From the Principal

Welcome Picnic – TONIGHT!

I am looking forward to seeing the OPS students perform their Disney themed dances tonight at the Welcome Picnic. Lucy and the students have been working hard perfecting their dance moves in readiness for the performance. A reminder to families to bring a picnic rug and dinner and enjoy this community event. Everyone is welcome!

Foundation Tours – 2025 enrolment

We have started running school tours for 2025 prospective families. This year for the first time the Department of Education have introduced an online enrolment system. This link will provide information about this new process Enrolling in Foundation (Prep) | vic.gov.au (www.vic.gov.au).

Please help spread the word to friends and neighbours if you are aware of any families with children who are looking at enrolment to primary school next year. Current families with children who are school age in 2025 will also need to enrol their child online from April 15th.

Community Calendar

I have recently introduced the Community Calendar on Compass. This calendar will include important school events and may be a helpful reminder for parents and carers. Events such as this afternoon’s Welcome Picnic and regular events such as Assembly will be included. If you use the Compass mobile app, you will see in the menu at the bottom of the homepage a small ‘calendar icon’ click this to open the calendar, you can view it day to day or a week in advance. Please contact the office if you need help using Compass.

Staffing news

A special thank you to Jane Mc Clelland who has been the Business Manager at OPS for over 25 years with almost 30 years of service in Department of Education schools. Jane is retiring at the end of Term 1 and will be greatly missed in the office. I am sure many, many families have been supported by Jane and had communication with her over the years. We thank her and wish her the very best in her retirement.

Please join me in welcoming the following new staff to the OPS community

Anne Sturrock – Administration assistant

Nikola Crisp – 4B classroom teacher

Principal classroom visit

Last week I enjoyed the opportunity to visit 3A and observe Cathy teaching an MSL (Multi Sensory Structured Language) lesson. It was fantastic to see the expertise in the room – both students and teacher! I really enjoyed listening to Cathy as she explained how the different sounds and combination of letters form to make words. The students were really engaged and enjoyed sharing with me their work and the success they were having with spelling. One thing I have noticed since working at OPS is the vast range of expertise amongst the wonderful teachers here and the willingness of them to share with their colleagues. This attributes to the excellent academic results the students achieved last year and the wonderful sense of engagement I witness when I am visiting classrooms.

NAPLAN

The NAPLAN assessment period begins at OPS tomorrow. Schedules and specific details regarding NAPLAN have been communicated to families of students in Year 3 and 5. A reminder to students and parents/carers that participating in NAPLAN should not be different to any other day at school, students should try their best and remember NAPLAN is not about passing or failing but about assessing learning progress and teachers use many sources to determine student growth and achievement.

Thank you and have a wonderful week.

Kellie Stewart

Acting Principal

kellie.stewart@education.vic.gov.au