From the Principal

Dear Families,

Year 6 camp: What a week the luckiest kids have had up at Howqua and Mt Buller. From trivia nights, skiing, to high ropes and water slides and horse riding - the list goes on. The students were amazing. Well mannered, respectful, caring, encouraging and resilient. Parents - you should be very proud of the children you have raised so far! 

A massive thanks to the staff that attended for your organisation before camp and then unrelenting dedication to making sure the entire camp was successful. Late nights, early mornings, interrupted sleep, administering medications, giving care to all - you are super humans! Thanks so much. 

Parents - thanks for supporting staff on this camp and also financially to enable the greatest of memories and relationships to be strengthened amongst this cohort before they take off for secondary school. We hope the students loved their time away and while we know they are exhausted, will hopefully bounce back this week. 

Covid: With an increasing number of cases prevalent within our community, please keep up to date with health advice. We will give general reminders about masks, keep air purifiers on, encourage hand hygiene etc. Plenty of RATs available via the office if required. 

CRT: the casual relief teachers are doing a great job around our school for staff who are unwell or on leave. We hope that our staff remain healthy to ensure continuity in learning and we need your help in this. Keep testing and monitoring for symptoms. Thanks in advance. 

Early arrivals: staff have expressed their concern for the children being ‘dropped off’ well before 8.45am. Just a reminder that yard supervision starts at 8:45am and we have a terrific before and after school program onsite that provides care and supervision for our community. Please use it! It’s not safe to have kids unsupervised so early. 

Common Professional Practice Day: Wednesday 14th September (student free day)

Like last term, we have been strongly encouraged to hold our Professional Practice Day as a common event as there is such a high demand on CRT’s. We have consulted with our AEU sub branch, non AEU members and School Council. We often try to have these days adjacent to the weekend but the same teachers and classes become impacted with missing specialist class sessions so we are trying to share this amongst teams. 

Camp Australia: CA will provide care on Wednesday 14th September for families if we have enough bookings to make it viable. Please visit their website or chat with Jo at CA hosted in the Library area.

Footy & Netball: Congrats to a few of our staff members on their achievements on the footy field and netball court recently. Unfortunately, Madi Judd’s Drysdale football team lost to Torquay on the weekend which knocked them out of the finals. Mat Hebbard’s Drysdale team will play in the upcoming finals and Mat also won the league goal kicking on 87 for the season. We hope you reach 100 over the finals - just not against Torquay! And Cory Connor was also looking at winning the reserves goal kicking but was pipped by a couple. And Mr Horbury’s team will finish their home and away season on the weekend but miss out on finals. We wish Anna (in the office) all the best with her netball finals coming up soon too! Congrats to you all. 

100 days of Foundation: what a fantastic day for the Foundation students recently. The assembly was clearly a huge success and if you weren't able to see the fabulous costumes etc, please check out last week's newsletter. We hope to have the Foundation students perform at the next whole school assembly. 

The Year 2 Potato Games: what a fun day last Friday with ‘The Games’ coming to OGPS. Thanks to the Year 2 team - the students had an awesome day - until the rain came! 

Parent/Caregiver/Guardian Opinion Survey:  Next Monday an email will be sent to all 406 families (usually parent A from the enrolment form) with a link to the Opinion Survey. Please keep an eye on your inbox next Monday. The survey will be open for about a month. Thanks in advance.

John Hendry OAM: Thanks to the 70+ families who joined us last night for an evening with John Hendry about Relationships based Education. It was great to hear from such a knowledgeable person in this field, hear his stories but also practical advice that we can all take away and enhance our own relationships. I strongly encourage the 70+ families to share the messages with family and friends. Congrats to Andy McNeilly for organising and hosting the night too.

Have a great week everyone.

Scott McCumber

Principal

Ocean Grove Primary School