Principal's Report

Welcome to our newsletter for this fortnight, as we move towards the halfway point of Term 2. Whilst the days are getting shorter at this time of year, our school remains a busy place, with great events, activities and learning occurring each day. 

Education Week

This week Victoria celebrates Education Week, with the theme of a ‘Spotlight on STEM’. We are fortunate to have our very own STEM program, run by Michaela Patel, for all students in Prep to Year 6. Highlights from the program, and STEM more broadly at our school include:

• A broad range of learning from the digital and design technologies curriculum, mathematics, and science. 
• A well-resourced program, with significant funds raised by our Parents’ Association in 2023 to ensure the program has appropriate resources to run successfully. 
• An accompanying school-wide cyber-safety program, ensuring all our students learn how to use online resources and tools safely. 
• A ‘coding-club’ program running weekly at lunchtimes, to give students an opportunity to develop their coding skills in a friendly and relaxed environment.
• A new ‘Techie-Team’; student leaders from Year 6 who help to support our ICT technician, staff and students to troubleshoot ICT issues and ensure we are maximising our capacity as ICT users across our school. 

Thank you to Michaela for her innovation and passion in developing our STEM program and for ensuring that our students have broad opportunities to excel with technology across our school. 

Upcoming Events

Thank you to the families who engaged in our Prep Information Night and our Annual Report to Community this past week. Next week, we are holding two sessions to consult with our community regarding the ‘pre-review self-evaluation’ section of our mandated Department of Education School Review. These sessions will run straight after drop-off on Monday morning, as well as Tuesday evening and will focus on our achievements in the current strategic planning cycle, as well as what some areas of focus may be for our next plan. Multiple Compass posts have been sent, most recently yesterday afternoon, with the booking details for these events, or feel free to contact our office for more information. 

Smart Watches

Keeping with the technology theme, we are aware that more students in all Victorian Government Schools are wearing ‘smart watch’ devices with capabilities that allow text messaging and / or voice-calling. Please remember the following:

1. Smart watches can be worn to school but must be on ‘flight mode’ or similar during the school day (i.e. they cannot be utilised as a smart, mobile phone-like device, noting that mobile phones are banned in all Victorian Government Schools and must be handed-over to your child’s classroom teacher at the beginning of the day, and returned at the end of the day). 
2. Do not contact your child/ren during the day on any device (smart watch, mobile phone, Chromebook, et al). Phone, email, or visit our school office if you need to pass on a message to your child.
3. Do not respond to your child/ren if they contact you on any device during the school day. If your child does do this, it breaks the agreement we have in place for such devices and our school will implement strategies to ensure this does not happen again. 

The school day is for learning and interacting with our peers. This must happen without the disruption of these devices. Thank you in advance for your support. 

Mother’s Day Events

We celebrated Mother’s Day in style at our school. With thanks to Adele, Natasha, Gabi and their group of volunteers, we held our annual ‘Mother’s Day Breakfast’ last Friday morning. A special call-out to Daniella for her styling, and to Aaron for his generous photography, as well as Gary Peer and Team Kids for access to their Coffee Vans.

Many of our mum’s followed-up by attending our Mother’s Day Lunch. Organised by our Parents’ Association President, Jess Tuszynski, this event was well-attended again and hopefully is now a staple in our annual events calendar.

Proceeds from these events will be shared when final details are reconciled, with funds raised to go towards upgrading our school playgrounds. 

Absence Learning Plans

As shared in our last newsletter, if your child/ren are absent for one week or more, particularly for a ‘parent choice’ reason, such as a family holiday, you must write to the school notifying us of this. We will prepare an ‘absence learning plan’ for your child/ren, to ensure continuity of learning for the period they are absent. 

Curriculum Day

Please note that we have a curriculum day next Friday 24th May. On this day, our staff will be working onsite, collaborating with their peers regarding student academic progress, completing moderation of student work samples, analysing student assessment data and preparing for the upcoming student reporting period. 

Team Kids will run a full vacation-care program on this day.

Thanks for your ongoing support and keep doing your best. 

Rohan Cooper

Principal