Ms D Principal Message

I hope all families had a restful couple of weeks over the winter break.  It has been wonderful to reconnect with many of the students over the last couple of days and hear about all the wonderful adventures they had.

This week we welcome four new education support staff into our school:

• Angelica
• Tonysia
• Caterina
• Ella 

Education Support (ES) staff play a vital role in supporting students and teachers in the classroom. They work alongside teachers to help meet the learning, wellbeing, and inclusion needs of students, particularly those who require additional support.  Their work helps ensure every child participate, engage, and succeed in their learning.

Semester One Parent Teacher Interviews

Parent teacher interviews will be held on Wednesday 30 July from 2pm.  Thank you to the families who have already booked in to see their child’s classroom teacher.  If you have not booked in yet, please book by Monday 28 July.  The interviews will take place in a hybrid capacity - online or in person.  If you prefer to see your child’s teacher in person please contact them via compass to let them know, otherwise we will assume the interview will take place online (webex links will be sent to families on Monday 28 July)

Musical Update

Rehearsals for our school musical ‘A Night at the Museum’ is well underway.  The students and their teachers have been participating in weekly cohort rehearsals that have been facilitated by Kinect Dance.  The dance instructors attend each Thursday and work with each year level for 40mins.  All classes will be part of 2 performances that are highly choreographed and will complement the main cast and story line of the show.  Some families have been curious to know why we have opted to engage with an outside provider for this musical as opposed to previous years. To put it simply after much consideration about the feedback from the last musical, we felt that at times staff felt overwhelmed with ensuring that the musical is a high quality experience whilst maintaining a high level of teaching and learning focus during term 3.  As a school who values both, we wanted to ensure that what we provide supports both; high quality learning and opportunities for inclusion of all.  

We have been fortunate as a school to receive about $7000 of financial support from our parent community as part of the Musical payment.  This money goes a long way in supporting all the extra parts that are required to make the musical successful.  For transparency, the funds will go towards the following:

• Costumes and props
• Providing release time for staff to undertake duties related to the musical (replacement staff cost approx $600 per day)
• Purchasing of equipment such as radio mics

Works Update

In the term 2 holiday we saw the beginning of our ‘ramps’ upgrade.  This work continued for most of term 2.  The following works have now been completed:

• Resurfacing the gradient on the front entry ramp and updating of railing
• Extension of the middle landing and updated railings on the back external ramp
• Extension of the prep building ramp walls
• Railing added to start of the deck area

These were necessary upgrades to ensure that the current railing meet the safety codes and regulations.

Last week, I met with the project team from the VSBA (Victorian Schools Building Authority) to progress the works that have been deemed high priority - Main Block roof restoration and staffroom floor.  The VSBA will be funding this project and will include the rectification of damage to internal walls upstairs in the main building where the building has been subject to water damage over some years. I will keep you updated further on the timeline of these works as more information comes to hand.

Painting upgrades have now been completed in the main foyer, library foyer, all student toilets and main building corridors.  This is a staged approach with the Art and Prep classrooms being next on the schedule.

During term 2, Margaret Whitford who oversees the library has been working diligently on the updates to the library space.  She met with numerous library furniture providers and selected new shelving to elevate this space.  New shelving has been delivered and installed and we cannot wait for students to use the new space.  The updates to the library space have been made possible by the generous donations made by families to the Library fund via voluntary contributions over many years. The Library fund contained about $70K of which $50K has been spent on the current upgrades.  Without your ongoing support we would not be able to provide high quality spaces for the students to use.  Over the remainder of the year we will be looking to add more current literature to the library and seeking input from our students as to what types of texts they would like to see included or updated.  Once we have a preferred list of titles we will engage with our local bookshop to support us with sourcing the titles whilst also opening it up to any families who would like to purchase any books to be donated to the school library.  More information about this will be communicated shortly.

The building and grounds team will be looking at applying for a further building upgrade grants in semester two.  We will be seeking for additional parent community support with the application process, if you have an interest or expertise in this area look out for further information to join the working party in coming newsletters.

Curriculum News

At the end of last term, all teams were released to plan and prepare teaching content for term 3.  Teachers spent time with the learning specialists to evaluate content delivered and then used recent assessments to determine the next areas of focus.  The following key areas will be covered in each year level this term alongside the core English and Maths areas:

At the end of last term I was invited to many classrooms to view the products of their learning.  The Year 1 students had published their information reports on various animals.  Please scroll through to some samples from our student authors.