Leadership Page

Good afternoon everyone, I am here to provide some light reading about all the great things happening at Newlands Primary School this week. Today was topped off with a bit of begging by our school teachers asking families to complete the Parent Opinion Survey. We are hoping to get over 100 responses from our community to really give us some feedback about what we are doing well and what we need to improve. Last year, our school created videos that really highlights and showcases the work that is happening behind the scenes and in the classroom that families may not be privy to. We recommend families watch these videos before completing the survey. They can be found at: Learning | Newlands Primary School (newlandsps.vic.edu.au)

Science Week

A big thank you to Raema for organising all the incredible lunch time activities for Science Week. Our students have been racing to get a seat during lunchtime to partake in the fun. If you would like to know what has been happening, click over to the Science Week page!

Foundation

I worked with the Foundation team during planning this week as they were at the midpoint of their writing unit focused on instructional writing. A big congratulations to all of our Foundation students for their hard work and for the amount of writing they are producing after their first 6 months at school is unbelievable. A big shout out to Alice and Eliza whose Spanish writing was maravillosa!

One of our Foundation students was devastated after losing his Pokemon cards after Wednesday’s lunch time club with Sophia. After unsuccessfully walking around the school together unable to find the cards we were a little panicked. But as we thought, our fantastic students found his cards in the sandpit and had already passed them back to a teacher. This is just another example of why our school is fantastic!

1/2

I sat in with Kylee and her 1/2 team for Maths. We were using number lines as we skip counted frontwards and backwards as a strategy to solve multiplication and division problems. I did a turn and talk with Felix who was able to explain to me what he noticed about the numbers. After we realised the circled number (20) as being the starting point, we were able to work out that we were decreasing by 5’s to ‘0’. Using our knowledge of fact families, we could work out that 20 / 4 = 5. Felix was able to use this knowledge in the next problem!

3/4

Daphne and Sunday explained to me what they have been learning in Spanish Maths. They are learning about different strategies to add and subtract numbers quickly to solve problems. To work out the difference between Bob and Tiffany, they decided to use fact families as the way to solve the problem. They then used their simple addition facts to solve problems as a cheat to solve harder problems. Our Grade 3/4s today also went on an excursion to the city. In conjunction with the Koorie Heritage Trust, our students were guided along Birrarung Marr. A big thank you to the 3/4 team for organising such a fantastic experience. 

5/6

I stopped Maya, Martina, Alessia & Violet as they were heading through the 3/4 learning. These legends are giving up their recess to collect all of the food scraps across the school to compost. They have been doing this for almost all of the year. Some heroes do not wear capes, but this is a way to acknowledge our appreciation for all their hard work. 

Newlands Curriculum Day

While everyone was enjoying their long weekend, we dragged the teachers into school for our curriculum day focused on Mathematics. We were lucky enough to have Brian Poncy live via Webex from Oklahoma to share with us his research on the importance of being fluent in all of our mathematical facts. While he discussed the importance of problem solving and reasoning, it needed to come later after facts were automatic to reduce the cognitive load for our students. You may hear from our students that we will be doing ‘facts on fire’ in the classroom each day! This is just practice of the facts to develop their mastery. These will be differentiated to meet the needs of our students. The school has also been collectively building its understanding of the importance of the Daily Review. This will refine our Skill Up which is the first 10 minutes of each session. Each class will be involved in revisiting previous learning through think-pair-share, read aloud and through the use of writing on whiteboards. 

Open to learning

Our Termly Week 5 Open to Learning Afternoon session was great! Thank you to the teachers for opening up their classrooms. All the students had a great and a thank you to families who included other students who didn’t have a parent present today. It once again reinforces that great community spirit Newlands has!

Book Week!

Our fabulous Kehani and the Library team have organised a range of fun book week activities. I can’t wait to see what all the teacher’s favourite children’s book are! I can definitely share that there is a lot of love for Pig and Trevor at the Cripps house. There is lots of talk about costumes, the book parade and the Read-A-Thon results for next week’s special assembly that begins at 2:30pm. Please make sure you come down because it is always a fun one!

2025 Foundation Students

Next Friday, our 2025 Foundation students attend their first transition day! We are really looking forward to starting our program with our new students and families!

School Crossing

This is a friendly reminder for families to cross at the traffic lights and/or school crossings! We want to make sure everyone leaves our school safely!

Have a fantastic weekend, 

Thanks, 

Luke