Launching Place Primary School Newsletter

Principal's Message

Welcome to Term Three

We are back!!  Hoping you all enjoyed a pleasant break and are feeling refreshed for the new term.  Term Three promises to be jam packed with action thanks to our upcoming camping program, excursions, incursions and community events. 

 

Thank you for your participation in our Reporting/Parent Teacher Conferences/IEP End of Term Survey

We had 60% of our families participate in our end of Term Two survey about the topics above.

  • 87% of families enjoyed looking at their child’s portfolio and felt it was a good showcase of their learning and achievement.
  • 86.3% of families attended parent teacher conferences or had a Student Support Group meeting.
  • 93% of families responded positively regarding the overall level of communication from their child’s teacher/teachers.

Our follow up actions:

  • Teaching staff will come to an agreement to ensure there is increased consistency in the use of portfolios across the school.
  • One printed copy of each child’s semester report will be put in their portfolio to ensure ease of access.
  • We will continue to build teacher/teaching team communication via Compass/email with families around learning.

Equity and Respect Workshops

Mrs Stewart (Year Two – Classroom teacher) will be travelling to Badger Creek PS next week with a group of our Year 5 students to take part in a ‘Young Leaders for Equality and Respect’ workshop.  There will be three of these sessions over the next term or so,  with a focus on:

  • Understanding and promoting gender equality
  • Explore, identify and embrace individuality.
  • Breakdown gender stereotypes and outdated norms
  • Be an up-stander for change and a Respectful Relationships ambassador.

We are excited to see the ideas and plans our student return with.  Good luck Launchers!

 

Year 5/6 Camp 

We are grateful to our Year 5/6 students and staff for a successful and enjoyable school camp last week.  What an adventure our student had visiting:  the Old Melbourne Gaol, the Carlton Gardens, Melbourne Museum, Melbourne Skydeck, Hosier Lane, Immigration Museum, O’Brien Icehouse, ArtVo, Melbourne Central Hoyts, Royal Botanic Gardens, ACMI and The Shrine of Remembrance!  No wonder our poor students (and staff) were exhausted! A big thank you to Mrs Freeman for organising the camp and our fabulous and dedicated staff for attending.  We hear too often of school who have had to cancel camps or put in place year on/year off arrangements due to staffing issues.  Whilst it is sometimes challenging for students to be away from home and their familiar environment this is an important milestone in their development and personal growth.  Good job team!

 

Feedback from the community

Whilst we had some lovely emails from our families about the success of Year 5/6 camp (thank you for that – you build us up!) we have also heard some encouraging feedback of late from prospective families attending our school for tours.  They have heard on the grapevine – strong literacy program; inclusivity; great community relationships.  It is our current community who spreads this positivity – thank you!

 

AFL Friday Lunch Sessions! – EOI

Jack from AFL Victoria has been calling me lately asking if we would be keen on running a lunchtime footy sessions program.  This would involve students attending a series of 5 sessions over the term at one lunchtime per week.  The cost would be $50 per participant. 

As a parent who finds it awfully tricky to get my children to after school activities, I’m thinking this may be attractive to some.  Students from Prep – Year 6 are welcome to express interest and you will find the event on Compass to do so.  If we have 15+ students interested we will run the program. 

Attendance Tracking and Plans

I’ve mentioned in the newsletter previously our follow up procedures for student absences.  Fiona or Sonia (ES staff) are tasked with calling families of students with unexplained absences daily.  This helps us to ensure that all students are accounted for and we aren’t sending you lists of absence days after the fact to provide reasons for. 

This term we will be going a step further with this; I will be contacting families of students with absences of more than a day per fortnight (Less than 85% attendance) to put together a bit of a plan to improve your child/children’s attendance.  ‘Why is she bugging us?’ I hear you ask…  Well, we care for your children.  We want them to learn and grow… and to do this they must attend school regularly.  We also want to understand the barriers so as we can do our best to support families.  

If you would appreciate some further support with student attendance from our Student Wellbeing Officers or myself please just contact us here:  https://tinyurl.com/WELLBEINGLPPS 

 

Prep Enrolment for 2025

If you haven’t already, get onto it now!  Letters are going out early next week to families confirming enrolment at Launch PS for Prep 2025.  If you are considering enrolment and haven’t, please contact us ASAP to organise.

 

Virtual Tour

See you around our place,

Laura Caddy

Principal