February Fun

We have enjoyed such a busy start to Term 1 and moved into the month of February with so much happening around the school. It was great to see so many families join us last week for our Bush Dance and welcome picnic. Thank you for supporting this event and making it such a great success.

On Wednesday our Year 3-6 students participated in our school swimming carnival alongside Windsor Primary School. I extend a huge thanks to our staff and families that coordinated and supported the event, allowing our students to participate in such a fun atmosphere. Well done to Miss Molloy who put this event on for our students.

Next week, our Year 5/6 students depart for 3 days at Cave Hill Creek Camp, a wonderful way to build relationships and spend time together to begin the school year. I once again extend my huge thanks to our teaching and support staff in attendance, giving up two nights away from their own families to support our students.

A few details from around our school are shared below, thank you for taking a moment to look over these.

School Council & AGM

Thank you to families that have already responded or made contact with me regarding our school council elections. The closing date for nominations to be accepted is the 24th February. We currently have 3 parent member vacancies (2-year terms) and a 12-month casual vacancy.

Our next school council meeting and AGM is scheduled for Tuesday 18th March where I will present our Annual Report, our Annual Implementation Plan and school council will determine office bearers and sub-committees for the coming year.

Sub-Committees (Education and Policy, Finance, Buildings and Grounds, School Engagement) are an additional way to support our school council without having a formal role on school council. These sub-committees are a conduit between the school, governance, compliance and our community. If you are interested in finding out further information please feel free to reach out.

The final meeting of our 2024 school council was held on Tuesday evening, I appreciate the wonderful support the school has enjoyed from our exiting school council members, Vicki Doust, Sara Ota, Kystal Ryan, James Macky and Travis Ion. Thank you!

Annual Privacy Reminder

Our school collects, uses, discloses and stores student and parent personal information for standard school functions or where permitted by law, as stated in the Schools’ Privacy Policy.

Please take time to remind yourself of the school’s collection statement, found on our website.

For more information about privacy, refer to: Schools’ Privacy Policy — information for parents. This information is also available in community languages.

Labour Day Public Holiday

Parents are reminded that there is a Labour Day holiday on Monday 10th March. There will be no school on this day, in addition to this a student free day will be held on Friday 14th March where staff are engaged in professional learning in mathematics and English literacy.

Working with Children Checks (WWC)

We encourage and value parental and community support at CPS. There are many ways that parents, grandparents and friends can assist at our school. We encourage all parents to obtain a Working with Children’s Check that will allow you to be very involved in your child’s education. These checks are free for volunteers. Once you have your WWC please come to the office so we can record this, and we will add your name to our list of parents who have a current WWC check.

Mobile Phones

A reminder that a state-wide policy on Mobile Phones is in place in all Victorian Government Schools. All students are required to turn off and hand in mobile phones to prevent usage during school hours. This also extends to smart watches where the call and messaging function can connect to the student’s phone, no wearable device should have access any access to messages or phone calls throughout the school day.

Devices will be placed in a locked cabinet/cupboard at the start of the day and handed back at the end of the day. School Council has approved our Mobile Phone policy to ensure it is aligned to Department of Education directives. A copy of this policy is available on our website.

Please discuss this with your child/ren to assist us in following this policy. We thank you for your support in this area.

Hats

A reminder that hats must be worn throughout Term 1. Hats are not available to borrow at recess or lunch. Students without a hat will be asked to sit in the shade. Sunscreen and sunglasses are also highly recommended.

Inclement Weather/Heat Policy

The school operates a heat policy and we keep the children indoors in air conditioned classrooms on very hot days where the temperature exceeds 35 degrees. From the beginning of the school year, we have experienced some very hot weather resulting in us enacting our heat policy, reducing our outside play time and retaining students in our air-conditioned buildings for recess and/or lunch. We will continue to monitor the weather and temperature updates on those hot days.

Kiss and Go Parking

A reminder to families that cars cannot be left unattended if you are using the Kiss and Go drop off and pick up zone on Olive Street. I understand the tendency to think that a quick trip to the office won’t hurt, but parents leave themselves open to fines if a parking officer is in the area. Often, the first time you will know about it is when you receive the fine in the mail, as most fines are processed from photographic evidence. This will also assist the flow of traffic and ease of pick up and drop off for all families. We have seen local council parking attendants in the area throughout the last few weeks, these are not affiliated with the school or school directives and I have no influence over parking infringement notices.

Staff Carpark – Poplar Street

There is a small car park for school and kindergarten staff located on Poplar Street near our prep building, a reminder that this is not accessible for vehicle school drop offs. It is used as an access gate for students walking into school. Under no circumstances are families allowed to drive into the carpark to complete a school drop off, this compromises the safety of our students as they enter our school grounds.

Annual Implementation Plan

Our 2025 Annual Implementation Plan was this week endorsed by our Senior Education Improvement Leader (SEIL) and has provided us with direction taking the school into our school review in Term 2. Throughout this year, the school is focused on the developing capacity and understanding of the revised Victorian Teaching and Learning Model (VTLM 2.0) and implementing the changes in the Victorian Government’s stance on reading from P – 2.

I am so proud of what we are seeing in our classrooms to begin the school year, we have a very explicit focus on teaching and learning in all classrooms, our Prep – 2 English team are all trained in and implementing our Systematic Synthetic Phonics approach, SoundsWrite into every classroom. Our Year 3-6 teachers have utilised the OCHRE units of teaching to support consistent, explicit, evidence based teaching of English literacy. This work is underpinned by the 2022 research report from the Grattan Institute focused on the benefits of providing teachers with high quality, consistent curriculum planning supports as a means of ensuring students are “learning the same thing at the same time – there’s no lottery”.

ICSEI Conference

I was very fortunate to be invited to present a research paper that I co-authored at the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) Conference on Wednesday at the University of Melbourne. Having worked on the paper and supporting publication for the last 12 months, our team (Nicola Sum, Reshmi Lahiri-Roy, Wilma Culton, Helen Koziaris and I) presented on ‘School Leadership as a Humanist Practice: Addressing Crisis to Sustain Learning’. I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to collaborate and present our research and represent our school.

Professional Learning

This term our teaching staff are engaged in internal and external professional learning. We currently have Mrs Curlewis, Miss Matthews and Mrs Newman working with Dr Nathaniel Swain for a series of learning consolidating our approach to reading instruction and we paired this up by working as a cohort of staff exploring the work of John Sweller and Cognitive Load Theory as an integral element of the Victorian Teaching and Learning Model (Knowledge and memory). We are collectively currently reading Oliver Lovell’s book, ‘Cognitive Load Theory in Action’ and implementing our learning into our classrooms throughout the school.

We start the week off with an assembly on Monday morning, enjoy a great weekend and I look forward to seeing you around the school next week.

My Thanks,

Edward Strain

Principal

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