Acting Assistant Principal 

Message

In the past week, I have had the opportunity to step up into the position of Acting Assistant Principal. This year as a Learning Specialist, I have supported curriculum development across the school and worked closely with the Junior PLC teams. Over the next five weeks, I look forward to supporting South Melbourne Park Primary School across more areas. 

If you haven’t had a chance to meet me before, I normally teach 2B on Wednesday and Thursday. At the moment my Grade 2 students have been particularly enthusiastic about seeing me around the school and calling me by my new title! I am very grateful that Lisa Breen will be teaching the class full time until I return in Term 4. For now please feel free to say hello if you see me opening the gates before school, and I am always up for a chat, particularly about books, running and travel! 

Year 5 & 6 Respect Survey

Every year, the Year 4, 5 and 6 students participate in the Attitude to School Survey (AToSS). Upon receiving the results, we were pleased to see improvements in many areas and are digging deeper into the data in some areas. Revisiting work we started in 2025, we are continuing to investigate our students’ understanding of respect at SMPPS. We want to unpack with our students what respect looks like between student and teacher, and student and student, as well as what areas in the classroom and playground we can improve on. The data also showed a gap in responses between different genders, so we will investigate whether the students feel that there are differences in how different genders are displaying respect. The student responses to our follow up survey will allow us to inform our implementation of School Wide Positive Behaviour Support and to look at further wellbeing lessons for students and whole school professional learning for staff. 

ES Professional Learning 

As part of my AP role, over the next 5 weeks I will be supporting our Education Support staff during their team meetings. The ES meetings provide a valuable opportunity to check in on student progress, discuss current strategies and practices and allow everyone to be on the same page with the students we are supporting across the school. The meetings also provide an opportunity to deliver Professional Learning to our ES team, ensuring that they are continuing to be upskilled and are aware of whole school learning that is occurring. During the next 5 weeks, I am excited to be attending their meetings and look forward to sharing with the ES some curriculum PL around Mathematics. We will be focusing on moving students through the stages of Concrete, Pictorial and Abstract as they learn new concepts and explore how to slowly reduce scaffolding when students are in the acquisition stage. 

Photography & Recording Permissions 

Please take a moment to check that you have answered the 2026 Photography and Recording permissions question on compass. It really helps teachers out to be able to see who in their class has provided a Yes, or No for consenting to photographs. 

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Photograph Permissions

• Login into Compass
• Select Students Profile
• Select Student Insights  - 2026 Photography and Recording permissions
• Drop down to yes or no
• Save

Melanie Davis