Principal's Message
Twilight Tour – Thursday 7th March – Beginning 5:30pm
This evening, Launch PS are hosting a Twilight Tour evening from 5:30 – 6:30PM. We encourage parents who are thinking of enrolling their child, beginning school in 2025 to come along to hear about our school from our community – staff, students and parents. If any of our current students or parents would like to come along to help out with the tour, as I mentioned at assembly – we would love to have you!
NAPLAN
We have NAPLAN testing taking place in the next couple of weeks, beginning Wednesday 13th March and continuing into the week following. NAPLAN is a national assessment that tests students' ability in three domains of literacy—reading, writing and language conventions (spelling, grammar and punctuation)—and in numeracy. Schools in all states and territories have administered NAPLAN in May every year since 2008. Last year the testing was moved to now take place in March. The information gained from NAPLAN is helpful to us as a school, in measuring the impact we are having on student learning and furthering focusing our efforts on school improvement.
District Swimming
On Tuesday 27th February we were most fortunate to have 13 students represent Launch PS at our local district swimming sports competition. A big thanks to Chelsea, Norah, Ruby C, Cayden F, Lucas G, Bianca, Jesse, Hunter K, Aysha, Izzy, Tate W, Jaylen and Kruze for your amazing efforts. We were so proud that you put your hand up to give it a go and did your very best. GO Launch!
Swimming Carnival
Speaking of swimming – tomorrow is the day! Our Swimming Carnival is on again at the Healesville Pool this Friday. We are so excited to see our Preppies, but of course everyone, out for the day and having a blast! All children are expected to participate (unless unwell - of course!) and parents are welcome to attend. The program starts at 11:00 -2.00pm. Children will need to provide their own Picnic lunch, and only boxed drinks are suitable. A substantial, but healthy, play lunch will also be required as lunch is held fairly late. Children will be competing for their House and will be placed in events prior to the day to ensure everyone has a fair spread of activities. It would be wonderful to see everyone getting in the spirit and donning their house colours!
Parents and Friends
Parents and Friends held their first meeting on Friday 1st March and it was great to see lots of our new parents showing up to lend a hand. If you missed it but are keen to take part or help out where you can, just check in with Audrey in the office and she will point you in the right direction of our lovely Parents and Friends crew.
Managing Classroom Behaviour
With the new year, new classes for our students and some new staff it has been important for us to continue to discuss and refine as a staff our processes for dealing with minor student behaviours in the classroom. These behaviours include things such as calling out, interrupting others and off task behaviour during work time.
For the sake of ensuring parents have a good understanding of how this process works, last year a Parent Booklet was created and distributed. Prep families also received this booklet in their Prep Information Folders that are handed out on school tours. If you have misplaced this booklet and would like another copy, please just drop into our office and Audrey will source you one. We welcome any questions or discussions that will help to clarify these processes for families.
Some new Casual Relief Teachers @ Launch
This term we have welcomed a couple of new casual relief teachers to Launch. These teachers have been helping us out when we require classroom teachers to attend meetings, professional learning, complete some one to one testing with students or to cover sick days.
Welcome to:
Miss Katia K who has been helping us out in the Prep and 1/2 area recently.
Miss Christel Anliker who has helped out a few days in the ½ area and will return next week to teach 2D in Miss DC’s absence.
Mrs Melissa Jones who has taught our Year 5/6 classes and helped out with some Science and Japanese recently. Thanks Melissa.
Whilst we acknowledge it can be tricky for some students in particular when their teacher is absent, having some known and happy faces that we recognise in their absence can really make the difference.
Congrats Mr and Mrs Stewart
I am a little early to the party, but I was keen to share that Miss Meg DC, will be taking a couple of days leave next week (13th - 15th inclusive) to marry her soon to be husband. Meg will return to us on Monday 18th March as Mrs. Stewart. We wish Meg all the best and look forward to her return!
Bikes and Scooters on School Grounds
We ask that parents of students who travel to school on bikes/scooters remind them that there is to be no use of bikes/scooters within our school grounds between the times of 8:30am and 4:00pm. This is to ensure that all people/families accessing our site during this time are safe. Students travelling by bike or scooter to and from school are asked to please walk them onto the school grounds and straight to the bike rack area. With the setup of our buildings as they are, I'm sure you can understand that it would be quite easy for a small child or even an adult to be quite easily injured by a bike or scooter flying around a sharp corner. Please help us keep everyone safe by reminding your children of these expectations. Families and students who use our school grounds out of hours are welcome to ride bikes/scooters around our grounds - in fact we encourage you to come and enjoy our space!
Virtual Tour
See you around our place,
Laura Caddy
Principal