Principal's Report 

Welcome back to Rangeview for 2025

We are so pleased to be back with all of our wonderful Rangeview Families including welcoming our new Foundation Families as they start their Rangeview journey. As a parent myself, who has just seen a child right through the levels at Rangeview, it is indeed a journey. The growth, development, and depth of experience that occurs throughout Primary School is nothing short of remarkable. As a team of educators, we see this as both a responsibility and a privilege to have such influence over this time. 

We welcomed 77 new Foundation students to the school and 18 students from other levels across the school. We begin the year with 681 students from Foundation to Level 6. 

We were very lucky to have a number of new staff join our school for 2025 and it has been wonderful to see them settle in over the last two weeks and start to develop relationships with their students and teams. 

Chelsea Verrell - Level 5

Maggie Murnane - Level 3

Angelina Rosas-Ortiz - German 

Our school leadership team is also excited to be welcoming our two new school captains - Amanda Xu and Reyansh Sinha to their roles for 2025. 

This Term at Rangeview we have a wide variety of programs, events and special celebrations that will take place. We began last week with the Start Up Program across the school. This is designed to help our students settle into their new grades and get to know their teachers and their new classmates. We welcomed back our Level 1 - 6 students on Wednesday 29th January and our newest learners began on Thursday 30th with the commencement of Foundation for the year. 

In the first week our new Grade 6 Peer Mediators had their training with Natalie Powell the school Social Worker, and they are now out in the playground each lunch break helping students with friendship issues and small problems/concerns. On Wednesday 5th February we held our Rangeview Swimming Carnival. See more details below. Our Student Leaders have begun their before school meetings on Friday mornings with Mr Sommers, Ms Balderston and myself. They will learn more about leadership and will have roles and responsibilities across the school. Our staff have met together in teams to ensure that there is a good handover of learning and engagement information from one level's teachers to the next. We want the transition time to be as smooth and positive as possible for all of our students. 

Term One Curriculum and Events

Throughout this term we will have District Swimming, Safer Internet Day, Getting to Know you Parent / Teacher Interviews, Whole School Photo Day, Level 3 & 5 NAPLAN, Whole School Harmony Day, Whole School Cross Country and Senior School House Athletics. 

Our Foundation and Level 1 students will be continuing our new phonics program ‘Little Learners Love Literacy’ and the teaching of phonological knowledge and phonological awareness will be structured and strengthened across the school from Level 2 – 6. Our teachers in Levels 2 - 6 are beginning to work with the phonics approach of Jocelyn Seamer - https://www.jocelynseamereducation.com/ Our Professional Learning Communities continue this year with teachers meeting fortnightly to look at student data, identify areas for learning improvement, and implement change to modify and improve our teaching practice. We will have a focus on Phonics in Term 1. Our Numeracy leaders and Mathematics Specialists have been learning about a new model for teaching mathematics - Our whole staff are learning more about this across this term. https://www.buildingthinkingclassrooms.com/ 

Our school continues as a Lead School in the Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships and we will will also continue to deepen our focus on the Resilience Project (TRP). We will be teaching all students the tenants of Gratitude, Empathy and Mindfulness (GEM) and will be this year reaching out to families and encouraging you all to become involved in this evidence based work with your children.  We have a lot to be grateful for in our beautiful community. 

Specialist Program

We continue with our two new specialist programs at Rangeview this year - Mathematics and Technology. Students will work with these specialist teachers once a week to advance their skills in these areas. 

In addition to these, our students also have a weekly session with specialist teachers in Art, Music, Physical Education, and German. 

Foundation Start to School

On Thursday 30th January Rangeview welcomed our littlest learners - the Foundation 2025 students! This was a momentous event and although there were some tears (all parents) it was a beautiful day. 

We are so proud of our new Foundation cohort who have begun at Rangeview so smoothly and have settled into their learning so well. 

Rangeview Swimming Carnival

On Wednesday 5th February Rangeview held our annual Swimming Carnival at Aquanation! Students from Level 4 - 6 - and some swimmers from Level 3 - all attended  to take part in swimming races for their House. 

In addition to the official races, there were novelty swimming games throughout the day, and even a session on the giant waterslides - so every child had the opportunity to have some fun and get wet. 

A huge thank you to Mitch Clark and Meg Hubbard for organising and running the day, thanks to all of the staff who took on roles across the event, and finally thanks to all of the parent volunteers who gave up their time to ensure it was a success. 

Cricket Pitch

We are thrilled to have the new Cricket Pitch complete and ready for students to use. This project was a jointly funded endeavour through the Heatherdale Cricket Club and Cricket Victoria. We look forward to the new pitch getting lots of use both for the end of this season and in many seasons to come. 

New Playground

The works continue on our new Junior School Playground with the team from Rocket Box. This new play space will be a ninja warrior style space which is designed for our Junior school. Student feedback was sought across last year to assist with its design. The estimated completion date is early this term and we will open the space for a level at a time to enjoy. 

Second Hand Uniform

Thank you to all families that donated second hand uniform to the school at the end of last year. There was a huge pile of uniform ready for our shop to start the year! A massive thank you to our P&F members Selena Sun and Cassidy Chen for their incredible efforts in sorting and organising these donations ready for our uniform shop on Tuesdays. They were willing to accept remuneration in the form of ice poles. 

School Council Elections

Notice of Elections and Call for Nominations 2025- 2025

Friday 7th February 2025

Closing date for Nominations Friday 14th February 2025

I am announcing the annual elections for our School Council. School council members are elected (or co-opted in the case of community members) for approximately a two year term. Usually half the membership expires each year creating vacancies for the annual school council election. We have 5 Parent vacancies this year. 

Process:

1. The principal arranges and conducts the election. The principal will issue a notice and call for nominations for parent and Department employee members in February or early March. The notice will include a nomination form or way to reply and the date to submit the nomination. The election process must be completed by the end of March.

2. Return the nomination form to the principal through the office within the time frame stated on the notice of election. Those who nominate will receive a receipt. Ask at the school for help if you would like to stand for election and are not sure what to do.

3. If there are more nominations than there are vacant positions on council, a ballot (vote) will be conducted after the call for nominations has closed.

4. If you decide to stand for election, you can arrange for someone to nominate you or you can nominate yourself in the appropriate category.

5. Forms are available at the office.

Annual Privacy Reminder for 2025

Our school collects, uses, discloses and stores student and parent personal information for standard school functions or where permitted by law, as stated in the Schools’ Privacy Policy.

Please take time to remind yourself of our school’s collection notice, found on our website. For more information about privacy, refer to: Schools’ Privacy Policy — information for parents. This information is also linked from our School Website, and is available in nine community languages:

• Amharic

• Arabic

• Dari

• Gujarati

• Mandarin

• Somali

• Sudanese

• Turkish

• Urdu

• Vietnamese

This will be a wonderful year - we are so pleased to be back! 

 

Marika Ferguson

Principal