school. I encourage our community to challenge themselves, reflect and maybe even an open discussion at home on how your family helps us, make everyone belong. Have a great Harmony Day tomorrow. Wear a touch of orange!

When students do the wrong thing: on Monday Ryan, Kristy and I attended a full day of professional learning with Dan Petro, behaviour analyst. He challenged a full room on many approaches from across the system and range of schools and has opened many an eye to the latest approaches. Respond by design, not default - this applies not only to school but also at home. How do we want students/children to behave? Have we explicitly shown them? Have we set them up for success (at school or home!) and do they know the expectations? If they don’t reach our expectations or actually do the wrong thing, how do we react? We know students make mistakes in their behaviour, just as they do in Maths, reading and writing and we teach them to correct the mistake. We have to do the same in behaviour and like the curriculum, some students learn to read quickly while others take time. Same in learning behaviours. Sometimes we help students through their behavioural mistakes at school and don’t need family support… and other times, we do. When we do need your support I hope families are ready to help as we always have the best intent at heart. 

School Council: Last night we met for the March School Council meeting where we met new councillors Andrew McCallum, Claire Williamson, Liz Patterson, Sarah Ottens and Seb Earle. We thank and welcome them to council to continue the great work done by previous councillors. I am also pleased to announce that Ross Gibson is our new President and Simon Brommeyer will be the Vice President. I can already tell by the new councillors expertise around the table we will continue is a positive trajectory.  Over the next few weeks, we might put a few School Councillors ‘in the spotlight’ so we get to know them out in the community!

School Garden: Many of you will have noticed that the garden area near the 5/6 Learning area is underway. It still requires a lot more work however and next term I will publish a list of activities that are required to keep the progress going. I sincerely hope all families will have a look at the list and offer to help finalise this area. It may not be the Year 6 students who fully benefit this year from it, but it will be the years that follow. So, if you’re a family in Year 1 for example and you can spare an hour or two to help, let us know. We want all students to be able to enjoy this space as they transition through the school – but we need you! Please help us! 

Have a great week everyone.

Scott McCumber                   

Principal

Scott McCumber

Principal