Principal's Message

RPS GARDENING CLUB

The productive gardens at Ripponlea are flourishing under the guidance and support of our Facilities and Environment committee and the hard work of a number of parents in the school community. Using grant monies we have now established vegetables in the Italian Garden and planted our third lot of seedlings in the productive garden. A group of volunteers have supported these projects by working on a weekend to upgrade the irrigation/watering system and completing the soil preparation and planting process. Tegwen King in particular is closely monitoring both gardens. Last week a group of students had the opportunity to plant more seedlings donated by David Southwick and Lee Brennan had a fabulous Friday market selling lots of produce to our community. It is so lovely to have the support of our community on these projects and we deeply thank the ongoing support of our volunteers:

Colin Smith, Cynthia Swanson, Tegwen King, Ben Shewry, Kylie Staddon, Ben Dixon, Lee Brennan, Jonathan Green, Suzanne Nielsen, Eli Greig and Natasha Stojanovich

BIG NIGHT IN & SLEEPOVER

Last Friday the neighbours were pleasantly serenaded to the sounds of our children singing and dancing away on the steps of the Barrbunin, enjoying their evening of activities late into the balmy night. The Year 1/2 students were treated to games, circus skills workshops, pizza, a special birthday cake, icy poles and lots of fun. The Year 2 students stayed at school overnight as a step into the Year 3 camping program. The whole event was a huge success from all accounts and we thank our wonderful staff for giving up their time away from their families to provide such a memorable experience for our students.

Thank you goes out to - Mr Calleja, Mr Leech, Ms Vicki, Ms Stef, Ms Tania and Ms D.

WOORABINDA EXPERIENCE

A select group of Year 4 and Year 5 boys and girls spent last week at Somers School Camp - Woorabinda Campus, a government residential school located on the shores of Lake Narracan in the LaTrobe Valley. Situated on 100 hectares of native bush, open paddocks, hidden wetlands and temperate rain forest, they believe in a values based learning environment with a strong focus on personal development, resilience and perseverance. Here is what our students had to say about their experiences: 

• Anna - I have so many things to say: I like the quest because I was the leader of the red hunters and gatherers group and we won. The night time activities were good and you could spend time with your friends. In the reptile enclosure I got to see two lizards and a turtle. I enjoyed the zip line, high ropes and especially the raft making and canoeing – even though I was bad and kept bumping into things and needed a lift back in the speed boat.  
• Max  - We were taught to use our initiative and learnt to be independent. I liked the reptile enclosure because the snake crawled around me. I also liked the quest because it was challenging.
• Maya  - There were a lot of sustainable practices; we had points for keeping the lights off and opening windows for air circulation. On the first day we had to make our own lunch on the fire.
• Gaspar- I liked that we got free time where we could play games or go and see different animals. My favourite activity was the high ropes course and the flying fox as it was fast.
• Petra - I liked the task at the end: we had to get ingredients to make tea for the teachers and they would name it after the word they used to describe what you had made – we got 'horrible'. I got a certificate for crying on the high ropes course because I am afraid of heights. It was sad when we left because my new friends didn’t have phones and I couldn’t get their numbers.
• Wynn - My favourite activity was canoeing and rafting because we had to use team work and it was fun in the water. We could paddle over to the other side of the lake and there were tracks we could walk along. The quest was really fun and we could explore the grounds. I also really liked the free time as I got to meet nice people who I enjoyed playing with.
• Camille  – I liked the quest which was: the marines who went canoeing, the early settlers who had to find places on the map and the hunters and gatherers who did archery – which I liked because it was challenging. I also liked playing Carnie ball in our free time because of the new rules.

DAV PUBLIC SPEAKING COMPETITION

Congratulations to Eve Graham and Bethany Aarons who represented Ripponlea Primary School at the SEVR public speaking competition at Wesley College. Both girls did our school proud in further developing their excellent oratory skills.

STUDENT COUNCIL ANNOUNCEMENT  

Students have a positive contribution to make within the decision-making processes of our school. When students are actively involved in these processes, they have an enhanced sense of commitment to the school and its programs. Our Year 5 Student Council aims to provide students with a sense of pride and achievement by:

• developing caring and responsible attitudes;
• providing an avenue for the development of ‘student voice’ within the school;
• raising student awareness of issues affecting our community;
• providing a forum for students to openly discuss concerns, issues, opportunities for improvement and to celebrate success; and
• enabling coordinated fund raising for social services within the local and broader community.

Over the course of the year, families have been contributing to the cake raffle which supports student council initiatives. After consultation with students, they have decided to spend the monies raised on two ‘Friendship’ benches made from recycled products. These will feature our school’s logo and will be named as the RPS Friendship benches. The care for others, connection across the school to other peers and creating new friendship opportunities will be the sentiment of these benches.

HOUSE CAPTAINS ANNOUNCEMENT 

After such an overwhelming support of the Fun Run and all the funds raised, the house captains have been busy consulting with all students across the school. As a result, students have unanimously voted to use the monies raised to buy AFL/Soccer combo goal posts for the oval.

We are working with AAAFlags to try to speed up installation before the end of the year. Thank you once again to our community for your donations towards the Fun Run. 

PARENT AND FRIEND VOLUNTEERS OF RPS – WE WANT YOU

…to join us for Morning Tea at 10:30am on Tuesday 10th December in the staffroom to say a big Ripponlea thank-you to the help you’ve given to us this year whether it’s been:

• as a class rep;
• a classroom helper;
• assisting on excursions and other activities;
• flipping a sausage or two on the BBQ;
• baking a cake;
• planting vegetables;
• contributing to our wonderful production of Sunnyville;
• preparing and selling gifts for our Mother's and Father's Day stalls;
• assisting with loads of jobs at our working bees;
• helping make Ripper Art such a success again;
• contributing to committees and events; or
• so many other things we could mention but we still wouldn’t scratch the surface!

Please do come and enjoy a cuppa and a treat with our very grateful staff; we are so appreciative of all that you do!

COMPASS COMMUNICATION

Now that we are in our second year of implementation using COMPASS, we thought we would kindly remind all families about some of its key features and how we manage all correspondence at Ripponlea.

Meagan Brake our Administration officer is our main communication officer for Compass. She receives communication from teachers, leadership, parents and Ripper families and posts information via the portal. Given a school can have a large number of daily information to distribute, we take the following approaches depending on the importance of the correspondence.

1. We can email and SMS the information (will alert you)
2. We can email (will alert you)
3. We can just SMS (will alert but disappears quickly on iPhone)
4. We can just post and save making the correspondence live for the period (no alert)

Please note:

• Reminders are occasionally sent as alerts, but not always
• All communication drops off after the event has concluded
• All minor correspondence drops off after 7 days
• All permission closes off by the due date for planning purposes
• All notices can be found on the school documentation tab

We highly recommend that all families make it a regular habit to check COMPASS on a weekly basis to avoid missing important information. The school has a number of communication channels but they all serve a different purpose and are managed by different staff.

For example:

Seesaw – a snapshot of what is happening in your child’s year level and class. Occasionally teachers do remind about whole school events, but this is not always guaranteed.

Newsletter – a celebration of events that have occurred across the school, information on events to come, calendar of events, only comes out every fortnight.

END OF YEAR SCHOOL REPORTS ON COMPASS

End of year reports will go live via the COMPASS communication portal on Tuesday 17th December at 5:00pm.  Student reporting provides a point in time description of student achievement, progress and growth. Learning occurs incrementally along the learning continuum however, the rate and pace of learning is not fixed or constant. It is recognised that there may be plateaus and even setbacks as different children learn at different rates.

The curriculum is a developmental learning continuum with content and achievement standards organised by levels, not years of schooling. This offers teachers the flexibility to tailor their teaching to provide rigorous, relevant and engaging learning opportunities for students, including those students with additional learning needs or a disability.

Our student reports will include information about student achievement and progress against the Victorian Curriculum F-10 achievement standards. Student achievement will be shown on a learning continuum at the end of a specified period of schooling, that being December 2019.

Progress will be represented as the growth in learning that has occurred by referencing the last time such achievement standards were reported against for that student in the school. This growth is measured from December 2018 to December 2019.

All Year 6 families are encouraged to download all copies of their children’s reports as soon as possible and definitely before the commencement of the 2020 school year. Once the school year begins, there will be no further access to the COMPASS portal for past students.

All reports can be downloaded in PDF format. Please read the following instructions if you encounter any difficulties.  

2020 STAFFING ARRANGEMENTS

As many of you might already know, Ms Abi Wright is expecting her first babyand will be leaving Ripponlea Primary School at the end of this year.

We have finalised our recruitment process and have successfully appointed a new Performing Arts teacher. Ms Tamara Lee-Thompson is currently a Performing Arts teacher at Aspendale Primary School. She has worked in Primary and Secondary government schools, a Catholic school, a Bi-National school and now in an International Baccalaureate (IB) World school teaching Music, Drama, Dance and Media Arts from Foundation to Year 6. Her recent career highlight has been the school’s musical production of Mary Poppins. Tamara is excited to be joining the RPS community in 2020.

Tamara rounds off our talented and inspirational Specialist Team for the 2020 school year:

2020 CURRICULUM DAYS FOR YOUR DIARIES

The following dates have been approved by School Council for the 2020 school year. These will now appear on both our website and on the COMPASS calendar. We have secured a number of high level consultants in the field of Mathematics and Literacy. Our staff are very excited to be offered these opportunities in the coming year. These professional learning experiences will be shared once again with local schools Glenhuntly and Windsor Primary School.

NB: Students do not attend school on these days (OSHC will be available for bookings)

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT AND WELLBEING 

At our last School Council meeting, the Student Engagement and Wellbeing policy was presented for ratification. This policy has been developed over a number of months by the Student Engagement and Wellbeing team and the Positive Behaviour Support team, along with input from the Governance and School-Community Partnerships committees. Further community consultation has also been sought to ensure that the policy accurately represents RPS’s position and actions on optimising the engagement and wellbeing of our students. Please take time to read the policy as it serves well to articulate our shared expectations for community members and our approaches to managing behaviour and attendance.

Until next fortnight ...

                                                    Natalie Rose                                        Jess Grey

                                                          Principal                                     Assistant Principal