Acting Principal's Message

Dear OLA Families,

It has been a wonderful fortnight with so many opportunities for our OLA community. As I come towards the end of my stint as Acting Principal (Richard is back on 1 June), I am truly grateful for the opportunity to ‘steer the ship’ at our wonderful school. 

OLA Classroom Helper Program

These past couple of weeks we have led two classroom helper program training sessions for interested parents/carers. We thank the parents who came along and have volunteered to support the learning programs at OLA! Having an extra set of hands in the classroom is so valuable. Teachers are working on parent helper rosters and will communicate these with you within the coming weeks. 

For any parents who missed out, we will host another training session in Term Three - watch this space!

OLA Parish Fete

It has been a few years in the making but we are looking forward to our OLA Parish Fete on Saturday 26 November this year. Keep your eyes peeled for more fundraising opportunities such as casual clothes days, etc. 

If you are interested in being more involved, the Fete committee are still looking out for some volunteers for the following:

• Lucky Dip
• Major prize raffle
• Devonshire tea
• Silent auction

Email fete@olacheltenham.catholic.edu.au for more information or to volunteer your time.

Grade 5/6 Class Participation in Mass

I congratulate the students and teachers in Grade 5/6 for planning and leading beautiful Masses over this last fortnight. It is so lovely to celebrate Mass with our fellow Parishioners and a privilege to say the prayers and readings of the day. It was also fantastic to share morning tea with our families and friends - something we have very much missed doing! Thank you to the families who provided a small plate of food to share. I think the students are the most grateful for these sweet treats as they enjoyed the leftovers!

NAPLAN

I congratulate all of our Grade 3 and 5 students for their persistence and hard work as they completed NAPLAN over the past two weeks. We are so proud of your engagement in this task and positive mindset to showcase your learning and skills. We experienced great success with the new online platform and thank Josy Reeder and the Middle and Senior teaching teams for their management of this process as well. 

Maths Professional Learning

On Thursday 19 May all of our teachers participated in professional learning onsite with our ‘Maths gurus’ from Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (MACS). 

Many of our families will remember our work around written strategies for addition and subtraction last year (do the words “jump strategy” and “split strategy” ring a bell?!). The students enjoyed such pride last year in mastering these strategies. It is important that our students have a strong foundation of number and place value before we progress to the ‘traditional’ vertical algorithm for addition and subtraction. 

This time, our teachers learnt about the 31 (yes, 31!) mental strategies for addition and subtraction. We will continue our work learning strategies throughout the year and work towards embedding the explicit teaching of these strategies within Mathematics lessons. It is so great to constantly review and improve our teaching in this important area. 

Building update

Demolition is complete! It has been quite noisy at OLA of late and it is so exciting to see open space ready for construction. This week we have seen concrete begin to be poured to set the foundations in the new building, and next week we will start to have steel frames arrive ready to be installed. 

We have also seen the deck which will become the outdoor learning space outside the library start to take shape. 

Have you seen our new fence wrap? It’s hard to miss it! Next time you’re walking along Centre Dandenong Road, take some time to review our plans and spot some familiar faces!

Best wishes Mrs Thompson!

This week, Liz Thompson has finished up her final work week before her maternity leave begins. We wish her all the best in these weeks of preparation before the birth of her and husband Justin’s third child. We are sure Jack and Harriet will be so proud of their new sibling! Thank you for all the work you have done to continue providing wonderful Physical Education opportunities. 

Welcome Mrs Roberts

Next week we welcome our new PE teacher Melissa Roberts. 

Melissa is currently a PE teacher at St John Vianney’s, Parkdale and is excited to also join our OLA community. Melissa will work Monday - Wednesday so changes have been made to our PE timetable. PE days are now as follows:

Celebration of achievement

As many of you are aware, I received my Masters in Leadership at the end of last year after three years of study - something I am very proud of! On Sunday I attended a graduation ceremony at Australian Catholic University and was pleasantly surprised that our very own Tess Riley (3/4TR) was celebrating her own graduation the same day too! Tess has received a Bachelor of Education (Primary). I also congratulate Meg McCallum who also achieved her Bachelor of Education (Primary) last year. 

Richard’s return

Richard has enjoyed a well deserved Long Service Leave break after 20+ years of education and I’m sure he’s keen to be back to life at OLA and witness the wonderful things in place here. Richard is due back on Wednesday 1 June. 

Have a great weekend everyone.

Caitlan Taig

Acting Principal