Message from the Principal 

James Penson 

WELCOME TO THE PRINCIPAL TEAM & CONGRATULATIONS TO BRAD RYAN

We are very pleased and excited to announce that Brad Ryan has been appointed as an Assistant Principal at Greenhills Primary School. This will mean that we have a Principal Team of 3 members including Janine and myself. Brad is an outstanding and experienced school leader having spent time in an Acting Assistant Principal role at our school and an Acting Principal role at St. Andrew’s Primary School.

Congratulations and well done to Becc Stephens and Nigel Dunne who have been appointed as Learning Specialists for the next three years. For the past couple of years both Becc and Nigel have been in Acting Learning Specialist roles, so it is GREAT that their work has been recognised and formalized and what an awesome outcome for our school. 

This confirms our Executive Leadership Team for 2023: James Penson, Janine Hough, Brad Ryan, Becc Stephens and Victoria Harris.

These appointments are also another example of our school’s has a rich history of building and growing leadership capacity. We are also fortunate to have a strong group of other leaders on staff that will support our Exec Leadership Team and lead exciting improvement initiatives across the school. 

 

PARENT ASSOCIATION & TRIVIA NIGHT

To quote a GREAT song lyric…Oh what a night! Our Parent Association Trivia Night last Saturday was as “Greenhills” as it gets! An event where parents, caregivers, friends and staff were able to come together, have lots of fun, boot scoot and Gangnam style and raise valuable funds for the school. A big thank-you to everyone who attended and congratulations to our winners of both the trivia and the many raffles as well. I take this opportunity to thank Becc Zappia, Mel Smith and Laura Wade along with all members of our Parent Association for organizing this event. This was a massive effort and one that we all very much appreciate.  All the money raised will help us continue to renew our classroom furniture and today we have already ordered large TV screens to replace the old and tired interactive whiteboard projectors in the Music and Art room and the Library. More furniture will be also ordered with a focus on Years 3 & 4.

 

GRADE STRUCTURES - INFORMATION 2023

Having completed our collection of parent requests and continuing with our staff and student requests, we have started to finalise our class groups for next year. Last year we flagged our aim to move to a school structure of straight classes across the whole school. This continues in 2023. Our experience this year has reinforced that this structure best suits the educational needs of our students based on our teaching and learning model which is driven by our Professional Learning Community (PLC) team approach. Our smaller teaching teams have enabled a high level of collaboration, more time together for planning and review of teaching / teacher impact and a more agile and targeted curriculum delivery.

 

I take this opportunity to reinforce the message that even though we have a “straight” year level structure across the whole school, we still consider all our classes to be composite classes. In each of our classes we have over four different levels of academic learning and many levels of social and emotional needs. Our staff work very effectively in teams to target our teaching to the skills and knowledge that is required by each student. The way we build any of our classes is not different from each other. All classes are built to ensure a balance of academic, social and behavioural needs. 

2023 as at 19/11/2022**

 

Current enrolments

No of classes

Class Sizes

Prep

58

3

19, 19, 20

Year 1

67

3

22, 22, 23

Year 2

84

4

21, 21, 21, 21

Year 3

63

3

21, 21, 21

Year 4

88

4

22, 22, 22,22

Year 5

56

2

28, 28

Year 6

83

3

27, 28, 28

Total

499

22 Grades

 

 

**Please note that this may change into and throughout next year.

 

We will also operate with 5 specialist subjects for the full school year. These are Italian, Visual Arts, Performing Arts, Physical Education and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Maths). 

 

The full list of staff for next year and their roles along with a map of where each classroom will be located will be published to the whole school community in Contact on Thursday 8th December. This will then lead into our 2 x whole school transition sessions on Thursday 8th December and Tuesday 13th December.

 

TERM 4 MEET WITH THE PRINCIPAL TEAM FORUM

Thank-you to all those families that were able to attend last night’s Meet with the Principal Team Forum. Janine, Brad and I really value these sessions as they provide a wonderful opportunity to connect with you and do what we can to support and grow our partnership. Sharing information is a big part of this, so you truly are an integral part of our school. 

Our favourite part if these evenings are the ideas, feedback and suggestions you provide. Parent input is incredibly important to us and as such based-on ideas from the session last night we would like to invite parents and carers into our classrooms to be part of assembly where your child is receiving an award such as Student of the Week or an ICAS certificate etc. We will try and communicate this as early as possible so please keep your eyes out for these announcements. We hope that in doing this, our assemblies where we don’t have our hall are still opportunities for you to enjoy those very special moments with your child/ren.

Please also note that all our assemblies will be held live via Webex at 3pm unless we advertise these as outdoor, whole school assemblies.

We will also be taking some other ideas raised for further consideration to see how we might implement them. This includes looking at ways to include another Parent-Teacher Interview throughout the year in addition to our Student Agency Conferences and ways to ensure that our students are supported to develop stronger organizational skills including in class and through homework. I am also pleased to announce that all classes from Prep-Year 4 will have a reading diary next year as part of their homework and our Year 5 & 6’s will have an organisational diary. 

If you ever have any questions, suggestions or feedback please contact a member of the Principal Team who will make a time to meet with you. The forums are a terrific way to do this, but you do not need to wait until the next meeting in Term 1, 2023 to have a voice and input into our school. 

REMEMBERANCE DAY 2022

Tomorrow we will pause to commemorate Remembrance Day. This provides a special reminder to our students about the sacrifice and commitment of all those people who have served our nation in active service. Our students will also be encouraged to visit our Remembrance Garden which stands at the front of our school as a permanent reminder.

 

EDUCATION SHOWCASE – TUESDAY 15TH NOVEMBER 7pm – 8pm

Our Education Showcase event has a special positive transition focus this year and this is your chance to participate in your child’s education and find out a little bit more about what next year will look like! We will launch into the fun and activity at 7pm and your challenge is to complete 3 different 15-minute sessions in the classrooms your child/ren will be in 2023. For example, our current Year 1 students will be able to join in with their parents through 3 different Year 2 activities, all of approx. 15 minutes so that we finish at 8pm. 

We haven’t run an event like this since pre-covid, but they have always been very active, hands on and a wonderful way to get that Greenhills experience as a family. 

An outline listing each of the sessions has been sent home and another Compass Newsfeed will also be sent out. It would be GREAT if you booked in following the links so that our teachers can prepare the correct number of materials they will need. 

If you have any questions about this event, please contact me: james.penson@education.vic.gov.au 

 

 

James Penson

Principal