From the Acting Principal 

Elissa Campbell

Dear Families,

We are beyond the halfway point of Term 3 with only 4 weeks left of this term. Students and families have had many opportunities to engage in lots of interesting learning opportunities both in and out of the classroom so far this term.

Book Week

Thank you to all for your support of our Book Week dress up day yesterday and the last minute change of plans for our parade. It was wonderful to see so many families attend our assembly and parade yesterday afternoon. While we engage in reading practice every day at school, the inspiring thing about Book Week is the extra opportunity it provides for students to talk about the books they love to read and why. I had several conversations yesterday with students about the characters they had dressed up as and why they enjoyed the book. We want to encourage a passion for reading in our students and it was great to see a wide range of characters represented across Foundation to Year 6. These events would not be possible without the support of out teaching staff and community. All the Book Week nominated books and winners have been shared in our classes over the last few weeks and will be available for borrowing from the library soon. 

Year 3-6 Student Values and Mumumbara Awards

Apologies to 3-6 families who came to see their child receive a Values award or Mumumbara award yesterday. Unfortunately, we ran out of time to present the awards yesterday, these will be presented at our next assembly.

Staff Absences

You may have noticed this week that we have been affected by a large number of staff absences, as many of our staff and their families succumb to the various illnesses that are currently circulating in our community. We are doing our best to limit disruption to classes where possible and have been fortunate that we have a pool of casual relief teachers and other staff within our school to support, however we are not always able to find staff cover. Unfortunately, when this does happen, we do have to split classes up. We try to keep students in age appropriate year levels and ensure that the continuity of learning continues. Our teachers work collaboratively to plan for student learning, so that even if a teacher is absent the disruption to student learning should be limited. There has been a lot of media coverage in the last few years about shortages of teachers, I feel that at Woodend Primary School we have been fortunate in that we have been able to minimise the impact of this where possible.

Photographing, Filming and Recording Policy

The Department of Education has recently updated expectations for schools around the photographing, filming and recording of students, as a school we have updated our policy and the consent form to reflect these changes. The new policy is available on our website. On Monday all families will receive a paper copy of an updated consent form that must be filled in and returned to the school office. This form should only need to be filled out once during your child/ren’s time at Woodend Primary School, the only time it should be filled in again is if you want to change your level of consent. If you have any questions please contact the office.

2025 Student Enrolment

During term 3 we commence our planning for 2025 and ask our community to please let us know as soon as possible if your child/ren will not be returning to Woodend Primary School in 2025 (excluding our year 6 students, who are moving on to Secondary school). 

We are still accepting Foundation enrolments for 2025, if you have a child who will be starting school in 2025 and you have not yet enrolled, please bring your forms to the office as soon as possible.

Acting Principal

Elissa Campbell