Message from the Principal 

Hi Greenhills 

My picture for this week is a GREAT example of how the connections and partnerships we have between staff, students and parents can be really powerful. Our students, led by our Year 5/6 Sustainability Action Team with the support of a dedicated group of parents on our Sustainability and Environment School Council Sub-Committee and our staff team have all combined to implement the Redcycle program across our school. This means that we have a process in place for students and staff to recycle soft plastic rubbish. 

We need everyone’s help to make sure we are putting our rubbish in the correct bin. Every classroom has a white bin that is specifically for soft plastic rubbish. As the picture outlines, this is the rubbish you can squish up in your hands. There are also several large white wheelie bins outside the office building. These are for students to use at lunchtime and they are also our main collection points to empty the classroom bins into. Our parent team then collect this to be recycled. 

With everyone doing the right thing, we can look forward to our Redcycle program continuing to grow and really make a difference to the amount of landfill our school generates. We have also ordered some outdoor furniture that is made from these recycled materials. In this way our school community will have a very visible outcome from this initiative. 

WE WANT OUR PARENTS TO TELL US WHAT THEY THINK!

Our school is conducting a survey to find out what parents think of our school. The Parent Opinion Survey is an annual survey offered by the Department of Education and Training that is conducted amongst all parents. It is designed to assist schools in gaining an understanding of parents’ perceptions of school climate, student behaviour, student engagement and experiences of remote and flexible learning. Our school will use the survey results to help inform and direct future school planning and improvement strategies. All parents will be invited to participate in this year’s survey. All responses to the survey are anonymous. This year, the Parent Opinion Survey will be conducted from Monday 22nd August to Friday 9th September.

The survey will be conducted online, only takes 20 minutes to complete and can be accessed at any convenient time within the fieldwork period on desktop computers, laptops, tablets or smartphones. The online survey will be available in a range of languages other than English. These include: Arabic, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Chin (Hakha), Hindi, Japanese, Somali, Turkish, Punjabi and Greek.

An invitation to the survey with a link and password will be sent out via Compass on Monday 22nd August. Please contact me if you would like more information:

james.penson@education.vic.gov.au

CONTINUOUS REPORTING CONTINUES

The next continuous reporting work samples will be available during next week. This will either be a writing sample or a numeracy sample. Information about your child’s progress includes a rubric or grid that outlines what aspect of the curriculum the teacher is assessing and the standard they have assessed the student work at. Teachers also provide a comment about what the student has achieved and what the next steps are for their learning. This is our way of bringing you as the parent or carer into a deeper understanding of how your child is assessed each day and what standard they are working at. 

We also provide you with an opportunity to give your child feedback as part of this as well. In this way you are joining with the teacher and your child in a learning conversation and being given a rich, frequent and authentic opportunity to participate in your child’s education. Processes like this have incredible power for student agency and learning which is something that we are so passionate about. I really encourage you to take the time to sit with your child, view their continuous reporting learning via Seesaw and become part of the learning journey with them. I appreciate and understand how busy everyone is, however finding 5 or 10 minutes every few weeks to engage with this would mean the world to your child/ren and you would be playing a bigger role than you may think in their learning. Your child’s primary school years will go by very quickly and when they get older the opportunities to share learning like this won’t be as available and accessible. 

It is important to note that your feedback is helping to drive our Continuous Reporting Program. In recent parent opinion surveys, one of the areas of feedback that we have been very keen to address and improve on is our parent participation and involvement and teacher communication.

Our 2021 parent survey response to the following questions highlight this:

“This school gives me opportunities to participate in my child’s education” we had 65% of parents respond positively, 20% were neutral and 15% were negative.

“Teachers communicate with me often enough about my child’s progress’ we had 50% of parents respond positively, 21% were neutral and 29% negative.

As a direct result of this feedback, we are implementing our Continuous Reporting system via Seesaw. This initiative means that rather than just providing feedback about student achievement at the end of a semester, we have developed a system where student work and learning is shared with you on a regular basis each term. In this way our teachers are communicating information about your child’s progress more often and in a more detailed way than ever before.

CHILDRENS BOOK WEEK – DRESS UP PARADE

At Greenhills we love to celebrate all things reading. A highlight of this is our dress up parade as part of the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Annual Book Week. This will be held on Thursday 24th August.

The theme for this year is Dreaming with eyes open. The theme is about stepping into your own story, dreaming with your eyes open, listening to Country as the first storyteller and learning from friends who help you on your way. Time to start to think about your costume! 

GETTING READY FOR 2023

This week we started our “Experience Greenhills” sessions with our 2023 Preps visiting the Library to enjoy a literacy focused session sharing some of the wonderful books we have. The 2023 preps will also visit each of our specialist areas each week over the next month, as we build towards our students starting school next year. We have 60 students enrolled in Prep next year, so this means we will be running 3 x classes of 20 students in each.

At each of the Experience Greenhills times over the next 5 weeks we will also be hosting short parent sessions in the staffroom. This will be a GREAT chance to catch up for a chat and find out a little more about our school. The sessions are open to all or our parents and carers, not just our Prep 2023 ones!

The session outlines are as follows:

Thursday 11th August 2022  “Literacy” presented by Sharon Draper who is one of our Literacy experts. Sharon will talk about literacy at home and how to spark a love of reading.

Thursday 18th August 2022 “Numeracy” presented by Nigel Dunne (Learning Specialist). Nigel will talk about ways to engage with math’s at home and how we teach math’s through the school.

Thursday 25th August 2022 “Communications”  presented by Brad Ryan and Victoria Harris who will share some information about Compass, Seesaw and Care Bookings

Thursday 1st September 2022 “Meet with the Principal Team” - an opportunity to meet with the Principal Team with both myself and Janine Hough to answer any questions you may have.

Thursday 8th September 2022 Questions, Feedback and next steps – hosted by James Penson & Janine Hough 

At the other end of our school our Year 6 students were notified of their Secondary school placements for 2023. 

This is also a really exciting time and we are looking forward to continuing to prepare these students for the big step into Year 7. 

James Penson

Principal