Principal's Message

School Philosophy

Orchard Grove Primary School is committed to providing a safe, nurturing environment that engages curiosity, promotes learning, personal growth, and well-being for all students. We strive to develop adaptability and resilience so students can become valued members of the local and global communities and be prepared for future life experiences.

From the Principal

Welcome back to 2024!

It is fantastic to see all of the students back at school, with our Foundation classes joining us now as well! The children all seem rested, ready for a new year and decidedly more grown up! 

I would like to welcome our new staff, Grace Jasinski and Zeena Hessenkamp, who are our new Performing Arts teachers for this year. We are looking forward to a whole school production (something new for OGPS) this year, so we are really pleased to have Grace and Zeena joining us. We also have Lauren Cummings in 0LC, Rachael Coulson in 2RC, Maggie Spillane in 3MS, Olivia Mahon in 3OM, Rachael Duke in 4RD and Charlotte Fatnowna in 5CF. We welcome back Charlee McElligott from her Maternity leave as well.

We also welcome a host of new aides to support our students, Mia will be working in Year 5 as a Teaching Assistant, and Cynthia, Jess, Melissa, Summer and Rafid will work with a range of classes and children across the school. Whilst not new, I would like to officially welcome Helen to our staff as well. Our Kitchen program for our Year 3 and 4 students will be run by Kate.

You may have noticed that this year our Foundation classes are changing from starting with an F to starting with a 0 (zero). This is to align them with all our other year levels, which start with a number. We will still refer to them as Preps/Foundation students but the classes will be known as zero and teacher initials.

All of our classrooms are busy engaging in our start-of-year program, in@OGPS, where they are revising our values and setting norms and expectations for their new classrooms. We have finished most days with a whole school gathering to share what we have done around the value of the day. The aim of this is to further develop our whole school connection in working towards a common goal of building a school where we all strive to do our best learning supported by kindness and understanding from our peers.

Mission statements and ICT agreements will be coming home soon for you to talk through with your children, sign and return to class teachers. Teachers have also had a planning day this week so they could plan for the term. This and other information will be shared with parents at the Parent Information Sessions we will hold in the coming weeks. These will be online (via Webex) as we have noticed more parents are available to attend these sessions when they are online rather than in person. Please keep an eye out for times and dates.

We will celebrate the  Lunar New Year this Friday at our first assembly, with a dragon dance as the finale of the day. There will not be Principal awards but we will launch our School Wide Positive Behaviours for 2024. This assembly will begin at the normal time of 2.45 pm and parents/carers are welcome to attend.

Our 2024 student leaders will have their badges presented to them in a special assembly on Tuesday the 13th of February at 9:15 am. The whole school will attend, with the assembly lasting about 20 minutes. 

Our first whole-school formal assembly with Principal Awards will be on the 23rd of February at 2.45 pm.

We look forward to welcoming as many parents as can make it along to our assemblies!

Thanks, everyone.

Michelle Ogilvie

Principal