Our final newsletter of the term, and an opportunity to thank our school community, staff and families for their support throughout the last two months. I really appreciate the support that our teaching and education support staff have enjoyed over Term 3. Thank you for supporting our achievements and trusting us with the work undertaken throughout the school.

I will deliver a brief SchoolStream message next Friday afternoon to acknowledge the end of term with our newsletters to resume in Term 4.

Please note some of the highlights around the school.

End of Term

Please note that Term 3 finishes next Friday, the school day concludes at 2:30pm. Supervision and Yard Duty will conclude at 2:45pm with Team Kids running their afterschool program. Please ensure plans are made to ensure your child is collected and/or supervised from 2:30pm onwards.

An end of term assembly will be held next Friday, as such, there will be no Monday morning assembly next week.

Congratulations

Congratulations to Rishaan (3/4D) who entered the My Brother Jack Short Story Competition and won First Prize out of 53 entries in the Junior Primary Short Story division! His writing piece 'The Lost Cat' is on the Glen Eira council website. All students in Year 3/4 had the chance to work on a writing piece during class time last term and Miss Pyrcz and the 3/4 team are really proud of Rishaan's achievement!

English – Literacy

This term, we have undertaken considerable professional learning to support English Literacy throughout our school, Miss Ryan and Mrs Newman have attended the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership to continue with their participation in the Leading Literacy course.

Last week, Miss Pyrcz, Miss Guzman, Mrs Watts and I attended the SaGE network phonics professional learning series working with Dr Nathaniel Swain. Nathaniel is the academic director and senior Lecturer at La Trobe University, a speech pathologist and teacher he is currently working with schools to support the changes to the Victorian Curriculum and embedding the Systematic Synthetic Phonics approach as outlined recently by the Minister for Education.

I acknowledge the leadership and work that Miss Ryan is doing as our Learning Specialist to prepare for these changes. We had an Education Improvement Leader join us on Thursday morning, who acknowledged the work the school is doing and the steps we have taken to plan for these changes in 2025 moving forward.

Playground Upgrades

Over recent weeks, we have discussed fundraising at a school council level and also addressed priorities in the school including upgrades to our Junior playground.

Since then, I have had detailed proposals presented to me by Adventure+ Playgrounds providing a design brief and quote for a redesigned playground. Next week, Justin Staggard (Landscape Architect) is working with our Prep and Year ½ classes to take design ideas and input from our students before developing a design brief for the school.

Justin has worked extensively in schools with over 25 years of experience. More recently, he has worked on design work at Kew High School, Bundoora PS, Yarra Valley Grammar, Kalinda PS and had oversight of the redesign and landscaping of Thomas Street Playground in Hampton.

We look forward to welcoming Justin to the school and presenting his plans back to our school community as we establish a fundraising priority moving forward.

Fundraising

Thank you for supporting recent fundraising efforts around the school, a breakdown of these efforts are shared below:

Father's Day Stall (PFC): $506.65 Raised
Avenue Book Fair: $830 Raised to be spent at Avenue Bookstore to replenish Library books
Junior School Council (JSC) Disco and Casual Day: $331.30 Raised to be spent on an additional drinking fountain

We continue to use fundraising as a means of supporting resources and opportunities for our students in and out of the classroom.

New Laptops

With thanks to some highly successful fundraising that has occurred over 2024, we are fortunate enough to order 52 new laptops for our Year 5/6 classrooms. This was only made possible with the school using our existing technology budget and complementing this with a significant contribution from our Parents and Friends Club Fundraising, the fundraising is the work of our whole school community led so capably by our Parents and Friends Club. Thank you for making this possible, our students will directly benefit from these new devices over the coming months.

Division Athletics

Miss Molloy has worked with our Year 3-6 students over recent weeks preparing them for their district athletics competition. The end results are a great success story with our school sending off a very large team to represent CPS at the Division Athletics in October.

Congratulations to our Division Athletics Team

Reina (5/6B), Ada (3/4D), Kiku (5/6C), Kaylee (5/6B), James (5/6A), Tristan (5/6B), Declan (5/6A), Lucan (5/6A), Aya (5/6A), Cocoha (5/6A), Caitlin (5/6B) and Nanami (5/6B).

I wanted to acknowledge the efforts of Miss Molloy who has considerable time before school conducting training sessions for our students. It is no coincidence that we see a very large team representing the school, in previous years we have only had 3-6 students qualify for the next level of representation.

Reconciliation Action Plan

Over recent months, we have worked to create and publish our Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP), this provides the school with actionable items that promote conversations, teaching and learning through meaningful steps towards reconciliation.

The plan incorporates inclusive policy, curriculum planning, recognition and acknowledgements of Country, celebrating reconciliation week and building and strengthening relationships within our community.

It is a document that that promotes and supports the Department of Education Marrung – Aboriginal Education Plan 2016 -2026. Many of the items shared are great pieces of validation for the work that the school and all teachers are doing to support this.

It is developed in conjunction with a Koorie Education Support Officer (KESO) from the Department of Education. The document sits on our website as viewable for our school community.

Car Parking

Just a quick admin note, I am aware that the Glen Eira Council is taking a very active and vigilant approach to car parking in our kiss and go area out the front of Olive Street, in order to support families and to avoid a parking fine, please try to ensure you are not parking in that location and are supporting the kiss and go time allocation.

Further to that, please be mindful of our students, families and other vehicles when navigating Poplar and Olive Street, I have some families report to me that they have had a close call with other vehicles and also with a recent car accident also occurring.

Phones and Smart Watch Use

A reminder to all families and students, we ask that smart watches are not used as a communications device during school hours. Whilst we trust our students, the Department of Education has a blanket rule on phones and communication devices, banning these from all schools during school hours. Whilst smart watches can be worn during the day, we ask that families are ensuring that these are not connected or available to accept phone calls or messages throughout the school day. If teachers are seeing this occur, they will confiscate these devices consistent with our school policy documents and Department of Education guidance.

I have successfully navigated my newsletter without making mention of the football result last weekend, the less said about that the better. Good luck to Hawks, Power, Giants and Lions supporters this weekend.

I look forward to sharing in the last week of term with our school community, enjoy the coming weekend (stay warm) and I look forward to seeing everyone on Monday morning.

Thanks for your support,

Edward Strain

Principal

Community News