Welcome back to the start of a new term. I hope everyone had a lovely break and spent some time relaxing and catching up with family and friends. The cold weather has certainly arrived, so we have now changed our split systems to heating!

Pupil Free Day

I would like to thank our two Wellbeing and Disability coordinators, Joe Greige and Samantha McCall, for organising our Professional Learning Day on Monday.

In the morning, we had Silvana Izzo who is an Occupational Therapist present. She focused on the brain and how it impacts each person’s ability to understand, participate, and learn. As educators and parents, we need to ensure our children are ready to learn each day. To do this we need to be aware of the things that could get in the way of their learning and do our best to eliminate them. We currently have a number of students across the school who have various diagnosed disabilities and we need to ensure they are in the right mindset for understanding and learning to occur.

In the afternoon we had Sam Korsch from the Resilience Project present. He spoke about the need for all of us to practice their principles of Gratitude, Empathy and Mindfulness (GEMS.) All of our children have a session a weekly specifically designed by the Resilience Project, where they discuss ways to implement GEMS in their daily life. Parents can access information about the Resilience Project on their website.

Camp

This morning our Grade 5 students and teachers headed off to camp. Today they are spending the day at Sovereign Hill. This afternoon they will go to the camp site, Log Cabins in Creswick, for dinner and in the evening they will return to Sovereign Hill to watch the AURA sound and light spectacular. Thursday and Friday children will be doing various activities at the camp site.

Portfolios

Yesterday students received their 2024 Assessment Portfolio. The portfolio contains tasks the students completed in Term 1 and includes reading, writing, handwriting, maths and Wellbeing tasks. The tasks are applicable to each individual student's level and have been assessed against criteria appropriate to that level. We ask that parents view the assessment folder with their child and discuss the contents. We have included some statements on the parent feedback sheet that parents can use as a prompt to elicit informative discussion with their child. We ask that parents provide feedback on their child’s portfolio on the sheet provided.

There are no tasks from specialist teachers this term however they will be included at the end of each semester.

The assessment folder is a cumulative folder and as such needs to be returned to your child’s teacher to enable them to include the following term’s assessments.

We need all of the folders to be returned by Friday April 26th.

Secondary School Placement

Today we emailed the application forms for secondary school placement to the parents of all of our year 6 students. If you did not receive the forms, please contact the school as soon as possible.

Parents have until Friday 10 May to return their child’s secondary school application forms.

Once we have received the forms, we will send them off to the school parents have listed as the first preference. If a child is not accepted to their first preference the form will be sent to the second preference. If a child is not accepted by any of their nominated choices the form will then be sent directly to their closest school. Parents will receive notification of their child's year 7 placement on Wednesday 19 June 2024.

I strongly recommend that parents of our grade 5 students attend information sessions and school tours this year. It is a big decision; it is important to gain as much information as possible about all of the secondary schools before you make the decision.

Welcome

I would like to welcome Effie Kapsalos to our staff. Effie is an educational psychologist who will be working at Preston Primary 2 days a week. She will be able to assist us with a range of issues that we see in our young people. She will be able to provide support and advice for staff and parents as well as students.

Defibrillator

For many years we have had a defibrillator at the senior school which anyone, who is in cardiac arrest, can access. We often hear stories in the media of how people’s lives have been saved as they had access to a defibrillator. We have now purchased a new defibrillator for the junior school.

The defibrillators are in the first aid rooms at both campuses.

Message From The Minister Of Education

The link below will take you to message from Ben Caroll who is our current Minister of Education.

Please take the time to watch it, it is only short!

Term 2 message from The Hon. Ben Carroll MP on Vimeo

Regards

Janet Paterson

Principal

High School Transition