Principal's Report

By Frank Catalano

Dear Members of the Glen Waverley Primary School Community,

I trust all is well with you and your family and welcome to another edition of our school newsletter.

As per usual, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me on 9802 9938 or via email at frank.catalano@education.vic.gov.au.

The 2023 school year, I find it very difficult to believe that we are fast approaching the month of December and the end of the school year is not too far away; wow, where has the year gone?

Nevertheless, below is an overview of some of the fabulous things we have to celebrate at our wonderful school!

School Chess Team Update

Our school chess teams continue to go from strength to strength and over the last few weeks their achievements have been nothing but extraordinary such as:

Open (Girls and Boys) Team – competed in the Victorian Championships on Thursday 9th November and placed second out of 28 schools – naturally this is a fabulous achievement and something that all the children, their families and our school are incredibly proud of. Well done and congratulations to our school’s Open Team for their amazing year!
Girls Team
- Placed 1st in the Victorian Chess Championships (State Champions) and have qualified for the national championships which are being held in South Australia on the 2nd and 3rd December. Naturally this is another outstanding achievement, and we can’t wait to hear how the children go at the Nationals Finals!

To support the children and their families, our school held a fundraising event today and we look forward to sharing how much was raised shortly.

To complete the chess season, our Junior (Year Prep – Two) Team will participate in the Northern Star Junior State Final next Tuesday. Once again, we wish all of the participants well and look forward to hearing how our team goes. Good luck everyone!

2024 Student Leaders

Throughout this term, most of the Year 5 students have been busy applying for various roles within our Student Leadership Team. At our school we have:

School Captains
House (Sports) Captains and
Curriculum Captains
- Digital Learning
- Science
- Art
- Performing Arts
- Languages
- Library
- Environment
- Peer Mediation
- Student Voice
- Music and
- CIS – Council of International Schools.

We are very proud to have an extensive Student Leadership Team as it provides the children with additional roles, responsibilities, and the opportunity to develop their personal leadership skills and style as they complete their final year of primary school. We are also proud of the selection process as it is fair, transparent and, where possible, student centred. For instance, last week, the children viewed recordings of the shortlisted School Captain nominees, and then they voted. Shortly they will do the same for the House Captain positions.

In terms of the Curriculum Captains, these are selected by the staff.

We look forward to announcing the 2024 Student Leadership Team at our school assembly on Monday 4th December – once again, best wishes to everyone involved!

Congratulations to Arena

As mentioned on a number of occasions, Arena (Year 6) is an avid golfer and throughout this year she has continued to train hard and compete in various tournaments around the world. An achievement of significant note was also representing Victoria in the School Sports Australia Championships which were held in Western Australia last week.

Arena mentioned that the competition was extremely difficult however it was also an enormous pleasure and honour to represent our school and state in the Australian championships. The final scores were:

1st place – Queensland
2nd place – Victoria and
3rd place – New South Wales.

Congratulations Arena as you should be incredibly proud of your achievements this year! We look forward to hearing how you go in future tournaments as you enter secondary school. Well done and I hope you are as proud of yourself as our whole school are of you!

2024 Parent Payments (School Fees)

Recently a Compass Post was distributed outlining information about the 2024 Parent Payments/school fees, which families were able to settle from Monday 30th October. The children’s stationary packs can be collected from the office from Monday 27th November.

As per all school events, if you require support with settling your school fees, please do not hesitate to contact me on 9802 9938 or at frank.catalano@education.vic.gov.au.

2024 Enrolments

I would like to remind families with children who will be beginning school in 2024 that we are taking enrolments now and that they are also closing rapidly as we only have a very small number of positions available. I strongly encourage you to ensure you return your child’s enrolment form to Daniel, Daria or Julie in the main office as soon as possible.

We also ask that members of our school community assist us by informing any of their neighbours of the enrolment procedures and direct them to the office to collect an enrolment form or our school website – www.glenps.vic.edu.au . School tours are available every Tuesday morning commencing at 9:30 and also upon request. Please call the school on 9802 9938 to book a tour.

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE FOLLOWING STUDENTS WHO RECEIVED A PRINCIPAL’S AWARD RECENTLY:

Prep E

Nikan, Raabia and Bilahari for making outstanding progress with their English skills. The children write narratives about Scooby Doo!
Sunnia for receiving a medal from her dancing club – well done and keep it up Sunnia!

Reyashi for creating the most amazing Lego house and for working exceptionally hard on her musical skills. Reyashi competed in the Cantabile School of Music end of year performance and was very proud of her effort and achievement.

- Senudi, Leah and Hathan for learning how to extract salt from salt water - they are amazing little scientists!

Tanvi, Fatima and Ziana for being really responsible members of our school community
Owen for receiving a certificate from his Chinese Language School’s Speech competition and also for competing in a Latin Dance competition where he placed 8th. He also received a certificate for this event too and did exceptionally well particularly considering he has been learning to dance for a short period of time. Well done Owen!

Shenelle, Jamie and Advika for being very generous with their time by providing origami lessons to other children
Nicholas for making a Christmas flip book that was very entertaining

Sharanya for writing a very clever poem about a book box
Ollie, Aadhavan and Aaradhya for writing amazing recounts about their excursion to Scienceworks a featured in the kids Corner section of this newsletter
Anishka, Anusha and Sharanya for being really responsible members of our school community
Sid, Jacob, Aiyana and Eliana for learning all about Mass and graphing their results

Ngo-chi, Zaiden , Prayag , Aria and Arnav for creating the most elaborate drawings of their very own community with the key places written in Mandarin and English.

Aadyah for successfully completing the Grade 3 drums exam with a score of 85% after only one year of learning how to play the drums

Anya for creating a very detailed poster about what would happen if the sun were to explode. Hopefully we will never know for real!

Curtis for making the most amazing progress with the development of his English skills - well done Curtis!

Reyan for working exceptionally hard on his musical skills and for competing in the Cantabile School of Music end of year performance

Kyra for working exceptionally hard on her home learning tasks

Ellie, Neervi, Shriya and Tamanna for writing excellent narratives about a not so nice school based on the text Raven’s Folly as featured in the Kids Corner section of this newsletter
Sophie and Yu Tong for writing a letter about a horrible fictions school called Ravens Folley
Shriya for learning the importance of percentages particularly when shopping
Neervi, Shriya, Chris and Kanav for creating instructional videos about how to add and subtract fractions with different denominators

Jiya for participating in the JETS a program at Scoresby Secondary College where she received the runners up award. Well done Jiya!

Take care everyone and wishing you a safe and wonderful fortnight.

Frank Catalano

Principal