PRINCIPAL'S MESSAGE

Assembly Announcements 

At next Monday’s assembly, we have several exciting things to share with our school community.  Our Prep cohort will be performing an item organised by our music teacher, Mr. Stubberfield.  All Prep families are very welcome to be in the audience at 9:10am sharp.  As a follow on from our last assembly, I will be drawing ten Golden Tickets for students nominated by their teachers for showing our school values.  The ten lucky winners will be invited to a lunch next Friday with our school leadership team.  Our school choir will once again be performing the National Anthem, and we have our normal student awards for our Prep-Year 2 classes.

NAPLAN Results

The initial results from our 2024 NAPLAN testing completed by our Year 3 and Year 5 students have now been shared with the school.  At first glance, the trends show a similar performance by our Year 3 students to last year’s cohort, and an upturn in Year 5 results, which is very pleasing. Individual student results will be sent out to families closer to the end of term.

Rise in Student Numbers

At the end of February, our Census student population numbers showed that we had 707 students across 31 classes.  These numbers have increased dramatically in the last month or so and we now have 722 students due to the arrival of 16 new students, with one leaving the school recently. Our class sizes are still relatively small for a government primary school, with our smallest class size of 20, and our largest class size being 26 students.  In other exciting news, we have two overseas students who will be joining us for one term whilst their family is on a working holiday.

Excursions

The Year 2 excursion to Edendale Farm was a resounding success, with all staff and students enjoying the hands-on learning experience.  Next week our Year 3s are very excited to be attending an excursion to CERES in Brunswick East, where they will be focusing on our inquiry unit on Australia & Me. They will be experiencing costumes, dancing & other different cultural activities.  We have 92 students attending with seven staff and seven parents providing supervision.  Thank you to our many volunteers who go on camps and excursions.  Without them we would not be able to offer such a comprehensive educational program.

Year 5 Camp

Last Thursday I made the long drive to Warrigal to visit our Year 5 campers, who were in the middle of their Forrest Edge experience.  It is a beautiful camp setting in the middle of a deep valley surrounded by a shallow river. Students undertook activities such as the flying fox, camp cooking, rock climbing and team challenges.  Both food and accommodation were very impressive. At Plenty Parklands we do try to put out a number of Compass posts to inform parents that everything is safe and well on camp.  Whilst at times photos are included, the staff on camp are busy ensuring students are safe and happy.  We do apologise if your child does not make it into one of the photos, but this is not a priority considering the 24/7 demands on staff that give up their time to attend.