Principal's Report

2021 Graduating Class

This week the 2021 Graduating Year 6 class celebrated their final days of primary school. Tomorrow they will have an all-day celebration, with a Hollywood dress up theme. Students will watch graduation videos, sign their graduation book, have a special morning tea and bento box lunch and watch a movie.

In the evening, immediate family are invited to the graduation ceremony to round off their primary schooling

I wish all of our graduating class- Rio, Yuujin, Jenithya, Satoshi, Seirai, Atsuya, Mia, Jamie, Mei, Selina M, Keitaro, Joseph, Audrey, Leona, Billie, Tokiwa, Misha, Becky, Apollo, Meino, Louis, Juli , Vasko, Eirto, Noemi, Mika, Crystel, Rika, Erika , Monaka, Takuma, Renat, Lily, Ellie, Joey, Micah, Maya, Seina, Lindsay, Kenny, Hector, Amalia, Orlando, Cathy, Noa, Anthony and Akiro all the best in the future.

2021 Online Christmas Concert

Well done to all of our classes for their efforts and performances in this year’s online Christmas Concert.

I hope the performances bring you Christmas Cheer!

Please follow this link to view the Christmas Concert:

https://sites.google.com/education.vic.gov.au/2021-hps-christmas-concert/home

Thank you so much to Smith sensei for organising the concert and to Nishikubo sensei and Fukaya sensei’s efforts in editing the videos and putting together the online format.

Production

In the last newsletter I described how proud I was of our Year 5/6’s for their performance in the school production.

Please follow the link below to see the production!

https://youtu.be/f8cR6xBSL8k

Memorial Bench

On January 10 2021, our school community lost the beautiful Okano family- Ako, Uta, their younger sister Enna and their mother Kaoru to a house fire. At the end of term 1, the school supported families to do a fundraiser to purchase a memorial bench. Finally, the bench has arrived and installed in the school, in an area near where the family would regularly meet.

Some families have discussed having a small memorial service next year to mark the 1-year anniversary. Once this is organised, we will inform the community.

Oakleigh Education Plan- Kewpie Mayonnaise Making and EV3 Challenge

On December 8 two planned events in the Oakleigh Education Plan finally went ahead after a number of cancellations due to COVID-19. The Oakleigh Education Plan focuses on improving student outcomes in STEM, Japanese and 6-7 transition with South Oakleigh College, Oakleigh South Primary School and Huntingdale Primary School.

One group of students- Satoshi, Lily, Maya, Lindsay, Kenny, Hector, Monaka, Tony, Atsuya and Rio went to South Oakleigh College to work with the students from the other schools to learn how to make the famous Kewpie Mayonnaise. The event was run by the company via Zoom, all in Japanese. The students had to listen and comprehend the Japanese instructions to make the mayonnaise. They then got to taste what they made!

Our students enjoyed making the mayonnaise, however, they were surprised by the difference in the taste between handmade and factory-made. They learned that there are no additives in Kewpie mayonnaise because salt and vinegar have a bactericidal effect. They also learned that Kewpie Mayonnaise is tackling global environmental issues in many ways.

I’d like to thank Naomi Mori-Hanazono for organising this event for the three schools and to Eiji Nishikubo for supporting her.

Another group of students- Keita, Jamie, Selina, Billie, Mei, Max. S, Max. L, Oliver, Amalia, Kirin, Hana, Zalia, May, Utano, Mancy, Cathy, Mika, Cassie, Sophie, Scarlet and Noemi travelled to Oakleigh South PS to compete in the EV3 Lego Challenge. These students had worked all year with Mr Magart to practice their skills in building their robots and writing programs for them. On the day, the students were set the challenge of imagining they were on the Moon and needed to send a message back to mission command to be rescued. The students collaborated on their plans, discussed these with a panel of teachers and in the afternoon, presented their solution to the entire group. The focus was on fun and creativity. Solutions included, dance Morse code, drawing and even a John Denver song. The students displayed confidence when presenting and the audience was engaged and respectful. Overall, it was a very successful excursion. Our thanks to SOSC for hosting and driving us there.

Oakleigh Education Plan Newsletter- sign up

The Oakleigh Education Plan has been implemented to improve education outcomes for our school and all current and future Oakleigh students.

Its focus is to bring our community together, sharing resources and experiences across all education levels and expertise in Oakleigh.

A community e-newsletter will be released at the end of the year to showcase the benefits of the plan and highlight how you might be able to be involved.

This newsletter will only be bi-annual but hopes to showcase some of the fantastic work being done by our Oakleigh community.

Click here if you would like to subscribe to the first edition.

ICAS English Test Results

We have been informed about the ICAS English Competition Results. Congratulations to these students for their achievements:

2022 Teaching Staff

Our 2022 Staff is as follows:

We welcome Annika McCann back who is from Camberwell PS and has experience in the 50/50 bilingual learning structure and Kumiko Nagata who completed her teaching rounds with us during the year. We also welcome new Chaplain Susan Hanger, who comes to us with a background in counselling.

We say our heartfelt goodbye to Jenny Celle who has decided to retire to spend more time with her family. Jenny has been at the school for 12 years and has been instrumental in supporting students, families and staff in time of need. She will be sadly missed.

Chris Everett, who was with us in Terms 3 & 4, will return to the Blackburn English Language School in 2022.

Thank you to Kate Gray for teaching 2A and 2B for the remainder of this year.

Congratulations to Ms Koyama

We received fabulous news on 12 December, in the wee hours of the morning- 3.29am that Year 2 Teacher Nozomi Koyama gave birth to a beautiful boy Benjamin Loaiza-Koyama. We are so pleased for her and husband Ruben!

Parenting in the Digital World

In my final piece about digital online safety, it is really important that your child keeps personal information offline. Experts recommend that:

Children only accept friendships and connections with people they know or usernames they know
Have a username that doesn’t include their full name or date of birth etc
That accounts are kept private
That passwords are strong so they cannot be hacked

It is also recommended that you know the classification of online games your child is participating in.

A great website about e-safety is the e-safety commission website: https://www.esafety.gov.au/

As we move into the holiday season, children have more time to be online. It is vitally important that you are monitoring when they are online, who they are online with and for how long.

Reminder- 2022 Start Date and

Curriculum Days

Each year DET gives 4 curriculum days to schools. The first day of the school year is a mandated curriculum day. The following dates have been approved by School Council for our curriculum days:

Friday 28 January (state-wide mandated day)
Monday 31 January
Tuesday 21 June (Parent teacher interviews on this day)
Friday 15 July

Years 1-6 will start Tuesday 1 February.

Foundation students will start on Thursday 3 February.

As per DET policy Foundation students are required to undertake literacy and numeracy assessments which occur on Wednesdays in February. Students are only required at school when their allocated testing time is. The dates foundation students are not required at school are 2, 9, 16 and 23 February.

2022 School Start Time

Each day the first bell rings at 8.50am to signify that students can enter classrooms. From 8.50 am to 9.00am students can prepare their belongings in the classroom, be marked off the roll, hand in notices and be prepared for teaching instruction to begin at 9.00am. School will finish at 3.30pm each day as per normal.

Last day of Term- Finish Time

The last day of Term 4, 17th December, all students will finish school at 1.30pm. We expect all families to be offsite by 1.45pm. Team Kids will operate for those families who wish to use the service.

School Uniform

The Summer holidays is the perfect time to assess your child’s school uniform needs.

Parents are asked to buy items with our Huntingdale logo including- teal polo shirt, jumper, jacket, school bag, hat and school dress. These can be purchased from PSW in Ormond.

All students must wear a Huntingdale hat and will need this from the first day of Term 1.

Other items that are navy blue such as shorts, tracksuit pants, leggings, tights and skirts can be purchased from PSW or chain stores such as K-Mart and Target.

Any accessories need to be in navy blue not black. Black is not our school uniform colour. Our school uniform colours are navy blue and teal.

We look forward to seeing all our students in their Huntingdale uniform in 2022.

Staff Service Awards

Each year we recognise staff for their service at Huntingdale Primary School. We congratulation the following staff for their dedication and service to the school:

20 years- Dr Rosella Dossi, Naomi Mori-Hanazono and Alyson Wakely

10 years- Tomoko Smith

I know the school community will join me in warmly congratulating these staff members on this service achievement.

I wish all of our school community a fabulous festive season, a relaxing holiday break and I will see most of you in 2022, which I hope will be a more settled year! Take care!

Ruth Biddle

Principal

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