Greetings from Shaun
Welcome back to Term 3! We hope all of our students and families enjoyed a restful and refreshing holiday break. It has been wonderful to see the settled and focused manner in which our students have returned to school this term. What we often call the ‘quieter’ term is going to be jam packed! We have a number of special events coming up, including Grade 3/4 camp, Prep 100 Days of School, weekly swimming for our Preps and Grade 1/2 students, Book Week, as well as our usual sporting events for Grade 5/6 students.
This term, we started with a whole staff curriculum day last Monday, where we spent time looking at reading comprehension, and how language structure and syntax impacts this. We also analysed student wellbeing data from our Resilience Project survey, and discussed how we can tailor learning to support some of these areas.
Book Week - advance notice
This term Book Week is going to be celebrated in Week 7 and the theme is ‘Symphony of Stories’. We will be having a whole school dress up day and parade on Monday 24th August, so note this date down in your diaries. Further details will be sent out shortly.
Celebrating NAPLAN Results
Last term we were able to share some of our initial NAPLAN results with our school community. The latest NAPLAN results were released last week and student reports for Year 3 and 5 students have now been sent home. As a school, we are very proud of our students' achievements and we are excited to celebrate our students' outcomes and growth in all areas of NAPLAN.
Below are two visuals which show a summary of our Year 3 and 5 results compared to both Similar Schools and schools in our network. Similar Schools are Victorian government schools that have a student population with similar characteristics to ours. The Department of Education groups schools based on factors such as students' socio-economic backgrounds, the number of students from non-English speaking backgrounds, and the school's size and location.
In 9 of the 10 assessment areas across both Year 3 and 5 we have outperformed our similar schools and we are higher than our network in all areas.
Congratulations to all of our students on their efforts and thank you to our staff for their ongoing commitment to delivering high-quality teaching and learning for our students. It is a reflection of the dedication and expertise of our teachers and education support staff, and the support that our families provide their children at home. Well done everyone!
Staffing update
This term we welcome some new staff to our NPS team. Meg Gleeson will be joining our ES team and working with different students across the school. Anja Stanislawski will be taking over Prep music on a Monday, as well as some additional classroom release. Anja is a familiar face for our students and teachers, as she has been a regular casual relief teacher this year. We are excited to have our new staff on board and we will include a short bio in our next newsletter. As Shaun mentioned last term, Andrea Read will be taking over in the music department while Anita is on leave. This term, Andrea will be incorporating elements of dance and drama into our music program.
Curriculum overviews
Our Term 3 curriculum overviews are in this newsletter, please take a moment to have a look over all of the learning taking place this term. During our inquiry units this term, students will be focusing on different elements of design technology across the school, with added elements of physical science in our Grade 1-4 classes, and economics in 5/6.
We have also heard that Shaun is having a wonderful time on his trip overseas. He has been lucky enough to be holidaying in Spain while the World Cup has been on! Shaun will be back at the beginning of Week 4, and I’d just like to say a big thank you to our teachers and school community for your support during this time.
Take care,
Bec