Principal's Report

Parents and Carers Webinar – The Resilience Project

As part of our partnership with The Resilience Project, we are very excited to provide all families with the opportunity to attend our Parent and Carer Webinar with Hugh van Cuylenburg on Wednesday 6th April, 6.30pm-8.00pm (90 minutes). This is a remote presentation that you can be a part of from the comfort of your home. Hugh is the founder of The Resilience Project and one of Australia’s most sought after speakers around mental health. We are so fortunate to have this experience available to our school community. Some of you may have come along to our session last year which was presented by Martin Heppell. Whilst the core principles are the same, Hugh brings a wonderfully different perspective to the work and I assure you that you will walk away with some new ideas and considerations. If you have adults within your family or friendship group who you would like to invite along to attend this session, we invite you to share this opportunity with them. 

During this presentation, Hugh will share his experiences and combine them with practical strategies that can be implemented every day to improve our overall wellbeing. This will link so well with the learning students are doing at school on a daily basis around developing positive mental health strategies. Attached to this message is a flyer outlining the session and what it will entail. 

Parents will need to register using the following registration link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_KAyQq0s-TjiuXOVAuBa1JQ

**Upon registration, you will receive a link to attend the webinar, along with a reminder the day prior.

Please note that the webinar will include parents and carers from other Partnership Schools.

We look forward to many of our parents and carers joining this very worthwhile session to further support your children. 

Curriculum Days for remainder of the year

At our most recent School Council meeting, the remaining Curriculum Days were approved and locked in for 2022. 

The dates are as follows;

• Thursday 12th May and Friday 13th May. The reason that we have allocated 2 Curriculum Days in a row is that we will be working with a phonics expert who is coming down to our school from Sydney to further develop our collective understanding of Jolly Phonics and Jolly Grammar. As you would know, these programs form a key foundation to our literacy approaches and we are extremely excited for this new learning and the impact it will have upon the outcomes for all students in literacy at OPPS. 
• Friday 22nd July. The focus of this day will be around how we build the capacity of our staff to align assessment practices and intervene to meet the needs of students in Mathematics.

Whole day care will be available with Theircare on these days for families who require this service. Bookings will be available in the near future through the usual channels. 

What a brilliant end to the week!!!!

Today has been such an incredible day with all of our students demonstrating our school values in so many ways. Our entire school celebrated Harmony Day through a range of activities and experiences celebrating diversity, aiming to foster inclusiveness, respect and that all different cultures can make a valuable contribution to society. This is something I am so proud of our school community and love that we embrace the different cultures that come together as one. In addition to this, we also ran our school cross country. Mr Scanlon and all staff we full of praise for the positive attitude and effort that all students demonstrated throughout the day. I would like to make particular mention of the incredible job our Senior School students did throughout the competitions, marshalling the course as well as supporting all of the students to give their very best. Without their leadership and commitment there is no way the day would have run as smoothly as it did. Mr Scanlon will now consider all of the results and create our teams for the district competition. Stay tuned for more information in upcoming newsletters about this. 

The race that stopped a nation...well a school at least

A young Prep student by the name of Elliott has been talking with me most days about him and I having a running race. The banter has been ongoing and I finally succumbed and accepted his challenge today. All of the school assembled in the gymnasium after lunch today as Elliott and I squared off for this much anticipated event. The opinions among our staff and students were split down the middle as to who they thought would be the victor...the speedy little Prep student or the long legged giraffe like principal. I was a little slow out of the blocks and Elliott broke away to an early lead. As hard as I tried, I just couldn't bridge the gap and went down to the speedy little Prep student by the barest of margins. Elliott was gracious in victory and was awarded the much deserved blue ribbon. I will lick my wounds, head back to the training track and perhaps challenge Elliott for a rematch in years to come.