Assistant Principal's Report 

What an exciting couple of weeks it has been at Orchard Park Primary School. It started off with a long weekend which was very nice after a busy start to the school year, giving us a chance to freshen up and recharge our batteries ahead of another busy period. 

In these past couple of weeks, we have seen a number of students excitedly showing off and cashing in prize coupons that they have purchased at our Spark Buck prize shop! Some of these prizes have been at the cheaper end of our menu such as some free-reading time, sitting on a bean-bag for a day or choosing a game for their class to play during year-level sport. Some prizes however have required a considerable amount of saving and come from the expensive end of our prize menu. This includes Havish and Deng who both decided that after saving 50 Spark Bucks, they wanted to borrow Mr Jagoe's chair for a day! The boys from all reports both had a fabulous day learning in the Principal's chair, whilst Mr Jagoe was none too comfortable working on his office floor!!

We also had 6 little legends who had saved up 50 Spark Bucks and wanted to do a cooking class. I took these aspiring chefs down to our food tech area last Friday afternoon where we baked some delicious pizzas! Every child got to choose their own toppings.  We made some Hawaiian and BBQ chicken pizzas with some just plain pineapple and cheese. And the best part was that they got to take them home with them to eat! Check out the pictures below.

It is so pleasing to see so many students earning such a huge number of Spark Bucks by demonstrating our school values consistently. We also presented our first awards at assembly to people who have earned over 50 Spark Bucks. This earns them 'Superstar' status. As students continue to earn Spark Bucks, they may achieve 'Champion' status after 100 and the can achieve 'Legend' status at 200 Spark Bucks so stay tuned!

This Wednesday I also had the pleasure of accompanying our school Chaplain, Jay, to Lysterfield Lake with our school leaders on another CHIPS camp. You may remember that Jay and Mr Scanlon took a group not so long ago to Phillip Island Adventure Resort. The focus of this excursion though was around developing Leadership skills. The session was again run by the incredibly entertaining and insightful, Captain Eric. 

Captain Eric has been running these sessions for over 20 years and is such a wonderful storyteller. He shared lots of dreamtime stories, sailing stories, stories about conquering fears and linked everything back to Leadership and effective leadership skills. The students were able to complete a range of activities throughout the day from sailing and bike riding to bushwalks, cart riding and team-building challenges. The sailing was without a doubt the big highlight of the day, being out on the water and trying to work out which way the sails needed to be facing to generate some speed. The BBQ lunch was also pretty popular and the students each got to bring a showbag home with some goodies as a bit of a reminder of the day and the lessons learned. Check out some of the pictures below. 

There are only 2 more weeks to go now until we are on school holidays again. It's hard to believe that we are nearly a term in, but as you can see, a lot can happen in two weeks too! I look forward to checking in then and being able to celebrate some further Term One accomplishments ahead of a well earned holiday break!

Until then, take care.

Regards

Danny Forster

Assistant Principal