Dear Parents and Friends,

Today's newsletter is a short one and obviously our last for 2024.

I want to thank everyone in our Pegasus Family for the support and best wishes this year. There are times throughout the year when you need to lean on us for support, and at times you have provided support and care for our staff. This is what being in a community is all about. Just this morning a teacher sent me a message in response to an email from a family, saying "I am so grateful for the community here at LPS. I feel so supported and valued".

I truly hope that each of you enjoy your Xmas holidays, catching up with friends and family and doing the things you truly love. I am planning to:

eat way too much
play some tennis
watch some tennis
go camping
swim
and do some work so we are ready for 2025

Take care over the break and we look forward to an amazing year in 2025.

The End of 2024

The final 4 weeks of the school year are always a mad rush to the finish line and this year is no different. Over the past 2 weeks we held the following events:

Market Day
Student Leadership speeches
Xmas carols
Parent helpers’ morning tea
Grade 6 graduation
Meet the Teacher (prep BBQ)
Grade 6 pool and movies day
Senior school trivia
Final assembly

2024 ACHIEVEMENTS

This year was a year of unprecedented learning for our school. Over the past 12 months there has been a significant shift in the messaging from the Department of Education about how teachers should approach teaching, specifically around the importance of explicit teaching. We had started down this path towards the end of last year and this year made important steps in both our theoretical understanding and practical implementation of these approaches. Next year will see us make important changes to our programs all with the aim of ensuring our students have mastered the foundations of learning before they move to secondary school. For example, in reading, we need to make sure our students have learned to read, so they are able to read to learn. They learn to read in primary school and read to learn in secondary.

Below are the key new initiatives we have implemented in 2024 or will implement in 2025:

Daily Word Work (phonics, spelling, morphology & etymology, semantics and vocabulary)
Daily Maths review
Literature units (book study)
Knowledge Rich units (instead of inquiry)

All these programs rely on explicit teaching and are backed by cognitive science. We will share more with you next year about these programs and how they will support better results for our students.

2025 Student Leaders

On my office wall there is a quote from a man named John Quincy Adams that says: If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.

What this reminds me of is that leadership is an action and not a role, and whilst this past week we have announced the students with official leadership roles for 2025, each and every student here has the opportunity to lead others and show them what it means to be a student at our school.

I want to thank the students that applied to be a School or House Captain. It takes a lot of bravery to put yourself forward for these opportunities. Whilst there is the excitement of potentially being successful, there is also the potential disappointment that goes along with missing out. In 2025 we will add a couple of new leadership roles to give more students the opportunity to be leaders. Well done to everyone who applied for, or has been successful in getting an official role for 2025:

School Captains

Levon Farrugia

Indy Dwyer

Lacey McLennan

Paige Allen

Sports Captains

Milla Peace

Kaeley Beattie

Jude Peace

Rooke Sonogan

House Captains

Marlu

Lulu Scott

Lucy Hallam

Wadherrang

Georgia Truin

Jobe Ward

Warrin

Archie Ferguson

Chloe Kennedy

Guuguubarra

Quinn Farrugia

Lucy Gibson

Senior School Leaders

Azalea Read

Alex Ivanoff

Fin Kidman

Kobe Hollow

These students will form the student leadership group and will work with Mrs Roose throughout the year.

GRADUATION

Our grade 6 graduation is always a highlight of the final 2 weeks of school and this year was no different. The grade 6 team of Craig McKenzie, Nathan Hicks and Tessa Holmes did an outstanding job with the organisation for this event, aptly supported by others behind the scenes.

Graduation is always a mixture of emotions for our year 6 students and their families. This year’s graduation ceremony was amazing and as always was an emotional evening with some families leaving our school after a long association. It was a wonderful celebration of the student's 7 years of primary school. We wish our leaving students all the best in the next stage of their lives. As part of the ceremony, we awarded students for outstanding effort, results and/or community spirit in a variety of areas.

Congratulations to the following recipients of this year’s awards:

External Awards:

Endeavour Award: Nathan Meyer

Tilly Aston Award: Jordan Petridis

LPS Excellence Awards:

Leadership: Colby Ellis

English - Bella Grace

Mathematics - Noah Phillips

Performing Arts – Grace Whitney

Visual Arts - Pippa Li

School Sports Victoria - Ayda Salih

Physical Education - Sienna Pilkington

STEM - Chloe Anema

Global Education - Ayda Salih

Environmental - Penny Waterman

In the past 2 weeks, we have also recognised the following students for receiving various scholarships.

Rowville Lysterfield News scholarship	Azalea Read
Rowville Lysterfield News scholarship	Roman Di Nicolantonio
Bendigo Bank Scholarship	Paige Allen
Rowville Secondary Collee Barry Plant scholarhip	Ava Pockett

2025 CURRICULUM DAYS

In 2024 schools will continue to have access to curriculum days to help improve student outcomes. The dates below are our approved curriculum days for 2025:

Term 1: Tuesday 28th January
Term 1: Wednesday 29th January
Term 1: Tuesday 11th February (Responsive Teaching)
Term 4: Monday 10th November (report writing)
Term 4: Friday 19th December

2025 Start dates

Below are the dates for the start of our 2025 school year, including curriculum days, prep testing and the start dates for students.

Tuesday 28th January– Curriculum day
Wednesday 29th January – Curriculum day
Thursday 30th Jan to Wednesday 5th Feb- Prep testing (prep students do not attend school)
Thursday 6th Feb- 9.00am - 12.30pm
Friday 7th Feb- 9.00am - 12.30pm
Monday 10th Feb- Start fulltime
Tuesday 11th Feb- Curriculum day
Wednesday 12th Feb- fulltime

All students in grades 1-6 will start school full time from Thursday 30th of January.

I hope that you and your children will enjoy a wonderful Xmas and summer holidays. I hope you get to enjoy spending time with family and friends and we look forward to seeing you in the new year.

Adam Wight, Principal

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