Principal
District Swimming
Earlier this week, the Solway PS swim team took to the pool to compete at the District Swimming Carnival. The entire team displayed all our Solway values whilst competing. They showed respect for the other competitors, responsibility for ensuring they were well prepared for their events and resilience when races may not have gone the way they wanted. In an amazing effort our team came away as the overall winners for the day, taking out the title for the first time and ending the 9-year streak of Hartwell PS. A huge congratulations to the team and thank you to Mr Tongue and all the parents that supported on the day and in the lead up. We have about 20 students moving onto the division carnival next week. I am sure we all wish them the best of luck and know they will again do Solway proud.
School Council
Our school council nomination and election process for this year has finished. We were lucky enough to have enough nominations as we did vacancies, so there was no need to hold an election. I would like to welcome parents, Sinead Mooney, Tom Ellicott, Mathew Kerr, Jess Symmons, Kim James and staff Tom Chapman and Sarah Watkins to the council. They will join Deb Brown, Tim McLennan, Dan Skanthalingam, Andrew Merryweather, Brooke Danaher and Kate Nancarrow who are continuing this year. Our first meeting this year is on Wednesday 26 March, when the election of President, Vice President and Treasurer will take place.
Getting to Know You Meetings
Thank you to everyone who made themselves available to meet with teachers last week and share information about their child/ren. It is a valuable experience for our teachers to get to know a little more about their students and strengthen the connection between home and school.
Mother's Day
As part of our Mother’s Day celebrations, students will be creating an individual drawing or artwork in Visual Arts sessions, that will be printed on a plate, tote bag or mug through Picture Products! These unique items will be available for purchase and will replace our Mother’s Day stall for 2025. A letter with further information regarding payment will be sent out via Compass next week.
Inner East Area Principal’s Forum
Yesterday, Kate, Sarah and I attended the Inner East Area Principal’s Forum. This is a once a term meeting that principals from schools in Inner Eastern Melbourne attend to undertake professional learning aligned with Department of Education priorities. The focus yesterday was the how school leaders are supporting teachers to implement the Victorian Teaching and Learning Model (VTLM) 2.0 and the Department’s reading position. This work has already commenced at Solway, our teachers have been participating in professional learning that unpacks the elements behind learning:
- attention, focus and regulation
- knowledge and memory
- retention and recall
- mastery and application
Early next term we will turn our attention to the elements of teaching (planning, enabling learning, explicit teaching and supported application) that support the elements of learning. This will see our teachers shifting to a more evidence backed approach to the teaching of English and Mathematics.
Our Prep and Grade 1/2 have already begun work on the implementation of a Systematic Synthetic Phonics Program, underpinned by the Department’s Phonics Plus resource. Phonics Plus explicitly teaches the relationship between letters and their corresponding sounds to decode and encode words. Parents of Prep to Grade 2 students may start to see decodable readers and passages coming home in the coming weeks. These books help children practice their decoding skills and contain sounds that they have already learned.
Solway Community Fair
The Fair is only 3 weeks away. Being my first fair, I cannot wait to see and experience all the fun and excitement it brings. An event like this can only happen with the help of our wonderful families and community, volunteering their time. We desperately need more volunteers for fair day. If you or someone you know can spare some time, please click the link below to sign up.
Tomorrow is Sarah McDonell’s last day at Solway Primary School. We would like to thank her for all her hard work and dedication to our community over the years. We wish her good luck at her new school and know the Weeden Heights community is lucky to have you.
We would also like to welcome to Solway, Victoria Bonicelli who started as our Business Manager. Victoria brings with her many years of experience as a Business Manager in schools in the South-Eastern Suburbs and Gippsland. We are very much excited to having Victoria on the team and being part of the wonderful Solway community.
Thank you for your support and lets all strive to be “our best always”.
David
Principal