Acting Principal Update

I trust everyone had the opportunity to take some time over the long weekend to fill your bucket in ways that work for you. I attended the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix on Saturday and spent Sunday and Monday outside catching up on some yard and garden projects.

The 'Prep Parent Welcome Night' was held last week and was very well attended. Thank you to all that came. Thanks also to our Prep teachers for attending and a big thank you to the Year 1 parents for organising and hosting.

Yesterday I spent the day at Camp Marysville with the Year 6 students. It was a lovely day with lots of activity. We spent the morning doing Bouldering, the Giant Ladder, photo scavenger hunt and hut building. In the afternoon I joined two groups on a mountain bike ride, while the remaining groups went canoeing. Today students do their day long hike through the surrounding bushland. 

Today we have three students who are competing at the Banyule Division swimming championships. Congratulations to Dakota, Isabella and Maddy for progressing to this level. We wish them all the best with their events. 

NAPLAN Online

We have had a very successful start to our 2026 NAPLAN and managed to escape the major disruption that occurred on Wednesday. We have completed the Writing and Reading assessments and have Conventions of Language planned for tomorrow before finishing up next Monday with Numeracy.  All the Year 3 and Year 5 teachers commented on how students approached each of the tests with minimal concerns.  It was really pleasing to see students just getting in and doing their best. This is certainly the best way to approach these types of tests. It appears the regular use of devices for assessments (PAT Online, Essential Assessment) as part of our assessment schedule supports students in being prepared for the NAPLAN Online format. While the conversations that we have regarding NAPLAN as a point in time test and how we can approach them with the best mental preparation, certainly appears to have set students up for a successful NAPLAN period. 

Results for NAPLAN will be received later in the year. Preliminary results come to schools first with a top-level view of overall performance. Individual results come later at which point the school receives individual student reports which are provided to parents. This is usually early Term 3. 

Mathematics @ APS: 

Alphington Primary School is committed to developing a community of curious and skilled mathematicians. Our aim is to provide a rich, challenging and differentiated teaching and learning program that facilitates strong mathematical content knowledge across the Six Victorian Curriculum strands. 

• Number 
• Algebra
• Measurement
• Space
• Statistics
• Probability

The curriculum also prioritise the development of the four Mathematics capabilities; understanding, fluency, reasoning, and problem-solving. 

In 2025 Alphington Primary School completed the transition to the Victorian Mathematics Curriculum Version 2.0. The new curriculum reimages the current curriculum with changes to the strands of mathematics, expansion of the elaborations provided in the curriculum, as well as changes to the scope and sequence of several mathematical skills. 

The mathematics curriculum aims to ensure that students:

• develop useful mathematical and numeracy skills for everyday life, work and as active and critical citizens in a technological world,
• see connections and apply mathematical concepts, skills and processes to pose and solve problems in mathematics and in other disciplines and contexts,
• acquire specialist knowledge and skills in mathematics that provide for further study in the discipline,
• appreciate mathematics as a discipline – its history, ideas, problems and applications, aesthetics and philosophy.

Each Maths lesson provides the opportunity for students to learn, develop and enhance mathematical knowledge and capabilities through practise, explicit teaching, exploration and analysis. Each stage is integral in the facilitation of an effective and engaging lesson.

The Maths Lesson Sequence  

1. Activating Prior Knowledge and building number fluency – an opportunity for students to become proficient in knowledge and understanding. This could be a game to build timetables, a number talk to explore place value, or rapid recall of facts.
2. Introduce the Learning Intention and Success Criteria.
3. I DO: teachers introduce and model new mathematical learning. This will involve teachers explicitly teaching new mathematical concepts and demonstrating the skill in a worked example.
4. WE DO: Students work with the teacher and are guided through to complete example mathematical problems. This may include shared learning experiences, such as solving a problem or working through a sequence of steps to identify patterns and generalisations.
5. YOU DO: Students working independently, cooperatively or collaboratively to apply their new learning in a range of situations. During this phase teachers will differentiate the learning tasks with enablers and extenders to support each individual learners’ needs.
6. Review – Students and the teacher come together to synthesise the learning from the lesson and pose new questions or problems.

Playground Safety

We have seen an increase in the number of more serious first aid injuries recently due to students playing unsafely around the yard at recess and lunch. The three main problems are:

1. Skipping/jumping across the monkey bars leading to slips and falls with heavy landings causing injury.
2. Playing games on the playground with eyes closed causing significant trips, slips, falls and head knocks

3. Using sticks, large pieces of wood or discarded materials in game play to build bases.

    

We have spoken to students about playing safely, however it would be much appreciated if these messages could be reinforced at home by families.

Have a great week everyone!

Shane Wilkie - Acting Principal