Message from the Principal

James Penson

The countdown is on….seven more sleeps to go! Our rehearsals are going well and excitement levels are very high across the school. Our Year 5 & 6’s had full rehearsal on Monday this week and then next Monday we have our whole school dress rehearsal in our gym. Then it will be show time!

These are the sorts of events that create really special experiences and memories. Good luck to all of our students and especially our main cast members.

Just a reminder to check all of the details in the communication sent home by each team last week. This includes the departure times for buses during the daytime shows. For the performing cast (Prep – Year 4, A-K on Wednesday and L-Z on Friday) buses will depart at 9am sharp. Drop off times and locations for the evening shows are also listed.

VICTORIAN STATE SCHOOL SPECTACULAR

The countdown is also on to the Victorian State School Spectacular! This week our students will attend two full day dress rehearsals before two big shows this Saturday at Hisense Arena. Thank you to Kate Stewart for all of the organisation and rehearsing and to Roberta Iebbiano-Rosa, Teresa Jordan and to our parent helpers Sophie Korze and Elizabeth Green for attending.

Good luck to everyone involved and as the saying goes “Break a leg!” The show is also broadcast on free to air television later in the year, so keep your eye out for that as it is great to see the amazing talent of students from all of our State schools.

MUSIC & PERFORMING ARTS AT GREENHILLS….PLUS SO MUCH MORE

Our State Schools Spectacular and whole school production of Jungle Book really highlight the incredible music and performing arts opportunities that our students get at Greenhills. This is balanced with a rich array of sporting, artistic, language, extension, support and leadership opportunities across all year levels. I think it is fair to say that a strength of our school is the broad educational experience our students are provided with and we really ensure that we celebrate student achievement in all areas.

There is something for everyone at Greenhills PS and we ensure that it isn’t one of these areas that dominates over the others. A balanced education like this is really important for primary school students. It allows them time and space to find out about the things they like to do, the things that bring them joy and the things that they can shine in. Thank you to all of our staff who go above and beyond in making sure there are so many core and extra-curricular offering and opportunities.

CYBERSAFETY NIGHT

We had a very strong attendance from parents and carers last night at our Think U Know Cybersafety evening. This event was truly a parent-school partnership as one of the presenters from the Australian Federal Police was one of our current parents.

There were many take aways from the session including:

The importance of being more aware of the different programs, apps and platforms our students/children are using and in particular the features and capabilities of the programs.
Keeping communication open with our students/children and build an environment where they feel safe and connected to share and speak up about things that happen online.
That just like scree time needs to be shared between home and school, doing what we can to help our students stay safe in cyberspace is a shared responsibility between home and school.

During the presentation, our school was presented a copy of a children’s book titles “Jack Changes the Game” which our classes can use to support learning. There is a host of supporting material mentioned during the night. These include the Family Online Safety Contract:

Resources | ThinkUKnow

Family online safety contract (prefilled).pdf

ACCCE | Australian Centre To Counter Child Exploitation

Thank you to Jon and Tim from the AFP for running the session and sharing their expertise and knowledge with our families.

NAPLAN WRITING RESULTS

YEAR 3 WRITING

YEAR 5 WRITING

Like our Reading results that we shared last week, we are also pleased with our 2024 NAPLAN Writing results. In both Year 3 and Year 5 we have a very high percentage of students who achieved results in the “Exceeding” or “Strong” bands. This was an amazing 89% in Year 3 and 88% in Year 5. This is 2% and 7% higher (respectively) than the similar schools we are compared against (*these measures include size of school and socio-economic, family education index).

Our next challenge is to ensure that we continue to deliver a balanced literacy approach and really expand on our use of oral language to boost our literacy results even further. In this way we will be able to grow the percentage of students who achieve in the exceeding band.

We will share our Numeracy results in the newsletter next week.

PARENT SURVEY REMINDER

Don’t forget that our Parent/Caregiver/Guardian survey closes at the end of this term. The closing date has been extended at all schools to ensure as many families complete the survey as possible. At time of writing this, we have had 61 families complete the survey. The link has been sent out again to all families yesterday.

TEAMKIDS UPDATE

We welcome Quinn Lanigan to Greenhills Primary School. Quinn is our new Director of Service at Team Kids. Also don’t forget that TeamKids is running a Spring Holiday Program. There is a great mix of incursions and excursions available over the two week period.