Principal's Report

A Great Start to Term 2

We have had a fantastic start to the Term at ACPS, with plenty happening across the school both inside and outside the classroom. A huge highlight for our community was undoubtedly our production of Aladdin Jr. Seeing students from so many different year levels come together to produce such an outstanding performance was incredibly special. The talent, teamwork, confidence and commitment shown by our students across all 3 shows made our whole community proud. Productions like this only happen because of an enormous team effort. Thank you again to Gavin Andrew, Sarah Bailey and our amazing production team — Cameron Mitchell, Erica Kennedy, Caz Diaz, Jacqui Burden, Rob Doekes, D’Arcy McFall and Steph Morgan — for the incredible amount of work that went into bringing the show to life. Thank you also to our Canteen Team, families and wider school community for the many ways you supported the production behind the scenes.

This Term we have implemented an initiative called Deep Planning Days, providing dedicated time across 3 selected days for staff teams to work collaboratively on curriculum planning, student data analysis and strengthening practice across classrooms. These days are immensely valuable and play an important role in supporting the high-quality teaching and learning across the school. Additionally, on these days we have been implementing a STEM program across each year level. Providing a hands on 2hr STEM block for each year level. Our STEM learning this term has had a strong Sport Science focus, with students exploring body systems, forces and how different materials and sporting equipment behave under different conditions. It has been great seeing students apply scientific thinking and problem solving through hands-on learning experiences. 

We are continuing our strong focus on reading and structured literacy across the school, particularly around explicit teaching, reading comprehension and building strong foundational literacy skills. Preliminary NAPLAN reading data in both Year 3 and Year 5 has been very encouraging and reflects the strong work being done by both staff and students in literacy learning.

Earlier this term we also held our ACPS Cross Country event down along the Yarra. It was fantastic to see so many students challenge themselves, encourage one another and show great persistence throughout the event. It also provided a great lead-in to District Cross Country, where our students represented ACPS extremely well, with several students progressing through to Division level competition. More recently we held our Mother’s Day Breakfast, which was another wonderful community event. Though I was unable to make this one myself, It was great having so many families come together and enjoy the morning.

As always, thank you to our staff, students and families for the way you continue to contribute to such a positive and supportive school community.

Looking Ahead

Kind Regards

Daniel Webber

Principal