Assistant Principal's Report 

Welcome back to all of our OPPS families and a very special welcome to those joining us for the first time in 2022. We know that whilst last year was not a 'typical' school year with the interruptions that COVID provided, there were still some very special achievements - in terms of student growth, community engagement and in terms of our teacher teams developing and embedding our teaching approaches. Whilst the beginning of the year to date has also not what we would describe as typical, it has still been incredibly pleasing to see how the students have transitioned back into school. It is really clear that the language and understanding of our school values is embedded and evident in their actions. Our new students appear to have settled in and developed friendships quite quickly and the excitement at the school-gate each morning quite obvious.

This has been a particularly exciting week for our approximately 60 Prep students that have started their school journey! The enthusiasm in the Prep learning community and out on the Junior School playground has been incredible. The Teachers have been particularly proud of the way that students have been quick to follow instructions and take such care of their learning spaces. Their learning this week has been mainly around school routine, values and expectations. Next week they will start to explore some Literacy and Numeracy concepts as well as expectations within these learning sessions.

Across our Year One and two classes, students have been exploring recount texts during this past week and it is pleasing to note that so many of the foundational skills that they developed last year have been retained and that students are able to quite confidently put thoughts down on paper and create basic sentences to share an experience. Students are also starting to explore some Australian geography and consolidate their understanding of months and seasons.

In Years Three to Six, students are learning all about health, what it means to be healthy and how this is promoted within our community. This then flows into their Literacy blocks where they will be reading associated literature and are also exploring persuasive writing on related topics.  In Numeracy, students are exploring data in various forms. They are exploring the purpose of data, different data collection methods and then interpreting data to explore what it is telling us. 

Whilst we know the beginning of the school year has been interrupted for certain people and families, for those that have been in attendance it has been incredibly busy, productive and exciting, and we look forward to welcoming all of our families back in due course. We would really encourage all families to ensure that their children are in attendance if they are not either COVID positive or close contacts. There are a number of preventative measures in place to ensure that school is a safe place including face-masks, hand sanitiser and air purifiers. All families should now be in receipt of rapid antigen tests as well now too so that they can be testing children regularly. 

We would also like to stress the importance of making sure that students are arriving at school at 8:35AM sharp. Students should be entering the Learning Communities at 8:35 and have 10 minutes of getting ready to learn time. Lessons commence at 8:45AM sharp and our learning time is precious. Our curriculum is crowded and our teachers plan strategically to ensure that we are able to cover all of the expected content by the end of the school year. Similarly, it is important that your child is at school until the end of the school day at 3:00PM. Our lessons run right through until 3:00 and if students are picked up early then they will be missing out on important curriculum content. We understand that sometimes appointments during the school day can be unavoidable, however, as we do with our staff, we would encourage parents to plan appointments and activities outside of school hours as much as possible.

I look forward to touching base again in a couple of weeks and sharing some more exciting learning updates! Until then, I will no doubt see plenty of you at the school gates for pick-ups and/or drop-offs. I hope that families are able to make the most of this glorious weather before our summer becomes a distant memory! 

Take care.

Danny Forster

Assistant Principal