Primary School News

Primary School

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES

Throughout Term 4, primary staff have been working together on Tuesday afternoons in Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). PLCs are teams of educators who work together regularly to improve teaching practices and student learning outcomes. In the primary school, our PLCs consist of teachers who are working in the same grade level areas. Throughout Term 4, our PLC focus has been on Writing and the development of the 6+1 Traits. These traits being Ideas, Sentence Fluency, Organisation, Word Choice, Voice, Contentions and Presentation. To date, students have completed a cold write based on a picture stimulus of the moon. Students will be completing another cold write later this term to assess the impact of our targeted teaching of writing concepts.

I would like to thank Elly Louchart and Bianca Maxwell who have been leading this work and to Jane Hancock Greig and Hung Mok from the Department of Education who have offered support with our implementation of this initiative.

PHONICS AND READING

You may have noticed media coverage recently about changes to the teaching of Reading in primary schools and the introduction of 25 minutes of explicit instruction in daily phonemic awareness.

Throughout this year, primary staff have completed professional learning around the UFLI Program; an explicit and systematic program that teaches students the foundational skills necessary for proficient reading. The program follows a carefully developed scope and sequence designed to ensure that students systematically acquire skills and learn to apply each skill with automaticity and confidence.

We have also purchased new ‘decodable’ texts for students to read in class based on the UFLI sequence of learning.

Staff have also recently completed learning in cued articulation; a system of hand cues for teaching pronunciation. This approach to teaching sounds helps children to visualise the way sounds are made in the mouth, provides a multi-sensory approach to learning pronunciation and can support students with speech or hearing difficulties.

Teachers are currently exploring elements from these programs in preparation for further implementation in 2025.

ENROL FOR 2025

Do you have friends with children due to start school in 2025? Time is ticking away for families to enrol for both our Mainstream and Steiner programs for 2025.

Confirmed enrolment helps support the school with class formation and workforce planning. School enrolment also ensures that your child will be able to access the School Savings Bonus Payments (see article in this edition of the newsletter).

Please direct any interested families to the office to arrange a school tour and to complete enrolment forms. We have our final twilight tour on Sunday 1 December. Interested families can register for these tours online.

WILL YOU BE WITH US IN 2025?

Similarly, if your family is moving house and your children will not be attending Collingwood College in 2025, can you please make contact with the office as this will assist us with grade lists and enable us to make contact with your child’s new school to support their transition.

CAMPS

It’s a busy term for primary students with a number of camps taking place. 6C returned from their Camp to Buchan Caves last week.

Upcoming camps include:

● 3C to Balnarring from Wed 13 Nov - Fri 15 Nov

● 5C to Upper Yarra Reserve from Wed 20 Nov - Fri 22 Nov

● 4C to Walkerville from Wed 27 Nov - Fri 29 Nov

● 56A + 56B to Camp Manyung from Mon 16 Dec to Wed 18 Dec

Thank you to all our staff, volunteers and families for supporting these programs.

P-2 SWIMMING

Our Prep to Year 2 students will be commencing their swimming lessons at Collingwood Leisure Centre this Friday. Students will participate in 5 lessons over 4 weeks (Friday 15 November to Friday 13 December)

A reminder to make sure students bring bathers, a towel, and a bag to store wet items in after the lesson. Goggles are a good idea too.

TERM 4 STUDENT FREE DAY 

A reminder to families that FRIDAY 22 NOVEMBER is a Student Free Day for primary students. This day is for staff to complete tasks associated with Assessment and Reporting. Students do not attend school on this day. Team Kids will provide supervision for students on this day if required by families.

Primary Art/Performing Arts

Year 3/4 National Gallery of Victoria visit 

 As part of the African fashion community, textiles artist Tab Sejoe ran a workshop with Year 3/4 students. With Tab’s expertise in the area of printing, the students worked with shapes colour and patterns to create prints.

Prep-2

As part of the Primary Performing Arts program, Year Prep -2 students had the opportunity to create their own plays about hot air ballons. The birthday surprise and In the jungle. Once finished students performed for their families and our school community in the theatre.

Year 5/6

Year 5/6 students painted three Murals on the corner of Hoddle and Perry Street in Collingwood.

Kindley supported by YCAN (Yarra Climate Action Now).  Channel 31 will also be attending this event and will be filming. Project Description: "Climate Action Chronicles: Empowering Diverse Communities for a Sustainable Future" aims to produce a series of three short videos focusing on climate action. With a specific focus on educating culturally diverse audiences.

'Little Feet' documentary

Child Nation in schools is working with Elisa Nogaret Florance Lenight film makers from France, for a special French documentary on raising children.

The documentary is called Little Feet. Our Year 3/4 students will feature as part of this documentary during Art time. 

TEASER The Little Feet - ENGLISH VERSION on Vimeo

Angela Dionysopoulos

Primary Art/Performing Arts

Team Kids – Review

The school council has discussed collecting feedback in regard to the service delivered to families who use before and after school care at Collingwood College.

Please complete the survey below if you are interested in providing feedback and a voice from those who use the service.

Geoff Rundle, school council president, and I are intending to Team Kids to share this feedback.

Can all feedback be completed by Tuesday 19th November.

https://forms.gle/T8AwjrcV51p1oRWB8

INSTRUMENTS FOR SALE (updated 27 October) - Contact Person - Steve Wu

Please click on the attachment below to see a list of Stringed instruments for sale. If you have an instrument for sale please email Steve at:  fengchih.09@gmail.com

COLLINGWOOD COLLEGE ON FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM 

Collingwood College is online! Feel free to follow us on: 

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/collingwood.college/ and like us on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/collingwood.vic.edu.au/ to keep up to date with everything that our school has to offer our students and the community.