2025 School Theme- Why Team, Why Team Westbreen

Dear Westbreen Primary School Families,

Dear Westbreen Families,

Thank you to all the parents and carers who attended the Annual General Meeting yesterday. Your support during the evening was greatly appreciated. It was a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the achievements of Team Westbreen in 2024.

I also want to express my gratitude to our amazing staff for their contributions, which have shaped the culture of our school and led to our successes in 2024. I’d like to also acknowledge the positive involvement of parents and guardians in supporting our students, which highlights the value our families place on learning.

As part of the annual report, we celebrated various initiatives and programs beyond Literacy and Numeracy, such as STRIVE, family time, the year 3 to 6 camping program, and special days on the Westbreen Primary School calendar that support our learners. The final copy of the annual report will be available on our website very shortly.

Beyond helping in the classroom, you can support learning at home by discussing your child’s day, listening to them read, assisting with home learning, and ensuring they go to school happy, healthy, and well-rested.

2025 School Council

I have listed the members of the school council for 2025 to help establish the broad direction and vision of our school within the community. I am looking forward to working with these individuals on our school council charter for the benefit of our students.

Parent Representatives	DET Representatives Staff Members	Community Members
Alice Pryor	Justin Lania	Aysel Illhan-Pasevic
Christine Katsikis	Jason Kenny
Mick Preston	Ricky Nolan
Jonathan Anderson	Louise Roncon
Nick Maguire	Adria Quinn
Sehrish Kanwal
John Dimas
Justine Solomano

As mentioned in the last newsletter, I would like to also extend my gratitude to our members of the school council for 2024.

In next week's newsletter, I will announce the school council office bearer positions for 2025, along with information on how parents can get involved in the various subcommittees at Westbreen Primary School.

Works at School

Our new double-storey portable building area is now complete! Over the weekend, our landscaping contractors, TrueNorth Construction, worked hard in extreme heat to landscape the area next to the bike shed. They removed any potential hazards and created an inclusive pathway to improve access for families with prams and wheelchairs to the multi-purpose pitch. It looks amazing! We also have installed double single gates in alignment with the Big W to help alleviate congestion at the end of the day. I have attached pictures of this area.

Local Members Visit

During last week’s assembly, Anthony Cianflone, the State Member for Pascoe Vale, and Kathleen Matthews-Ward, the State Member for Broadmeadows, attended and presented each class with bags for storing our recyclable containers as part of the Container Deposit Scheme initiative that Westbreen Primary School is participating in. A big thank you to Maddie and the student leadership team for welcoming our local leaders to the school and for accepting the bags to support each classroom. All students are encouraged to participate by placing any 10c refund recyclable containers in their designated storage bags in their classrooms.

Student Leadership: What Is It?

Last week, our School Captains sent a message via Xuno regarding this week’s school assembly, which will be held on the basketball courts. During this assembly, we will welcome the class captains and the junior school council to their respective teams with badge presentations.

This term and next, our student leaders are focusing on enhancing the school assembly experience as it relates to their leadership roles, voice, and agency. They will be inviting guests to speak at assembly in the future. I hope to be invited at times to speak and celebrate Team Westbreen while Mr. Kenny is looking forward to be invited to share his dad jokes and make us (hopefully) laugh. Our school leaders will guide our 417 students during each assembly, celebrating what makes our school special.

As we move into Term 2, our school and house captains will visit classrooms to assist teachers in discussing student voice and agency—what it feels, looks, and sounds like at Westbreen Primary School. These leaders will then create a definition based on their experiences in the classrooms to share with our community so that when we talk about student leadership, we will be able to see clear examples of what it looks like at Westbreen PS. Our students will be empowered to take ownership of events and will look to co-construct a whole school language around student agency, representing significant progress for our school.

Congratulations to Our Year 3 and Year 5 Students

We want to extend our gratitude to our Year 3 and Year 5 students for their resilience, persistence, and efforts during NAPLAN testing over the past week. Today, we completed our final test as a group in Numeracy. We will be conducting catch-up sessions for the remainder of the week to cover any curriculum areas missed by students who were absent, except for Year 3 Writing, which is no longer available as per NAPLAN guidelines.

The results of these assessments provide valuable information to schools, states, and territories regarding the effectiveness of educational approaches, areas that need improvement, and schools that may require additional support in teaching literacy and numeracy. This data is also crucial for evaluating our School Strategic Plan (SSP) and Annual Implementation Plan (AIP).

We are proud of everyone for doing their best!

For more information, parents and carers can visit the following website: https://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/assessment/f-10assessment/naplan/Pages/parents/index.aspx.

Reminder: Working Bee

All families are invited to join our Working Bee on Friday, March 28th, from 3:30pm to 5:00pm. We aim to weed and mulch certain areas of the school, so please bring a shovel and gloves to help out Team Westbreen. The school will provide zooper doopers for the children, along with water and soft drinks for families. Thank you for your support!

Wishing everyone a lovely Week 8 at Team Westbreen!

Kind Regards,

Justin Lania

The Victorian Government acknowledges Aboriginal Traditional Owners of Country throughout Victoria and pays respect to their cultures and Elders past, present and emerging.

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