Principal's Report

Education Week

Education Week was once again very successful.  We had many families attend both our Open Morning and Open Night along with the Book Fair and BBQ. One highlight of the evening was the ‘passport’ activity, with students across all year levels seeking ‘the answers’ to questions posed in our Passport ‘scavenger hunt’ during the Open night. Three special Book Fair prizes will be won at our Assembly next Friday by some lucky students who entered their completed passports in the draw in the Library. 

Additionally, our lovely choir and members of the Junior Rockers instrumental music program performed admirably in the STEM room to conclude the evening. 

We were very pleased with the turnout and the number of books purchased in the Book Fair this year, with over $3000 of items sold!  Well done to all the students and their families who joined in.

Today, as part of Education Week, we conducted our annual Spelling Bee for students from Foundation to Year 6. The competition was very strong, with finalists managing to correctly spell words well beyond their year level expectations! Congratulations to our Year level Spelling Champions:

A very special congratulations to Rajeel (Year 4) who won the final competition between the champions of Year 3-6, becoming our ‘Overall Spelling Champion’ for 2025.

Musical - Update

Poster Competition: finalists have been chosen and voting will occur next week! Our winner will be announced at assembly next Friday.

The badge competition is now open- templates were provided to students in all classes this week, and already some wonderful badge designs have been received! We will be continuing to collect badge designs until Friday 30th May.

Script rehearsals for main cast have commenced this week. Further rehearsals will continue next week.

Costumes are being created and managed by some very helpful parents and grandparents! Thanks to the team for all your work so far!

Songs and Dances are being confirmed, and some classes will commence dance rehearsals next week.

Performance Nights have been drafted. These are the current arrangements:

Arrangements for siblings have been made in some cases, so that all younger students (Year 1-4) perform on the same night as their youngest sibling. 

Working Bee- REMINDER: 

Our School Council – Facilities Sub-Committee have set a Term 2 working bee for Sunday 22nd June between 9am – 12pm. We will be completing some indoor and outdoor tasks, including updating our corridor displays with student work and photographs. We would love some talented ‘indoor decorators’ with a flair for displays, to come and assist on this working bee. Other tasks include clearing our storage areas, sorting equipment, gutters and drain cleaning, and general gardening.

Pre- Review Self Evaluation (PRSE)

This year, Albany Rise Primary School is undertaking a whole school review. Schools undertake a school review every 4 years to inform the directions of the school’s 4-year School Strategic Plan (SSP).

Parents/carers have a very important role in the Pre-Review Self Evaluation (PRSE), during the PRSE, we ask parents about their experiences, opinions, ideas and possible opportunities they would like to be considered when developing a new strategic plan. Over coming weeks, I will be asking parents to provide input through various platforms, including a simple online survey. 

PLEASE take the time to complete this simple survey: https://forms.gle/BhSRmF2LgfZ7i3LP7

Keeping Fit and Active 

The joint ministerial statement – Active Schools, Active Kids, Active Communities (PDF, 8.7MB)(opens in a new window) – highlights the Victorian Government’s commitment to improving physical activity in all Victorians to improve health, wellbeing and educational outcomes.

Leading an active life improves your health and wellbeing.

By moving more and sitting less, you can reduce the risk of ill health and death from any cause.

Regular physical activity helps to prevent and treat many diseases such as:

• heart disease

• some cancers

• diabetes

• musculoskeletal conditions

• depression (Booth, Roberts and Laye 2012; Pedersen and Saltin 2015).

Being physically active and having a healthy diet reduces other risk factors for disease, such as high blood pressure and over-weight and obesity (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2017).

We encourage all our students and families to maintain regular physical activity, through involvement in school sports events and initiative, such as our recent promotion of ‘Walk Safely to School’.

Many families from our school undertake sports activities afterschool and on weekends, such as soccer, basketball, AFL, swimming, golf and even roller skating and ice skating! We are always happy to share some of the sporting options available to our school community- you can see some of these included in our ‘Classified’ page in this newsletter.

Curriculum Day Reminder - TOMORROW

Don’t forget that Friday 23rd May is a curriculum day at Albany Rise, and our teaching staff will be undertaking a day focusing on assessment and reporting. 

                 Judy Drew - Principal