Principals` Message

After 8 weeks, or 37 days, of learning we are almost at the end of Term One for 2024. It has been a great Term with many achievements and highlights for our staff and students. We have welcomed many new students and families to our community, especially our new Foundation students who have settled into school life extremely well – it is great to see how well they have adjusted to school and how focused they are in their learning. We have welcomed new staff members to our team and have seen them making great contributions to our school. 

The George St capital works were completed and we successfully returned to learning across two sites. Our students enjoyed the swimming/water safety program at Fitzroy Pool and we had excursions to Collingwood Childrens Farm and visits from Collingwood College. We have elected new school councilors, appointed student leaders to key roles, and resumed our school assemblies. We have seen our year 3 and 5 students successfully complete the NAPLAN assessments, for both the first and last time at Primary School. Most importantly we have established positive learning routines in both French and English classes and seen all of our classes experiencing great academic and wellbeing learning. 

This week we celebrated recognized our wonderful diversity with our Harmony Day celebration. Our school has a very rich cultural diversity and it was great to see a wide range of cultures represented. Some of the cultures and countries represented included France, Somalia, Eritrea, Vietnam, Norway, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, and many more countries and cultures. We saw lots of children in fantastic cultural dress and plenty of orange on display. It is a great event and fantastic to see so many of our children proud of their cultural heritage. 

Over the holiday break there will be some works planned to be completed at George St. There are a number of defects from the capital works that are due to be fixed during the break to minimise disruption to learning. We are making some improvements to the grounds by installing some garden edging next to the footpath on the south side of the yard (near the bike rack) to hold back the mulch off the footpath. Extra pinboards will be installed for displays in classrooms and extra furniture will begin to arrive to complete our furniture purchase. We will also be organising a delivery of soft fill for under the playground at George St and are planning to have a working bee to distribute it to the right place – if you are interested in helping keep an eye on Compass for the date and time!

I would like to remind families about our Iftar dinner on Tuesday 26th March which will be our community event for Term 1. The Iftar is an opportunity for our school to come together as a community to break the fast for those families observing Ramadan and to celebrate our diversity. Everyone is invited to attend and we ask those participating to bring a plate of food to share with everyone. Families are also welcome to bring their own picnic to enjoy on the evening as well should they have dietary needs or concerns around sharing of food. The Iftar dinner will commence around 7.20pm (sunset) and beforehand we will hold a learning expo from 6.30pm. Students and families are invited to visit their classroom and see some of the learning that has taken place across the term. It will be great to see as many of our community come to this great event and celebrate the term together.

Lastly, I would like to thank everyone for their kind thoughts and wishes with the news that I will be staying for the remainder of the year at Fitzroy Primary School. I have been very impressed with the fantastic staff, wonderful students and community at Fitzroy. Our school has been on a great improvement journey and there is a very positive future ahead for Fitzroy Primary. I look forward to working with our great community for the rest of the year. 

I hope that everyone has a restful, fun and safe school holiday break. I encourage our students to get off devices and head outside to explore the world during the great autumn weather. I hope everyone enjoys quality time with family and friends, and we look forward to seeing all our students for Term 2 on Monday 15th April.

-Nathan Moore & Andrea Hennessey