From the Principal 

Dear Parents and Carers,

What an amazing last few weeks we have had at Somerville Primary, it was wonderful to see all of the mothers and special people who came last week. The weather was superb; and our students made lots of special treats for their special people. We have begun having fruit back in classrooms and its been very pleasing to see all of our students enjoying fresh fruit.   Following the works carried out on the holidays, we will be getting the Basketball Towers installed early next week, this is the next stage in getting this area upgraded, I am sure that our students will be very excited to have their basketball courts back! At our last School Council Meeting, the Somerville Primary School Annual Report was endorsed and will be available on our website. It was an exciting opportunity to reflect on 2020 and share our students and school success. If you would like a hard copy of the report, please contact the office.

We have had NAPLAN testing this week and all of our students have done a phenomenal job with completing this assessment. If any students in Grades 3 and 5 have missed a test, they have the opportunity for catch up assessments next week. 

2021 marks the beginning of the teaching of Synthetic Phonics at Somerville. Systematic Synthetic Phonics is the teaching of sounds and then blending these to ensure students can decode any text.  Recently there has been a number of articles in The Age, outlining and celebrating the success of Synthetic Phonics. We have placed some of these articles on our Facebook page.

https://amp.theage.com.au/.../primary-schools-dump...

 This approach is an evidence and research based teaching strategy which enables high levels of success through developing strategies to decode and assist fluency when reading; these skills become clearly evident when students begin reading more complex texts in Years 4-6, where the language is more sophisticated and there are less visual prompts to support decoding of the vocabulary. The main resource we are using at Somerville is the Little Learners Love Literacy texts. This does not mean that students are limited to only Little Learners texts, they can read books from the library, books of their own interest and we always encourage the sharing of a picture story book every day.  Students are scaffolded within their learning to identify any misunderstandings and then teach the correct sounds. We will be having an information session around Synthetic Phonics and the Little Learners Resource on the 2nd of June from 2:30pm. Due to density limits, parents will need to register at the office by the 28th of May.

Education Week is the 23rd to the 29th of May 

Now in its 77th year, Education Week aims to positively profile and celebrate the strengths and achievements of Victoria's government education sector. Education Week 2021 will run from 23-29 May and the theme is 'Building Connections'. The theme celebrates the connections between schools and local communities and strengthens bonds with families and carers. Education Week is an opportunity for all primary and secondary schools, higher education, and early childhood services to showcase how they are building connections with the community around them. 

We will be having visits from Somerville Secondary Students and their instrumental band; some of our students will be going to Somerville Secondary to work in specialised subjects such as cooking, sports literacy and numeracy. We are also bringing some local Kindergarten students into our school to have our students read to them.

As previously mentioned we are still taking enrolments for 2022 Foundation students. We will be having an information evening on the 16th of June at 6:30pm in the hall, parents will need to register at the office so that we can adhere to density limits. 

 Have a lovely weekend,

David