Message from Principal Sarah

Welcome to our Week 4, Term 4 newsletter. As always, NMPS proves to be a very busy place and we have already packed so much into this term already.

Welcome New Staff

This term we welcome three additional staff to the NMPS teaching team. 

Caen Chang has joined the team on the 3-6 Campus teaching Science for the remainder of 2024 replacing Ritu Marwah. Sally-Jean Pye will join the Year 6 teaching team on Fridays teaching 6E. Sally will grade share with Elly Benjamin, replacing Kristy Saint-Clair. We also welcome Patrick Connor to our teaching team, Patrick will replace Kristy Saint-Clair as a member of the Performing Arts team teaching across both campuses.

Please feel free to say hello to Caen, Sally and Patrick when you see them around the school.

Arts Festival

This week we celebrate our Arts Festival across both campuses starting with our Year 5/6 Performance on Tuesday 24 October, followed by our Year 3/4 performance on Wednesday 25 October and our P-2 performance on Thursday 26 October. The students have been rehearsing in Performing Arts sessions throughout the Semester and we are confident their hard work will pay off on the evening - this has been evidenced by our brilliant Year 5/6 performance yesterday. Please ensure you take the time to view the Visual Art displays around the school on your child’s designated evening.

World Teachers Day

On Friday 27th October we will celebrate World Teachers’ Day. This is an opportunity to say thank you for the incredible contributions teachers make to our community.

Our teachers at NMPS are extremely dedicated to each and every one of our students and have shown great resilience over the last couple of years as we navigate teacher shortages across Victoria and the Nation. 

To all our teachers at North Melbourne Primary School, thank you for everything that you do, day in and day out. Thank you for always bringing your best to work and continuing to put our students first.

Prep Transition Program

We have started our Prep Transition Program with our 2024 Preps engaging in Story time sessions in our Molesworth Street Campus Library. It has been lovely to see how these students are already starting to settle into NMPS. 

Thank you to our current Prep team for their preparation and participation in these sessions. Our next Story time session is on Monday 30th October. Following this, we have our 2024 Prep Information Night on Wednesday 8th November.

2024 Grade Placements (as published last newsletter)

As we begin the planning process for the 2024 school year and organising classes, we would appreciate if parents could notify the school if your child/ren will not be returning to NMPS in 2024, as soon as possible. 

Any current families that are yet to enrol 2024 Prep students are encouraged to do so as soon as possible to assist with our planning process.

We also wanted to share some information with families around our process for student grade allocations. 

NMPS is such a large school and as such we are not in a position to accommodate parent requests for grade placements.  

Classes are randomly generated and then teaching teams review these classes considering the needs of all students from a social, academic and behavioural perspective. Teachers look for compatible learning partners, considering current friendship groups, and encourage the development of new friendships. 

A range of factors are considered based on some simple principles:

• Classes need to have a gender balance.
• Classes need an academically compatible balance.
• Classes need a ‘social behaviour’ balance.
• Children need to be placed with familiar faces while at the same time acknowledging that some children work better with certain students than others irrespective of friendships.

At NMPS, we strongly believe it is essential for children to have the opportunity to make new friends as this experience often leads to wonderful new friendships and stronger social skills.

In 2024 our Prep – 2 cohorts will be learning at our Molesworth Street Campus and our 3 - 6 students will be learning at our Errol Street Campus. Bell times for each campus will remain the same for 2024.