Principal's News

Is it just me or has December crept up on us rather quickly over the last few months? For many of you, it means it is busiest time of the year both personally and professionally, throughout schools this is also the reality with teachers both in the midst of drawing the 2024 year to a close whilst also planning for the 2025 school year. There are many engagements and celebrations in our school as we draw towards the end of the school year and begin planning for the year ahead. 

I look forward to celebrating the final weeks of Term 4 with our school community and sharing in the achievements of our students as we collectively reflect on the 2024 school year. Thank you for taking a moment to read over our newsletter, a shorter final newsletter for the year will be shared on December 20th. 

Farewell to the Class of 2024!

Our 2024 Year Six students are now in their final weeks of primary school. We are very much looking forward to the Year 6 Graduation and Awards night that will be held next Tuesday evening.

It is an exciting time for any young person to move from the sanctuary of their primary school and take the challenge of entering secondary school. I would like to wish them all a very fond farewell from Caulfield Primary School. We know our school has provided these students with the skills and confidence to take on any challenge they face in the coming years. I would also like to farewell all the families that are departing Caulfield Primary School for a variety of reasons. I hope that wherever you go you will look back fondly at your time at our school.

2024 Student Leaders

Our final assembly will include the opportunity to celebrate our Graduating class of 2024 and welcome our 2025 student leaders to their roles. This leadership presentation will be presented at our final assembly, a more formal badge presentation in recognition of these roles will be conducted early in 2025.

I greatly admire our Year 4 and 5 students who have undertaken leadership speeches and put their hand up for a position of responsibility for 2025, regardless of the end outcome, it is a great credit to our students and their willingness to strive for leadership roles throughout the school. 

2025 Staff Listing

As we move towards the end of the 2024 school year, we continue to make plans to ensure optimal learning opportunities for our students in 2025. Our class structure will look as follows:

Farewell

I extend my sincere thanks to our departing staff members, Miss McCann, Miss Campbell, Miss Harper, Asako White and Lauren Karas for their commitment to our school and our students over the course of 2024. We wish Annika, Emma, Jessica, Asako and Lauren all the best for their future endeavours.

In addition to this, I extend my thanks to Kurokawa sensei who has taken 12 months leave to travel and return home to Japan and to Caroline who has taken 12 months leave to pursue further opportunities.   

I also extend my sincere thanks to Warren, Warren has taken on leave to support his family needs. I thank him for his wonderful contributions to our school, always going over and above to support our school. 

Our 2025 Team Members

We are excited about welcoming our new staff in 2025 to our school, we have taken some time over the last few months to recruit staff that will support our vision and direction for our school moving forward

• Jess Matthews: Miss Matthews joins our Year ½ team, having a strong interest in bilingual education and experience working in both Australia and Japan. She has spent three years teaching English in Japan and joins our team from St Joseph’s Primary School. 
   
• Olivia Gibson: Miss Gibson is an experienced teacher and joins our Year 5/6 team working alongside Klein sensei. Miss Gibson has spent the last 12 months working overseas with considerable experience working in the UK. Prior to that she has worked as a classroom teacher at Northcote Primary School.
   
• Aoi Sakamoto: Sakamoto sensei has a strong interest in bilingual education, over the last 12 months she has undertaken regular visits to our school and had an interest in classroom teaching as a Japanese teacher. Sakamoto sensei joins us from Eltham East Primary School and joins our Year ½ team. 
   
• Zhimin Zhao: Miss Zhao has undertaken her teaching practicums at our school over the last 12 months and has recently worked with us in a casual relief teaching role. Miss Zhao will join our specialist program, teaching the STEM specialist class to our Prep – Year 6 students. 
   
• Jenny Parkes: Jenny returns from family leave and takes on the role of Wellbeing Leader at our school. Mrs Parkes is duel trained as a teacher and occupational therapist and has led wellbeing at our school alongside Morioka sensei prior to the commencement of her family leave. All schools are encouraged to employ a qualified teacher as a Mental Health and Wellbeing Leader in their school to implement a whole school approach to mental health and wellbeing, we welcome (back) Mrs Parkes to this role. 

Student Free Day

A reminder that we are hosting our final student free day on Monday 9th December, our 2025 teaching teams will be working together to begin planning for Term 1 next year. Bookings with Team Kids can be made for a service in lieu of our ordinary Monday program.

Student Free Days – 2025

A few dates for your 2025 diary were endorsed by our school council last week, these include our 2025 Student Free Days which will be delivered on the following dates: 

• 28th January – Statewide Planning Day
• 14th March – Teacher Professional Learning
• 2 July – Parent Teacher Interviews
• 10th December – 2026 Teaching Teams planning 

2025 Classes

Miss Ryan and Onda sensei have worked over a number of weeks on creating our 2025 class structure. We utilise a class builder program that adopts an algorithm to create classes comprising balance in gender, ages, academic ability, behaviours, and individual student needs, we then also add in the student friendship requests and any other additional information. It becomes a complex task and we have finalised our classes with thanks to their leadership. 

Students will find out their 2025 class on our Meet the Teacher day on the 12th December. 

Reports

Semester 2 Reports will go home via email on Monday 16th December. You are of course welcome to speak to Miharu or myself if you are unsure of anything in this report or wish to clarify anything further.

Congratulations

Congratulations to Callum Mattock, Callum recently achieved his Black belt in Taekwondo and was awarded this at a recent presentation. Callum has been doing Taekwondo since he was 5yrs old. He is one of the younger club members to have achieved his first Dan at 11 yrs old. Well done Callum. 

I also extend my congratulations to Barnabas Zoltan, Barnabas recently received the Bronze Qualifier in the Junior Excellence Program for swimming achievements and performed with achievements in the Swimming Victoria qualification meet and at the State Athletics Relay Championships. Congratulations Barnabas! 

Grill’d and CPS

If you are looking to feed the household over the next few weeks, you might like to consider dropping down to Grill’d Elsternwick where we are featured in their local matters jars competition. All orders from Grill’d Elsternwick receive a token that you can use to drop into our Caulfield Primary School Jar in the restaurant, the winning community organisation at the end of December is awarded $300. Thank you to our Parents and Friends Club (PFC) for organising this opportunity. 

Closing off

A reminder that the school office will be closed from 2pm on Friday 20th December, whilst I will be in and out of the school over December and January the office will not be formally open again until staff return on 28th January with students returning on the 29th January. 

Year 1/2 Disco and Sleepover

On a balmy Melbourne evening last night, our Year ½ students enjoyed their disco, dinner and sleep over event. I enjoyed joining our students and staff, staying the night and seeing them enjoy the company of one another and demonstrate their school values and their growing maturity. Manners were on display as was a genuine kindness and care that saw them helping one another and our staff. My thanks to our families who supported this event and a big thank you to our teachers, in particular Mori sensei, Miss Harper, Mrs Watts and Kurata sensei for staying overnight with the students and giving them such a wonderful evening. 

Sharing and Learning:

We had a great privilege on Wednesday to host a travelling delegation of educators and Government officials from Indonesia, this opportunity was extended to us as a means of celebrating inclusive education and showcasing our bilingual learning environment. During our visit we shared a presentation on our school and did a school tour fielding questions from the group. It was a really positive networking opportunity and a very exciting opportunity to showcase our school to a visiting and engaging group of educators and officials. 

Working Bee: 

We have our final working bee of the school year scheduled for the 19th December, beginning at 3:15pm, the aim of this is to move furniture from classrooms to assist with painting and recarpeting over the holiday break. We just need hands and helpers, the more support we can get, the easier this work will be. If you can help us for an hour or so, it would be so kindly appreciated. 

Positive Classrooms and School Wide Positive Behaviour: 

Over the final weeks of the school year, we are engaging in some professional learning around positive classroom management strategies and school wide positive behaviour, noting that we are beginning our work together next year with a whole school implementation of school wide positive behaviour support. Next week, we welcome School Wide Positive Behaviour Coach, Anthony King to the school to take our first step in our implementation journey. You can read more about School Wide Positive Behaviour Support at https://www.vic.gov.au/SWPBS.

Enjoy the weekend ahead and I look forward to celebrating the final two weeks of the school year alongside each of you as we return back together on Tuesday morning. 

With Thanks,

Edward Strain

Principal