Principal's Report 

Welcome back to Rangeview for 2023! 

We are so pleased to be back with all of our wonderful Rangeview Families including welcoming our new Foundation Families as they start their Rangeview journey. As a parent myself, who has just seen a child move up to Secondary College after 7 years at Rangeview, it is indeed a journey. The growth, development, and depth of experience that occurs throughout Primary School is nothing short of remarkable. As a team of educators, we see this as both a responsibility and a privilege to have such influence over this time. 

We welcomed 90 new Foundation students to the school and 16 students from other levels across the school. We begin the year with 689 students from Foundation to Level 6. 

We were very lucky to have a number of new staff join our school for 2023 and it has been wonderful to see them settle in over the last two weeks and start to develop relationships with their students and teams. 

Natalie Morrissey - Level 5/6 Classroom Teacher

Lisa Janes - Level 5/6 Classroom Teacher

Dale Bateup - Level 1 Classroom Teacher

Karen Smith - School Nurse

We also welcomed back two of our Rangeview teachers;

Meg Hubbard - Level 5/6 Classroom Teacher

Jackie Moran - Enrichment Classroom Teacher

Our school leadership team is also excited to be welcoming our two new school captains - Joel Bryant and Emily Poon to their roles for 2023. 

This Term at Rangeview we have a wide variety of programs, events and special celebrations that will take place. We began last week with the Start Up Program across the school. This is designed to help our students settle into their new grades and get to know their teachers and their new classmates. We welcomed back our Level 1 - 6 students on Monday 30th January and our newest learners began on Tuesday 31st with the commencement of Foundation for the year. We were able to have a Cheers and Tears welcome for these families on the library deck - something we have missed during COVID restrictions. On Wednesday 1st February our new Grade 6 Peer Mediators had their training with Natalie Powell the school Social Worker, and they are now out in the playground each lunch break helping students with friendship issues and small problems/concerns. On Sunday 5th February many senior students met with Mr Clark and Ms Hubbard at Aquanation to try out for our District Swimming Team. Mr Clark will report on this in his Sport page. Well done to all of the students who tried out on the day. Our Student Leaders have begun their before school meetings on Monday mornings with Mr Sommers, Ms Balderston and myself. They will learn more about leadership and will have roles and responsibilities across the school. Our staff have met together in teams to ensure that there is a good handover of learning and engagement information from one level's teachers to the next. We want the transition time to be as smooth and positive as possible for all of our students. 

Term One Curriculum and Events

Throughout this term we will have District Swimming, Safer Internet Day, Getting to Know you Parent / Teacher Interviews, Hockey Clinics, Welcome Twilight Picnic, Whole School Photo Day, Level 3 & 5 NAPLAN, Whole School Harmony Day, and a Pupil Free Day on 31st March. Our Foundation and Level 1 students will be starting a new phonics program ‘Little Learners Love Literacy’ and the teaching of phonological knowledge and phonological awareness will be structured and strengthened across the school from Level 2 – 6. Our Professional Learning Communities continue this year with teachers meeting fortnightly to look at student data, identify areas for learning improvement, and implement change to modify and improve our teaching practice. We will have a focus on mathematics in Term 1, student agency in Term 2, phonics in Term 3 and student wellbeing in Term 4. Our school continues as a Lead School in the Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships and we will be running workshops for other schools in the network on areas of this model. Rangeview will also continue to deepen our focus on the Resilience Project. We will be teaching all students the tenants of Gratitude, Empathy and Mindfulness (GEM) and will be this year reaching out to families and encouraging you all to become involved in this evidence based work with your children.  We have a lot to be grateful for in our beautiful community. 

Enrichment Model

This year we have introduced a new teaching program called Enrichment. April Warfield, Ryan Evans and Jackie Moran will be teaching Enrichment for one hour a week to all of our grades from Foundation to Level 6. This model was introduced to ensure we are following the new Victorian Government Schools Agreement (VGSA) and it will see our students accessing specialist teachers in areas of Literacy, Numeracy, NAPLAN Readiness, Digitech, Touch Typing and Inquiry. We are excited to see how this teaching with enrich the learning and engagement of our students. 

Break Times

We have moved this year to a different break timetable for the school. Our lunch break (big break) is from 11am – 12pm with 15 minutes of supervised eating from 11am – 11:15am. We then have the recess break (small break) at 1:30pm to 2pm. This allows for the longer outside time to be moved away from the hottest part of the day, it provides an earlier lunch for our hungry learners, and it allows for staff meetings to fall during the working day as required by the new VGSA. Our new Junior School Council will be taking feedback and ideas from the grades and working towards naming our new two breaks. This could be interesting... 

Parent / Teacher Getting to Know You Interviews

The ‘Getting to Know You Interviews’ will be held on Monday, 13th February from 3:40pm to 5:30pm and Wednesday, 15th February from 3:40pm to 7:30pm. These will be held in classrooms with teachers and in the Library with our Specialist team. Please let your teacher know if you wish to arrange a WebEx meeting instead. 

Families are required to book interviews online. Information will be sent home with times and access information. Families will receive their unique access number to log onto the COMPASS Parent Portal.  ‘Getting to Know You Interviews’ are valued by parents, students and teachers. If you do not have Internet access at home, please ring the school office on 9874 6381 for alternative arrangements to be made.

Foundation Families - Please note: there will be no Foundation interviews due to the interviews undertaken at the beginning of the term.  

New Playground

Our new playground on the banks of the oval was delayed over the holiday break due to conveyancing issues around the slope of the land. This has been further investigated and works are re-commencing with an expected completion date this term. It will be wonderful when we are able to start to use this new play space. 

Car Parking

Please be aware of the various parking restrictions and drop off zones around the school. The local council do enforce restrictions with infringement notices. The 5 minute drop off zone does not allow you to walk your child into the school, so please do not leave your car parked in this zone, it can cause traffic congestion. 

The school car park off Churinga Ave, is for staff only, except for OSHClub usage before 8am and after 4pm. The boom gate has been installed for traffic management and as a safety measure as children and cars don’t mix.

Nude Food 

There has been a collective effort to reduce the litter in our school yard and it is working because students are eating inside and only permitted to take nude food outside. We encourage parents – wherever possible – to send the students with a packed lunch that is nude! 

School Council Elections

Notice of Elections and Call for Nominations 2023- 2024

Friday 10th February 2022

Closing date for Nominations Friday 17th February 2022

I am announcing the annual elections for our School Council. School council members are elected (or co-opted in the case of community members) for approximately a two year term. Usually half the membership expires each year creating vacancies for the annual school council election. We have 6 Parent vacancies and 0 DET employee vacancies.

Process:

1. The principal arranges and conducts the election. The principal will issue a notice and call for nominations for parent and Department employee members in February or early March. The notice will include a nomination form or way to reply and the date to submit the nomination. The election process must be completed by the end of March.

2. Return the nomination form to the principal through the office within the time frame stated on the notice of election. Those who nominate will receive a receipt. Ask at the school for help if you would like to stand for election and are not sure what to do.

3. If there are more nominations than there are vacant positions on council, a ballot (vote) will be conducted after the call for nominations has closed.

4. If you decide to stand for election, you can arrange for someone to nominate you or you can nominate yourself in the appropriate category.

5. Forms are available at the office.

Annual Privacy Reminder for 2023

Our school collects, uses, discloses and stores student and parent personal information for standard school functions or where permitted by law, as stated in the Schools’ Privacy Policy.

Please take time to remind yourself of our school’s collection notice, found on our website. For more information about privacy, refer to: Schools’ Privacy Policy — information for parents. This information is also linked from our School Website, and is available in nine community languages:

• Amharic
• Arabic
• Dari
• Gujarati
• Mandarin
• Somali
• Sudanese
• Turkish
• Urdu
• Vietnamese

This will be a wonderful year - we are so pleased to be back! 

Marika Ferguson

Principal