Pupil-Free Day

We had a very productive pupil-free day on Monday where our teachers and education support staff engaged in professional learning aligned to our goals in our Annual Implementation Plan. Our teaching staff focused on developing their skills and knowledge of effective explicit instruction practices when teaching writing. Our education support team worked with Hazel (speech pathologist) to develop their knowledge of phonics and phonological awareness and strategies to support all of our students in literacy.

School Review

All Victorian Government schools conduct a school review every four years. Our school will be working through the review process in Term 3 and will create a new strategic plan that will begin in 2022. We are currently in the Pre-Review Self Evaluation (PRSE) stage of the review process. During this stage, we spend time identifying our progress towards the four-year goals of the current strategic plan and celebrating our successes. It is important that this process involves the whole school community and we will be seeking information and feedback from parents and carers in the near future.

Reports

The report format has reverted back to the pre-2020 model for the semester 1 reports with the added inclusion of the general comment from the 2021 reports. Teachers are currently assessing students to measure progress against the Victorian Curriculum and will begin writing soon. The reports will go live on Compass on the final day of term 2. Parents and carers will be given an opportunity to discuss their child’s report with the teachers at the parent/teacher conferences in week 1 of term 3.

Junior School Council

All students in Years 1-5 have had the opportunity to nominate themselves to be selected as a Junior School Councillor. All classes went through a process where students prepared a speech and presented it to their peers. I was fortunate enough to view the Year 2/3 cohort present their speeches in front of the whole 2/3 cohort and was most impressed by the quality of the speeches and the bravery of the students to stand up and speak in front of all those people.

All the successful JSC members were presented with their badges at assembly last week and had their first meeting yesterday where they began discussions about their roles and how they can help to make AGPS even better.

Outside School Hours Care (OSHC) working party

Thank you to everyone that completed the OSHC survey last week. The working party have collated the results and discussed the findings at the school council meeting last night. We will be putting an expression of interest out to OSHC providers and will work through a selection process in the near future.

Special Events

AGPS participated in the 2021 National Simultaneous Storytime this week. This event occurs every year where a picture book, written and illustrated by an Australian author and illustrator, is read simultaneously in libraries, schools, pre-schools, childcare centres, family homes, bookshops and many other places around the country. This year the story was read by astronaut Dr Shannon Walker from the International Space Station!

Next week is Education Week and Reconciliation Week. All students across the school will participate in activities throughout the week to gain an understanding of the key themes and messages of the week.

Staff Car Park Reminder

Please ensure that you do not use the staff car park for pick up or drop off. The only exception to this is picking up and dropping off your child to before or after school care. Children should not be in the car park as this poses a serious safety risk.

2022 Preps

If you have a child beginning prep in 2022, please contact the office as this greatly assists us with planning. Thank you to all those families that have already done so.

We are offering school tours for any families that are considering Altona Green for their 2022 prep child. The tours will be held on the following dates:

9:30am Tuesday 25th May
9:30am Tuesday 15th June

Please register your interest in attending any of these tours by contacting the office 9360 0777 or via email altona.green.ps@education.vic.gov.au

That's all for another busy fortnight at Altona Green. I hope you all have a great weekend. I'm off to check with Cam if he can recall the scores from the Dees V Blues game last weekend!

Take care,

David

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