Nigel's Natter

WELCOME TO 2025

Welcome back! 

It's been a really positive start to the school year - despite the heat! How lucky our kids are to have AC in every room. I remember dripping in a portable with wet paper towel on the back of my neck on hot days when I was at school. How times have changed. 

Classrooms are settled and have launched straight into the Term 1 learning program.

BIG WELCOME to our new Prep Families. Your little ones have had a smooth start and it's been a joy spending time watching them master the routines of school so quickly. 

Lots of info and a few big updates to share with you all to kick off the school year. 

UPDATED REPORTING PLAN

Based on community feedback, discussion with School Council and a review of Ongoing Reports access data - we are making some BIG changes to how we report on student learning. 

• There will be no more Ongoing Reports. Only 12% of these reports were ever accessed by families. 
• There will be no more Learning Snapshots in the newsletter. We are replacing this fortnightly update with a Term Overview. We will be sending home in digital and print format an overview of the learning that is planned for the entire Term. This is a PLAN, and as such, is subject to change based on the learning needs of students - however, it will give families a really detailed overview of what they can expect students to be learning at school for the entire term. 
• We will be sending home Progress Reports in Term 1 and Term 3. These reports will include the assessments your child has completed and their result. It will clearly indicate how your child is progressing based on their assessment results, and will indicate if your child will be participating in an explicit intervention program. The Progress Report will include your child's Behaviour and Effort in all subjects and their attendance data including the number of days they are late to school or depart early. 
• We will be sending home Semester Reports in Term 2 and Term 4. These reports will include a General Comment from your child's teacher and the 'dots' that show their progress against the Victorian Curriculum. 

We hope these changes provide families with very transparent information about what their child will be learning, and how they are progressing with their studies. 

Overview of our School Improvement Focus for 2025. 

The image below captures all of the Actions in our Improvement Plan.   

Our Main Focus?

In a word, WRITING! 2025 is all about our entire staffing group developing their capacity to teach writing exceptionally well - so that our students become outstanding writers. 

We know that many students dread writing, and it makes sense. Writing is incredibly hard to master. Writing is made up of many sub-skills, shown in the Writing Rope below. 

Children need to develop their skills in ALL these areas for their writing to improve. Spelling, handwriting, sentence structure, vocabulary, syntax, paragraphing, text structure, punctuation - and the list goes on and on! 

We can summarise these sub-skills into two main groups. Transcription skills and Composition skills. When both these areas develop - the outcome is Skilled Written Expression. 

When our Preps start school, it makes sense that they focus on different things to our Year 6 students. The Image below gives a rough idea of how writing time is spent in each of the year levels. As you can see, Preps spend much more time working on handwriting, spelling and sentence level writing than our senior students. 

As students progress through the school - they spend increasing amounts of time on text composition. In the past, we placed a great deal more focus on knowledge of text types and structures from the very beginning of school. However, we are moving to a model, where teachers will model writing complete texts, and classes will compose complete texts together as a group in the younger years. Students will spend far more time working on spelling and sentence level writing in the early years of school. 

One of our very first steps is to make a commitment as a whole staff to supporting students to NAIL handwriting. We know for a fact that once students have mastered handwriting, they will have far more focus available for WHAT they are writing. The ROUTINE below has been rolled out in every classroom this week and the impact on students writing presentation is evident already!

We will be working on WRITING all year. 

During our staff curriculum day, our team watched the expert webinar by Lyn Stone together. It provided the foundation for lots of great discussion and further learning across 2025. I thought I'd share it for those who are interested. It's an easy watch and paints a very clear picture of just how complicated learning to write really is. 

STAFFING UPDATE. 

Warm welcome to Jemima Luck, Josh Gee and Andrew Sunderland who are joining our team this year. We know you're going to love our school community! 

PRINCIPAL FORUM INVITE. 

Some exciting news for HBPS. We have been invited to present to 100s of Principals at the Barwon Area Principal Forum. This is a BIG DEAL. Regional office recognise the outstanding work we've done as a school community to improve the learning outcomes of our students through Explicit Instruction and the new Victorian Teaching and Learning Model. I'm so proud to share our work and our staff and students' accomplishments.  

TERM 1 MEET AND GREETS. 

Bookings are now open via Compass. The main message I want to share is that this year, given the growing number of Student Support Group Meetings we have - students will either have an SSG or a Meet and Greet. We will be following up to ensure teachers have had the opportunity to meet all families at the start of the school year. This is a great chance to share everything you want to about your child, and to ask any questions you have. 

HOUSE T-SHIRTS 

How epic do our Year 5/6s look in their fresh new house t-shirts! Students can now proudly represent their house by purchasing their house coloured t-shirt from the uniform shop.

When can students wear their house shirts? 

• On their specialist day
• At house-themed events
• During house sporting events

Not sure which house your child is in? Simply check their Compass profile!

BREAKFAST CLUB

Great news! Breakfast Club is now running every day at HBPS.  WE WOULD LOVE YOUR HELP! If you can spare a morning to cook some toast or hand out some fruit - please reach out to daryl.farnham@education.vic.gov.au and let him know. 

Swing by the kitchen (next to the Art Centre where Kelly Club runs) and see Daryl for a delicious, healthy start to the day.

KELLY CLUB UPDATE

The holiday program was a hit, and Kelly Club are ready to take more enrolments. If you need before or after school care for your child - please reach out to the coordinator Noah or register online. 

Service Coordinator  - 0467 770 079

Service email - hamlynbanks@kellyclub.com.au 

Website - www.kellyclub.com.au

OPEN AIR MOVIE NIGHT! 

We booked a movie night last year and tickets are on sale. We need to sell AT LEAST 300 tickets for the event to go ahead, and we are some way off this currently. If you are planning on coming - please grab your tickets ASAP! 

Bring your picnic rugs, blankets, and low chairs for a fantastic outdoor movie experience.

• Friday, Feb 14
• HBPS Oval
• Gates Open: 6:30pm
• Movie Starts: 7:30-8ish (finishes by 9:40pm)
• Food & Drinks available – sausages, popcorn, lollies & more! 
• BYO picnic if you prefer.
• Tickets: $7 per person
• Kids under 3 FREE.

Get your tickets here: https://compasstix.com/.../1273d10c-41b2-4598-9d12...

ROUTINES ROUTINES ROUTINES. 

For our new families, here is a look at some of our school routines. We encourage you to talk about these with your child. They WILL know them. Having tight routines reduces wasted learning time, minimises the effort required for kids to 'do the right thing' and ensures a calm place of learning. 

FIRST NATIONS GROUP. 

Our very first First Nations catch up is next Friday Feb 7th at 11am in the wellbeing room.   

WATER ONLY

A friendly reminder that we are a Water Only school. Children can refill their drink bottles at school. We also ask that you don't send glass water bottles for obvious reasons. 

ATTENDANCE

I want to start the year with a big THANKS. We saw a significant improvement in our attendance data last year - and we are keen to see another BIG improvement this year. 

Bottom line - students who are not at school are not learning. A day off here and there may not seem like a big deal, but they add up - and the impact on learning is huge. 

If you need support with getting your child to school each day, reach out. We're here to help. 

DATES FOR THE DIARY. 

Be sure to check out the Dates for the Diary page. We have tried to provide as many dates as possible as early as possible. Some things are still to be confirmed (TBC) and will be updated as soon as we have the details locked in.

Bring it on 2025! We're ready! 

See you at the front gate. 

Nigel