Assistant Principal's Message
Welcome to the 2026 School Year!
Welcome to the 2026 school year! I hope you enjoyed a refreshing break and are ready for the exciting journey ahead. It is a privilege to continue serving this wonderful community as Assistant Principal, and I look forward to another year of growth, connection, and shared success.
This year, our school focus will centre on: differentiation, resilience, and academic rigour. These priorities will guide our teaching, strengthen our learning culture, and ensure every student is supported to achieve their personal best.
🎯 Differentiation
Every student learns in unique ways, and our commitment to differentiation means providing learning experiences that meet each child where they are. We will continue to use targeted strategies, flexible grouping, and personalised supports to ensure all learners can access, engage with, and extend their understanding.
💪 Resilience
Resilience is essential not only for academic success but for life. In 2026, we will continue to create opportunities for students to build persistence, confidence, and a positive mindset when facing challenges. By fostering resilience, we help students become adaptable, capable, and ready to embrace new learning.
📚 Academic Rigour
We remain committed to maintaining high expectations and delivering rich, engaging learning opportunities. Academic rigour is not about doing more—it’s about deep thinking, problem‑solving, curiosity, and quality learning experiences. Our goal is to empower every student to strive, stretch, and excel.
As we begin this new year, I am incredibly grateful for our dedicated staff, enthusiastic students, and supportive families. Together, we will continue to build a vibrant and inclusive school community where every learner feels known, valued, and challenged.
Wishing everyone a positive and inspiring start to 2026!
Gifted Education: New testing in 2026!
The Cognitive Abilities Test 4 (CAT4) from Renaissance is a, designed for students aged 6 to 17+, that assesses reasoning abilities in four key areas—verbal, non-verbal, quantitative, and spatial—to identify hidden potential and inform personalised learning, rather than measuring specific academic knowledge.
CAT4 helps you see beyond what students know and into how they learn. By measuring reasoning ability across four core areas, it provides insight to personalise support, identify hidden potential, and plan more effectively for progress.
It provides a well-rounded profile of each student’s learning ability, allowing you to tailor teaching to their thinking style.
Students in Years 2 & 4 and any new students in the primary years (Yrs 3, 5, 6) will also be tested by the end of term one. The gifted team will meet to analyse data and will create student profiles.
Student Goal Setting and Parent/Teacher/Student Conferences
Parental engagement recognises the important role that both parents and teachers play in developing positive attitudes towards learning and education for children, building their motivation and confidence as learners, and fostering their enjoyment of learning. Parents and families play an important role in supporting their child's education.
Research has shown that when schools and families work together, children do better, stay in school longer, are more engaged with their schoolwork, go to school more regularly, behave better and have better social skills. Parent engagement also results in longer term economic, social and emotional benefits.
Next week we invite parents and carers to come to school to meet their child’s teachers. These meetings involve the development of shared goals with input from parents, teachers and children and allow for a shared learning environment to be established from the very beginning. We recognise that all children are different and their learning journey needs to be catered to their specific needs.
Teacher’s Role: Teachers will facilitate the meeting and give insight into how your child has started the school year.
Parent’s Role: Parents will give teachers any information they feel is relevant for the academic, social and emotional support they will require at school.
Child’s Role: To share their ideas about where they feel they are doing well and which areas they are looking to grow and further develop this year.
As the year progresses, it is hoped that the students will be able to share their achievements with their teachers and parents. We hope that this process will not only help instil student responsibility but also make it easier for you as parents to engage with your child about their learning.
Parent/Teacher/Student conferences will take place next week from 9th - 11th of February. These 15 minute interviews are conducted face to face in classrooms and the student is encouraged to attend. Parents are able to make a booking online via Compass.
Morning Supervision
The children's safety is paramount. Just a reminder that morning supervision starts at 8:30am. The slope gate will be opened at 8:25am for the children to drop their school bags outside their classroom and then walk to the Possum playground for teacher supervision.
SCECS before and afterschool care offers care from 7:00am -8:30am and then 3:15pm-6pm.
Wellbeing: UR STRONG
URSTRONG’s whole-school friendship strategy has improved the social climate in schools around the world, connecting over a million kids, parents, and teachers with a common language of friendship.
Friendship is...COMMUNITY!
Healthy friendships are the building blocks of healthy communities. UR Strong looks at social-emotional well-being through the lens of friendship.
2026 - Specialist Days
Sport Days - Monday & Friday - Mr O'Malley (Mon)
Spanish - Monday - Mrs Spindel
Library - Tuesday/Thursday Mornings - Mrs Temple
Visual Art - Tuesday - Mrs Traylen
Amadeus (Yrs 3-6) - Wednesday - Specialist Tutors
Music - Thursday & Friday Mornings - Mrs McInness
Blessings,
Marie Iorfino
Assistant Principal