Principal Report & School News
From the Principal...
Our school picnic was a great success and I want to thank Heather Hosken and the parents and friend’s team for their organisation. The Year 6 students eagerly pitched in to run a series of fun activities on the evening. All those who attended had a wonderful time enjoying the food trucks and picnic food they had brought along. The staff also enjoyed chatting with parents and students.
Curriculum Day
On Thursday March 10th, the staff participated in a SMART Spelling workshop with an expert facilitator. The teachers all commented on the high quality of the presentation and support resources provided. The English team will continue to ensure all levels are delivering a consistent approach to the explicit teaching of Spelling at our school.
Labour Day Holiday
I hope everyone in the community enjoyed their labour day holiday weekend. The weather was sensational for being outdoors. This year is moving by so quickly and before we know it term one will soon come to an end. The wonderfully warm weather is such a contrast to the amount of destruction and damage caused by huge amounts of rain in the north of the country. I do know many students across the school are keen to organise a fundraiser to help the people most affected by the floods. Please stay tuned for more details.
School Council Annual General Meeting
The Annual General Meeting will be held Wednesday evening March 23, from 7pm to 7.30pm in the school staff room where we will present the Annual Report on the school achievements in 2021. This will be placed on our school website for all of our community to read. New office bearers will also be elected for the coming year. The first School Council meeting will be held straight after the Annual General meeting.
Covid Updates
The Rapid Antigen Testing program will continue in schools until the end of Term 1 2022, although this will continue to be monitored and may end early if recommended by health advice. All students and staff in mainstream schools are recommended to test twice a week while students and staff in specialist schools are recommended to test each school day. Compass Updates are sent out when each new round of packs are available for collection. Many families are yet to collect their third kit. Please do so as soon as possible.
COVID updates are being sent each day as new cases are communicated with the office and we will try to get this information to the OPS community as soon as possible. We continue to follow the Health Departments’ guidelines to keep everyone safe. Please continue to make sure you notify the school if there is a positive case so we can support the family and protect our community at the same time. Keep up the good work.
Overall, we have had a successful start to the academic year. Mask wearing has been consistent, the additional masks that you are providing for your children are ensuring that they are protected. Teachers have windows and doors open to maximise ventilation and the air purifiers have been delivered to the classrooms and are all in use. Additionally, we are ensuring that we are limiting the mixing of classes and encouraging the use of outdoor spaces to align with the COVID operations guide.
For more information on symptoms visit: https://www.coronavirus.vic.gov.au/symptoms-and-risks. For more information on how to get tested visit: https://www.coronavirus.vic.gov.au/taking-test-covid-19.
The Learning Continues
It is business as usual at OPS with some great learning happening across the school including Reading, SMART spelling, building on fundamental numeracy skills, STEAM, Art and Korean. Students have also been involved with pre-testing to determine appropriate groupings. The school teaches all students at their point of need and the children are involved in setting learning goals appropriate to their level.
Early Arrivals at School
Parents are reminded that children should not be arriving at school before 8.45am in the morning. The students are not supervised at this time of the morning as teachers are preparing their classrooms for the day. Before and After Care facilities are available for parents who need to get to work early. Students should not be inside the buildings before the music starts unless supervised by a teacher.
Contact Details
Have your contact details changed? We have already tried to phone parents and emergency contacts only to find that the phone number is no longer valid. It is vital that we can contact parents or carers at all times.
Upcoming Dates for your diary
On Monday 21st March, we will be celebrating Harmony Day. Students can come dressed in their national/cultural dress if they have such items or wear orange, the colour of Harmony.
Friday 1st April students can come in casual dress and bring an Easter themed product to fill the Eater Raffle hampers.
Kerri McLeod
Principal
Harmony Day - Monday 21st March
Monday 21st of March is Harmony Day at Ormond Primary School.
To celebrate, students are asked to wear orange - the colour of harmony or cultural dress.
Students will have the opportunity to show their Harmony Day outfits at assembly on Monday.
Easter Raffle - Casual Dress 1st April
The OPS Annual Easter Raffle is now on! This year it is online, please scan the QR code below to purchase tickets.
Friday 1st April is a casual dress day for students. Instead of a gold coin donation, please supply an Easter item for the hampers.
Payments & Consents for Student Activities
Processing activities before their due dates is the only way to confirm your child's participation in them.
Payment/Consent after the due dates will not be accepted.
Many families still have remaining credit with the school following the cancelations of activities in 2020 and 2021. If you believe you may have credit please contact the office before processing activities so we can amend the costs associated and allocate these funds instead. Families applying for CSEF, are asked to please do so asap. Please see the Compass feed notification for further information.
Any questions at all regarding activities, payments or financial support please contact the office or if your child is unable to attend a planned activity, please inform the office in writing as soon as possible to avoid constant reminders.
Library News
Reminder to all parents and carers, book club is still open for school delivery.
Ordering will close Friday 18th March.
Thank you to all those that have ordered books through Scholastic, as this helps OPS buy new books for our school and also the only fundraiser we do for the library.
Your support is much appreciated.
Foundation News
On Monday and Tuesday mornings, the Foundation students have been participating in PMP (Perceptual Motor Program) with Mr Pannam. This program assists in improving their eye/hand and eye/foot coordination, fitness, balance, locomotion, and eye-tracking skills.
Year 2 News
In Science students in Year 2 explored a fun food workshop and were challenged to think about food in a whole new way. They experimented with a variety of food related chemicals and even took home some tongue tingling sherbet!
Year 3 News
Over the past two weeks, Year 3 students explored the well-known Dreamtime story The Rainbow Serpent, learning how to summarise important information from different versions of the story. The students enjoyed integrating their reading, writing, inquiry and artistic skills as they drafted, edited and published their own summaries based on one version of The Rainbow Serpent. See some examples of their wonderful efforts below.
Year 4 News
The Year 4 students are learning how to set up a 'fair test' for science experiments.
Today we played a game outside to understand when it is not fair!
We are learning what the variables are in a science experiment/game.
We needed to keep all the variables the same, except one, so we could make it fair.
PE/Sports News
Year 6 Friday Summer Sport
All teams feature in the top half of the district ladders which is great result so far.
Training for Hotshots is Thursday mornings starting at 8.15.
Rounders, T-Ball and T-20Blast training is on Friday mornings at 8.15. All team members are expected to turn up for training. Training will not go ahead if it is raining or has been raining during the morning. Please don’t send your child if this has been the case.
Ormond Primary School District Swim Team
Well done to all our representative swimmers who participated in the Moorabbin District Swim Carnival at GESAC. We had a good day with some impressive results. Great swimming from Noam C who managed a 2nd in the open boys freestyle and a 3rd place in the open boys backstroke and also Michelle C 3rd in the 11yo backstroke and Rainn C 3rd in the 10yo freestyle.
Years 3 – 6 Cross Country Running Morning Sessions
A Year 3- 6 cross country running group will begin in week 7.
Sessions will be held Wednesday mornings from 8.15am
This is for students who are interested in possibly being part of the Ormond P.S. District Cross Country Team in Term 2.
Ormond will be having a Year 3- 6 cross country day at Karkarook Park on Tuesday 3rd May. This day will for the main part of the team selection criteria. The District Cross Country Carnival is for 10 to 13 year olds. Age groups are determined by the age students are turning this year. If you are turning 10 this year, you are 10 year old, etc,. There is no 9 year old age group in Victoria Sport Schools Association. However Year 3 students will still be part of Ormond’s cross country day.
Mr Pannam
PE/Sport Specialist
Korean News
Year 1 to 5 students enjoyed celebrating the year of the tiger, 호랑이[ho-lang-ee], through creative crafts.
Year 1 to 3 students created tiger puppets and used them to practise greetings such as introducing their names.
Year 4 students made a traditional kite, 방패연 [bang-pae-yeon], and learned how to fly the kite well. Year 5 students also created lovely tiger bookmarks using their origami skills.
STEAM News
It has been another STEAMtastic couple of weeks in the STEAM room. The students are coming in curious and eager to see what activities are planned for them!
Foundation students have been introduced to our programmable robotic toys the Blue-Bots and they are already familiar with some of the basic commands such as the forward and go buttons. They have learnt to program the Blue-Bot to reach their favourite colour by pressing the forward button the correct number of times and to most importantly press the clear X button before they even commence programming their Blue-Bot.
Year 1 have been sorting recyclable materials based on their properties. They have been tallying data on the amount of each material we have in our collection and then presenting the data in a graph. The Year 2 students were this week challenged to find a way to clean up an oil spill in their mini oceans and to remove the oil off a feather which is what volunteers try to do when oil spills occur in real life. They discovered that oil doesn’t mix with water and it is very hard to remove! We discussed the impact of oil spills on the environment and the methods scientists use to remove the oil.
This week the Year 3 students have started engineering their own names by using coloured cardboard. We have looked at a variety of 3D paper techniques and will conclude by adding decorations around our names. The Year 4 cohort are currently engineering their dream playgrounds! They have worked in teams to plan, design and construct their playgrounds and will be finished by next week.
The Year 5 & 6 students have examined how a digital system like a lap top works by considering how data is entered with a range of input devises like a keyboard or mouse and how output devices like headsets and screens output data as sound and video. They have also been finding out about the Ormond Primary School digital network, how we are all connected to a LAN a local area network, and they have demonstrated their understandings by creating diagrams using Google slides.
