First Week of School for the Preps

Congratulations to our Preps for getting through their first full week at school (and congratulations to their families too!). It’s a big change starting school and the students have done an incredible job settling in and getting used to the routines.

Thanks to our Prep families for all your work so far supporting the transition - and of course, we couldn’t do it without our incredible Prep teaching team, Molly, Bronte, Anja and Tristen!

One of my highlights this week was being out on the adventure playground when the Preps were playing with their Grade 6 buddies, with the older students showing them the ropes. Our buddy program really helps connect the new students with the school, and it is so lovely to see how nurturing and kind the Grade 6s are with their buddies. It means there’s always some extra people in the yard to check in with them and support them if needed.

I want to give a shout out to our wonderful Grade 6 cohort who are already stepping up as leaders of the school, with the way they are working with the Preps. Thank you.

I spoke with some of the Prep’s this afternoon about their first week of school:

Bonnie (Molly’s class): School’s been fun; it’s been fun playing. Mira is my buddy and she’s been playing with me. We have played games like hide and seek, tag and duck duck and goose.

Mila (Anja’s class): One of my favourite things about school is having lunch because I get to eat my food. I have wraps in my lunchbox. One of the eleven year olds who is my buddy is Campbell. I like Campbell; we have been playing games. Today he helped me put the pink rubber band on my lunchbox.’

Matilda (Bronte’s class): The best thing about school is playing on the playground with my friends. I like going on the monkey bars. I like seeing William (my brother) so I can hug him. Marlo is my buddy. We’ve been playing together on the monkeybars and in the playground. I can’t do all the monkeybars so Marlo helps me.

Pepper (Tristen’s class): My favourite thing so far is getting home after school because I have my family there. The best thing at school is playing with my friends like Luca and Edie. My buddy is Vincent and we have been playing together and having lunch together. One time he helped me do my shoelaces.

The Fitzroy North Primary Swimming Carnival

On Thursday our Grade 4s, 5s and 6s walked to Fitzroy pool for the FNPS swimming carnival. It was a beautiful day and many of the students took the chance to cool off in the pool and go for a swim! Congratulations to all the students who took part on the day. From personal experience, 50m is a long distance in a pool and well done to everyone who had a go at swimming this length! Best of luck to the students who will go on to represent FNPS at the district carnival later this month.

Thank you to Ben for his coordination of the carnival and for all the staff and volunteer parents who helped out as well.

Celebrating Chinese New Year

Today our 1/2s were learning about Chinese New Year, with 2024 being the Year of the Dragon. I spoke to some students from Zoe’s class about what they learnt:

Olivia: Today we learnt about Chinese New Year. We saw videos about lions and dragons. Chinese New Year happens once every year. This year it is tomorrow. Tonight is Chinese New Year Eve. It’s going to be very special for lots of people.

Frankie: Chinese New Year is when you celebrate with your families, it might be your parents, your grandparents and with your uncle and aunties.

Archie B: Today we read a book about this kid, I think she wanted to help everyone for Chinese New Year. Her parents said she couldn’t help yet.

Olivia: But then she baked pineapple cakes with her cousin and her mum was so excited. She did this to help everyone celebrate a special Chinese New Year.

Archie: What I really liked is we got to make some collage lanterns and we’re also going to make cards. Chinese New Year is very important for Chinese people. They do lots of decorations and bake lots of food.

Staffing News

We would like to officially welcome Amy Fleming to our teaching staff. Amy started this week teaching in 34TR and has already been getting to know the students and the school. Amy has recently moved to Melbourne from the ACT and brings with her a strong focus on building student relationships and supporting children to be the best they can be. We’re sure everyone will help make Amy feel welcome if you see her around the school.

Exploring Maths at Home

I am often asked what parents and carers can do at home to support their students' maths learning. My answer to this is to give students an opportunity to have fun with maths and try to find ways to connect mathematics to the world around them.

Positive dispositions towards maths are so important to support learning through primary school and into high school. We promote this at school by giving students an opportunity to be playful with maths and feel successful, and we use different approaches in the classroom including maths games, authentic problem solving tasks and connecting maths with play.

One way to informally support mathematical learning at home is slipping maths into everyday life. My seven year old, Theo, and I are guilty of weighing every 1kg bag of carrots when we visit the supermarket to make sure we get the best value for money! You may not have the time or inclination to do this, but even just discussing prices of items and the relative value when you’re at the shops, comparing and estimating mass of objects when cooking, or discussing the time are all powerful ways to connect maths to everyday life. On a road trip, ‘are we there yet’ is replaced in our car by a maths problem solving task where I ask the questions: How long until we get there if we are arriving at 11.45am? What if we stop for a snack for 20 minutes? You can imagine it’s lots of fun travelling in our car!

Another more formal way you can engage with your child at home is through maths games. Games as simple as ‘snap’ give students a chance to practise skills and can be adapted to promote fluency for different ages (for example, ‘number bonds to 10 snap’ where you say ‘snap’ when two cards in a row make 10; this can be changed to ‘double snap’ or ‘make 12 snap’). Often all you need to play a game at home is a deck of cards or some dice (all kinds of dice are available digitally). A great resource for maths games is the Love Maths website (https://www.lovemaths.me/games), where maths consultant Michael Minas has video demonstrates lots of games with his own children. Happy playing!

School Policies: Mobile Phones, Privacy & Photography

A reminder that any student who brings a mobile phone or smartwatch to school needs to give these devices to their teacher at the start of each day. Teachers will keep the devices in a secure location and return them to students at the end of the day. Students are encouraged not to bring a mobile phone to school unless there is a compelling reason to do so. For example, some older children may have phones for safety reasons, allowing them to connect with their parents or carers after school. Please note that Fitzroy North Primary School does not have accident insurance for accidental property damage or theft. Students and their parents/carers are encouraged to obtain appropriate insurance for valuable items.

Further details can be found in our mobile phone policy on the school website: https://www.fitzroynthps.vic.edu.au/policies.

The Schools’ Privacy Policy is a statewide policy that all government schools must comply with. The policy outlines how schools collect and manage personal and health information, consistent with Victorian privacy law and other associated legislation. The privacy policy can be found on our school website or at this link: https://www.vic.gov.au/schools-privacy-policy.

Finally, the school has recently updated our Photographing, Filming and Recording Students Policy, in line with Department policies and following consultation with the Policy and Curriculum Subcommittee. The policy outlines how Fitzroy North Primary School will collect, use and disclose photographs, video and recordings of students and how parent/carer consent can be provided and how it can be withdrawn. The updated version of this policy can be found on the school website at https://www.fitzroynthps.vic.edu.au/policies.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.

Toby

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