Dear Families,

Welcome back to school everyone. It is the final term for our wonderful Year 6 cohort who will be transitioning to high school later this term. I sincerely wish them all the best and ask them to finish strong and be ready for high school. Enjoy the final term.

EXCITING NEWS: Ocean Grove Primary School would like to take this opportunity to thank the Walker family. Brooke and Josh (parents of Goldie in grade Prep), are donating the remaining glass sliding doors in the SLC as well as installation, which will enable the classrooms to be more flexible in the space. This is an amazing donation to our school and will benefit a huge number of children now and into the future. On behalf of the entire school community, thank you Brooke, Josh and Goldie.

SunSmart: Time to dust off the hats and slap on the sunscreen for Term 4. No Hat – No Play rule started day 1 Term 4. Please ensure your children have a SunSmart hat. Please supply your child with sunscreen and show them how to apply it so they can do this independently at school.

Welcome: This term we welcome Mrs Deb Rogers into the Foundation Team. With Megan King having her baby later this term, Deb has started in the classroom and will have Megan nearby for a few weeks to help transition. Deb has been a long-standing CRT at OGPS and is excited to be part of the team. We wish her all the best in Prep-land and also thank Megan for all of her work in FMK. We will officially send Megan off later in the term.

School Socks: Over 140 pairs of the new school socks have been requested! They are in the process of being manufactured NOW and it won’t be too long until they arrive. A fantastic uptake on the EOI from last term and it’s not too late to show your interest! We will have 500 pairs available (down to 360 at the moment). The Student Voice Committee are extremely excited to be coordinating this project. You can express your interest (and reserve a pair or two) here. They will be $15 a pair with profits going to the SVC to improve the school in their chosen way.

Colour Run: Friday 1st of November is the day we get ready to splash the colours! Mrs Nikita Stanley and her team are preparing things in the background and will provide more information soon. Families are welcome to attend on the day – even go for a run with your children if you want! Stay tuned for more information from Nikita soon.

Monday 4th November & Tuesday 5th November: On Monday the 4th of November, we have a staff Professional Practice Day (Pupil Free) where staff will begin their assessment and reporting period for the end of the year. Tuesday is the Melbourne Cup Public Holiday. This was changed from the Geelong Cup holiday in 2023 and we had an enormous amount of positive feedback from families and staff about this, so a super long weekend can be planned before the run to Summer holidays.

Resilience Rights and Respectful Relationships (RRRR): On Monday afternoon, staff met to plan and prepare for more lessons around the RRRR program. This is a system wide program with explicit teaching of various topics and concepts. We encourage families to have a look at the website (https://www.vic.gov.au/respectful-relationships

and if you are interested in the Program Lesson Plans: https://arc.educationapps.vic.gov.au/learning/sites/respectful-relationships

We hope families become familiar with the content that students will be learning as they may have some more questions at home. If you have any questions, please chat with your child’s classroom teacher.

REACH workshops: Andy has coordinated another session with The Reach Foundation who visit students in Years 5 & 6. This week the Year 5’s will attend these workshops with staff. I encourage families to ask open ended questions to their children and engage in conversations about their learning in these sessions.

Have a great week everyone.

Scott McCumber

Principal

Weighed Down

A little book with a big message.