Farewell

Families

Along with the Grade 6 students graduating, there are a number of families that we will say goodbye to AGPS at the end of the year. We would like to thank all of the students and their families for being such wonderful members of our community and for all of their contributions over the years.

We say thank you and goodbye to the following families:

Beckwith, Burgess, Connors, Cruickshank, Doncaster-Willcox, Gekas Novella, Ghotra, Huggett, Kalorgerakis, Li, Omarit, Pavlakis, Perry, Phan, Prifti, Ringia, Sammut, Singh, Turner, Valencich, Zaharakis

Thank you again for your contribution to our community and you will always be part of the Altona Green Family.

Staff

We also sadly say goodbye to some staff at the end of this school year as they forge their paths away from Altona Green Primary. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the following staff and acknowledge their wonderful contributions to the Altona Green community.

Clare Atherton - Sadly we say goodbye to Clare as she moves to a school closer to home next year. Clare joined us for the 2021 school year as a graduate teacher and has been a wonderful teacher in Year 6 during her time at AGPS. She has made many positive connections with so many students during her time here and has been a tremendous support for them during a busy and stressful time of their lives. She has been a great member of each team she has worked with as well as a great member of the whole school community and will be sorely missed.
Jemma Robson - We are also sadly saying goodbye to Jemma next year as she has been successful in a promotional role as a Leading Teacher at Wyndham Park PS. Whilst this is heartbreaking for us, this is a wonderful opportunity for Jemma as she continues her professional growth. We know she will make a significant positive impact on the students and staff at her new school and thank her for the significant positive impact she has had on so many people within our community. We particularly want to thank her for all her efforts in setting up so many preppies with a successful start to their schooling. Like Clare, Jemma will be sorely missed.

Welcome!

We are delighted to welcome Neil Marshall-Inns to AGPS as well as welcoming Andrea Belfall back to our community in a full-time role. Neil is an experienced educator with many years of experience working in international schools as well as most recently working at Yarraville West PS. Both Neil and Andrea will add great value to their teams and we are really enthusiastic about what they will bring to their classes. Both Andrea and Neil met their 2024 students at our final Step Up day and both the teachers and students are very excited about sharing their 2024 journey together.

2024 Class Details

Class	Teacher	Room No
Prep G	Gurpreet	9
Prep B	Jovana	8
Prep J	Josh	6

1A	Andrea	15
1M	Michelle & Vera	10
1H	Hannah	11
1K	Kate	7

2/3T	Tayler	4
2/3C	Carolyn	2
2/3M	Sarah Myers	1
2/3V	Vicki	5
2/3S	Sarah Martin	2

4/5A	Ainsley	West Wing
4/5Z	Zach	14
4/5N	Neil	12
4/5M	Merryn	13

6F	Fiona	16
6H	Hayley	17
6E	Eugene	East Wing

Arts	Debbie	Art
Italian	Bianca & Vera
P.E.	Nancy	Gym
STEM	Janine	Library
Intervention	Loretta	Cottage

End of Year Concert

For the first time since 2019 we were able to have the whole school together under Gumbuya to watch our whole school concert. This event is always a highlight of the year and a great way to celebrate the year as a whole school. The classes have been choreographing and practising their moves in preparation for the event and they all did a great job. We were most impressed with the wonderful variety of acts and the effort that the teachers and students put into their performances. Thank you to Debbie who put in a lot of effort to make the event a success and thank you to all families for coming along and joining in the fun.

Year 6 Graduation

We had a wonderful time celebrating our Year 6 students at our graduation ceremony last Thursday night. It was wonderful to hear the students share memories of their time at AGPS and to celebrate the achievements of this cohort of students. We were really pleased to be able to share this special event with so many families and other significant people in the students' lives.

Our Year 6 award winners for 2023 are:

Kitchen & Garden: Addison Connors
Italian: Anthony Gekas Novella
Physical Education: Luca Burrone
Arts: Kingston Phraphone
STEM: Nikola Macher
Citizenship: Mia Connors, Eloise Robson, Zoe Huggett, Georgie Myers
Academic: Isabel Egan & Bianca Webster
Tim Watts Award: Asreet Ghotra

I would like to thank Fiona and Clare for their tremendous efforts in putting such a great event together. I would also like to highlight the amazing decorations that were all coordinated by Vera - it all looked fabulous! Cam and I, along with the students, parents and staff, are really appreciative of everything they have done to make this event and their final year at AGPS a special one. I would also like to thank Nancy and Sammy who also helped throughout the whole process.

Christmas Fun Day

On the 15th of December, we had our Christmas Fun Day. It was filled with fun activities such as face painting, pin the nose on Rudolph, Christmas tattoos, and guess the lollies in the jar. The most popular one was dunk the teacher! Many students lined up for the chance to dunk a teacher with water if they hit the target. There were also icy poles and popcorn available. It was a huge success and everyone had a blast!

-Matilda P (Principal for the day)

End of Year Assembly

At 12:30pm on Wednesday, we will have our final assembly for the year. At this assembly we will announce the 2024 school captains, present student awards, announce this year's recipient of the Jo Tyers Community Award and farewell our Year 6 students with the traditional guard of honour.

A reminder that school finishes at 1:30pm on Wednesday 20th.

Thank You!

Thank you to all the members of our wonderful community for a great 2023. This year has felt like the most consistent year we have had for some time with none of the interruptions of previous years. As always, the AGPS community has worked collaboratively to ensure that students have had many positive experiences throughout the year as well as making excellent academic and social-emotional growth.

We are incredibly proud of what we have achieved in 2023. As a school, our focus on our key improvement strategies has continued and we have seen excellent results in all measures across our whole school. The student results in the academic measures are some of the strongest that our school has had and we are particularly pleased to see the improvement in student growth data which indicates that we are catering for all the individual students at our school. Thank you to all the staff for their efforts to make this happen and for their efforts in providing such rich, varied and positive learning experiences for our students.

We are also incredibly proud of our students. We are always proud of how kind, polite, inclusive and hard-working our students are and this is always evident as we greet students in the morning and walk through the classrooms and schoolyard. It has been great to hear of individual student achievements in a number of subject areas or extra-curricular activities and we particularly enjoy hearing about the hard work and effort that the student puts in behind each of these achievements.

We would also like to highlight the amazing achievements of Parents and Friends. This year we have had another great schedule of events and activities and these events are what sets our school apart and makes our school community as strong as it is. From the regular Friday treats to the Colour Explosion that was held earlier in the year, the members of Parents and Friends have done such an impressive job putting all this together for the benefit of our kids and community. It has also been an incredibly successful year with fundraising and these funds are going to help us continue to build and resource our excellent STEM program. Thank you to anyone that has volunteered their time to make this year such a success - your efforts are such a vital piece of what makes our school such a great place.

We are really excited for 2024 and continuing to make our school even better. We are very fortunate to have a full staff for next year despite the ongoing chronic teacher shortages in Victoria, particularly the western suburbs, whilst still retaining our small class sizes and excellent range of subjects offered. 2024 is shaping up to be another productive and positive year!

Thank you again for all for all your contributions to making this year such a success. We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a safe, relaxing and well-deserved holiday period and cannot wait to see you all again when we return in 2024!

Take care,

David & Cam

Altona Green Primary School Newsletter

Issue 18 · 19 Dec 2023

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