Message from the Principal 

FROM THE PRINCIPAL 

BOOKWEEK FUN

Today we enjoyed a wonderful celebration of Book Week 2025. For me, these types of activities and events are what school is all about. Dressing up on special days is such a fun way to enjoy and promote a love of reading. It was certainly a GREAT parade, and the staff and student costumes were simply amazing. A big shout out to all our parents and carers for supporting our students to source or make costumes and getting fully into the spirit of the event.  This is not always an easy thing to do but know that your commitment was worth it.

The Children’s Book Council of Australia presents annual awards to books of literary merit, for outstanding contribution to Australian children's literature. Congratulations to all the winners of the 2025 Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards.  Many of the books are available in the school library for our students to enjoy. 

Book week is also a GREAT opportunity to acknowledge and thank Jen Ellis for her work in our school Library – you are awesome Jen!

As we highlighted last week with a special Compass newsfeed and Facebook post, Greenhills Primary School is a GREAT reading school and we want to keep getting even better. Our reading data is improving all the time and we fall into the “High” performance category of DET schools as a result of our academic results. We have great teachers, we are implementing an evidence based approach to reading that is built on the Big 6 + 1 (oral language, phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension and writing).  We have a superb Library and of course a strong level of parent support for reading for pleasure at home.

So how do we keep working to make sure we remain such a strong reading school?

At school, we will achieve this through a very strategic and detailed professional learning plan based on ensuring high levels of staff knowledge around what high quality reading teaching is and how we deliver this consistently across the whole school each day. You can also participate with us by doing something similar at home too.

At home, you can assist your child to find an extra 10 minutes a day to read. It might be as simple as 10 minutes less on technology or reading for 10 minutes before dinner. We know that you can become better at something if you focus on it more. Reading becomes easier and more enjoyable the more you do it! If you need some motivation have a think about this: If your child currently reads for just 1 minute a day, they will read 21,000 words this year. Increasing this by 10 minutes a day will lead to 321,000 words being read in a year. It also works for those students that are already reading for the suggested 15 minutes a day. Currently these readers would be churning through 1.8 million words a year. Ten minutes more would take this to over 2.7 million! 

Help your child to choose different types of books to read and take turns to read with then. Talk about the book and look for words to pay special attention too. Most importantly, make the experience as fun and engaging as possible.

PREMIER’S READING CHALLENGE

At this stage we have 129 of our students who have completed the 2025 Premier’s Reading Challenge. There is only a couple of weeks to go, and it would be GREAT to increase this even more. Imagine a school that has a 100% completion rate!   

NAPLAN 2025 - WRITING

Last week we reported on our 2025 NAPLAN Reading results. This week we are sharing our Writing results. Overall, we are very pleased with the progress our students are making with writing. In both Year 3 and Year 5 we have a very high percentage of students who achieved results in the “Exceeding” or “Strong” bands. This was 92% in Year 3 and an incredible 82% of students in Year 5. This is 3% higher than the similar schools we are compared against in Year 3 and the same percentage to similar school in Year 5 (*these measures include size of school and socio-economic, family education index). 

BULLYING NO WAY

Last week we spent some time with our students unpacking what bullying is, what it looks like at our school and where it may be happening. This included running a short whole school assembly and then also collecting some data from each of our classes.

You can also partner with us and support our work as we continue to focus on being bold, being kind and speaking up.  

How families can respond

Schools can be much more effective when parents report bullying and support their efforts to deal with it.

If your child reports that bullying is occurring at our school, or the bullying involves students from the school outside of school, you should let the school know the situation.

Working together with the school is the best way to help your child resolve bullying issues.

We will then work with you to resolve the situation and will also work with the other student's parents. Due to privacy laws, they will not be able to share information about any other students involved.

Tips for contacting the school

Remain calm and focus on being constructive (even if you feel upset).

Prepare by:

• making a time to talk with your child's teacher or member of the principal team.
• writing notes (and any other records) based on what your child has told you so you can be as clear as possible about what happened.

Tips for working with school staff

Continue to be calm and constructive. In the first instance contact your child's teacher if possible.

During meetings with staff:

• refer to your written notes to be as clear as possible about what happened and write notes of the discussions with your child's teacher or other staff
• ask what steps will be taken and if a plan is to be developed with home and school strategies
• recognise that investigating the situation at school will require time
• keep a written record of when you contacted the school, who you have spoken with, and any agreements that were made
• stay in touch with the teacher and let them know if problems continue or something new happens.

If you are unable to achieve a satisfactory solution with the class teacher make an appointment to meet with a member of the principal team.

PARENT / CARER OPINION SURVEY

This is a reminder that our school is conducting a survey to find out what parents think of our school. The Parent Opinion Survey is an annual survey offered by the Department of Education and Training that is conducted amongst all parents. It is designed to assist schools in gaining an understanding of parents’ perceptions about your child’s learning, teachers at the school and general satisfaction with the school Our school will use the survey results to help inform and direct future school planning and improvement strategies. All parents and carers have been invited to participate in this year’s survey. All responses to the survey are anonymous. This year, the Parent Opinion Survey has been extended and will close at the end of this term on Friday 19th September.

The survey is conducted online, only takes 15-20 minutes to complete, and can be accessed at any convenient time within the fieldwork period on desktop computers, laptops, tablets or smartphones. The online survey will be available in a range of languages other than English. These include Arabic, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Chin (Hakha), Hindi, Japanese, Somali, Turkish, Punjabi and Greek.

An invitation to the survey with a link and password has been sent out via Compass as newsfeed.

Please contact me if you would like more information:

james.penson@education.vic.gov.au

ROAD SAFETY - IT IS YOUR JOB TO ENSURE YOUR CHILD GETS TO SCHOOL SAFELY

Last week we had reports of a very young (prep) student crossing Greenhills Road on their own as their parent waited on the opposite side of the road. 

We would like to remind everyone that parents/guardians have the legal responsibility to supervise their children at all times, including coming and leaving school. 

We do not want any of our students to be at risk.  Our younger students do not always have the capacity or situational awareness to be safe on the road. 

We have also asked the support of our local Police including the Highway Patrol to see if they have the resources to conduct general patrols around drop off and pick up times so that the importance of this message is reinforced. 

James Penson

Principal