PRINCIPAL'S MESSAGE

The Moorabbin Primary School Community touch the land and think of the Bunurong People and surrounding Clans of the Kulin Nation who cared for the land before us.

We share our gratitude to their Elders past, present and emerging.  As we touch this land, we promise to treasure it, taking care of all its people, animals, plants and waterways. We at Moorabbin Primary School appreciate this land. Thank you.

Another Busy week at MPS with our foundation students attending school for a full week, I am sure they will make the adjustment to full time schooling well. We are finding that this cohort of foundation students are very settled. A credit to our parents, carers and their teachers for supporting them through the first 5 weeks of “big school”!

I am currently attending the Bayside School leaders conference where there has been much discussion about the curriculum frameworks now being implemented from the Department of Education. I was pleased to note that our school has already adopted a strong phonics, evidence-based approach to spelling and writing, with our work this year focussing on our practice in reading and writing. 

Our school wide teaching and learning approach is now embedded in our planning and teaching, and supports the new Victorian Teaching and Learning Framework 2.0. I am especially grateful to our staff and previous leadership who had already began the work in this space.

We were immersed in developing high quality curriculum and what that should look like for all students along with data showing when systems are not using evidence-based approaches in educational settings. I was fascinated by the research behind “Cognitive load theory” and how that impacts both students and teachers. I am very keen to bring this research to our school and dive deeper into the strategies for teaching and learning at MPS. And finally, we had a master class around what Explicit direct instruction is and what it isn’t.

I have certainly left this two-day conference with information and ideas for our school.

A BLAST FROM THE PAST

On Monday morning I had the pleasure of a surprise visit from a past student called Yuhao. A little back story here… he arrived in Australia with NO ENGLISH but he was extremely talented with music and mathematics and as time went on and he was supported by our teaching staff, our additional assistance program and our specialists teachers who fostered his love of learning. He left MPS in year 6 with the skills and capabilities of a year 8-9 student. This continued for him throughout his educational journey. He came back to share with me all his achievements, certificates, medals and his ATAR score of 99.65! 

A MASSIVE THANK YOU TO OUR MPS P&F AND ALL OUR PARENT HELPERS FOR OUR WELCOME BBQ

I would like to sincerely thank everyone that helped with the welcome BBQ and supported our P&F team. It was a fantastic event and there is a bit more information from Tash and Jaz in further along in this newsletter.

Parking and unfortunately continued appalling behaviours from some members in our community

It is of paramount importance to all of us that we ensure the safety of our school community and, most importantly, our students around our roads. The roads surrounding our school are exceptionally busy due to the building works, particularly in the morning and afternoons. It is at pick-up and drop-off times that we ask our families to prioritise safe behaviours in and around our school. 

I am asking for all our families to be critically vigilant in terms of where they park (ensuring legal and appropriate parking), speed zones (adhering to school zone limits) and safe and supportive behaviours as pedestrians as well. A significant number of our families are experiencing near misses, frustrations and inconvenience due to some short cuts being taken by some of our parents. 

From the end of last year and the commencement of this year I have been engaging with Kingston council, who have come on several occasions to our school site and last week gave out more parking fines.  They have shared with me that the behaviour and attitude from some of our families is the worst they have seen in a long time. I am mortified and sad that some of our community members are actually behaving in this manner. 

I will continue to ring, complain and engage with Kingston council traffic control as I do not want any more cars to be hit and damaged, I do not want any of our children or members of our community to be hit. I do not want to be told regularly that parents have been sworn at and stalked. This is NOT ACCEPTABLE!

This is a friendly reminder that we a need to take responsibility that if we park illegally there will be consequences. 

I will continue to call Kingston council and the police to attend our school and help me and our community until we can turn some of these behaviours around. It is not part of my job to traffic manage nor is it the crossing supervisors job to redirect drivers who are constantly doing the wrong thing.

In order to avoid a parking/speeding penalty we must as a community abide by traffic laws and not take matters into our own hands and yell/ swear/ conduct ourselves inappropriately in front of our children or take it upon ourselves to treat members of our community with such disrespect and disregard. Under no circumstance should anyone in our community threaten to harm/ hurt/stalk/intimidate any member in our community. 

Can I also ask that over the weekend all families talk with their children about how to appropriately and safely cross the level crossing on Wickham and Worthing Road.  This morning I had an extremely upset parent com into school to inform me of a near miss when they witnessed 3 Moorabbin students duck under the barrier to cross the train tracks as a train was approaching from Moorabbin Train Station. This type of behaviour is not appropriate, and these students put their lives at unnecessary risk. 

Thank you.

LABOUR DAY — PUBLIC HOLIDAY 

 A reminder that Monday 10th March is the Labour Day Public Holiday. The school will be closed for the day. 

Noxia Angelides

Principal