Principal's Report
Dear Parents, Families and Community members,
It's now the end of Week Four of Term Two, marking almost the halfway point of this nine week Term.
As families will be familiar with, we alternate between Newsletters and Assemblies fortnightly. It was wonderful last week to welcome families back to our 'face to face' assemblies for the first time in over two years! We look forward to this continuing from next week and seeing more and more families attending to celebrate learning and achievements of our students.
This week our Year 10-12 students ventured off on camp to Anglesea, staying at the beautiful Camp Wilkin. I had the pleasure of joining the crew on Thursday night and participating in their disco, as well as hearing about the great things they had been doing up until then.
We will no doubt hear and see more about the camp in an upcoming Newsletter, but I'd like to thank and congratulate our wonderful staff who coordinated and provided this great opportunity for our students. Melissa, Megan, Andrew, Louise, Alison, Kateyln, Emma and Steph; great job!
Education Week
Education Week is next week, Monday 23rd May - Friday 27th May and this year the theme is "150 Years of Public Education". To celebrate, we have various activities planned for our school community to enjoy.
On Monday while you are enjoying your long weekend, you may wish to kick off the fun with a dress up! We would love you to show us your understanding of what school life looked like 150 years ago. What did students and teachers dress like? What was the transport students/teachers used to get to school? What resources would they have used in the classroom? Please take photos and upload to the school's Facebook page on Monday.
On Wednesday night, we are running our inaugural Family Maths Night - Everyone Counts at ACS! We look forward to welcoming families to enjoy a range of maths activities and games between 6-7:30pm.
On Friday 27th we welcome our grandparents or special visitor to enjoy a session with students in learning communities between 2:10 - 2:30pm. Students can share with their grandparent/special visitor what school life is like for them and chat about how this may differ from their visitor's school experience.
Finally, we have our annual Scholastic Book Fair available to browse and purchase a variety of books across the week. Money raised will be used to purchase books for our learning community libraries. The Fair is also open before and after the Family Maths Night too – please refer to the flyer in your Compass Newsfeed for all the details.
How your fundraising efforts support our school!
Armstrong Creek School has a small but very motivated parent’s club (PACC) that have quietly been raising funds for us since we opened in 2018. Our biggest fundraising year was 2019 where a total of $10,542 was raised for the purchase of literacy resources! Then along came a global pandemic that disrupted life as we know it and meant most fundraising events were put on hold or majorly scaled down. Purchasing resources became complicated due to suppliers not being in a position to fill orders so this was also paused.
However, during 2020 and 2021, our amazing parents continued to work hard and adjust to the ‘online world’ and went on to raise another $3,380 for the purchase of clubs/numeracy resources and science/Auslan resources. At the end of 2021, we were finally able to complete our literacy resources “wish list” and purchase over $6,000 worth of take home readers as part of our 2019 fundraising commitment in addition to games and other resources for our lunchtime clubs and numeracy programs.
The fundraising goal for 2022 hasn’t yet been determined by School Council but if you have any ideas on what sorts of resources you think may be beneficial to our school community, please share these with a member of the PACC. You may even like to consider joining PACC and supporting them as they continue to work hard to “bridge the gap” between Department of Education funding and locally raised funds (donations, commissions). Perhaps you're a small business owner or Manager of an organisation and able to offer products for free or at discounted rate that might support fundraising events e.g. sausages and bread (sausage sizzles) items for raffles? Please contact PACC President Jenna Grundy - jenna.grundy86@gmail.com or 0419 330 763 to talk about the ways in which you can support PACC and become involved in your child's school.
Don’t forget that we also have a Library Fund and any donations made to it are Tax Deductible. If you wish to make a donation to this fund, please use your family’s bpay details (give us a call in the office if you don’t know your details) to process the payment online and follow up with an email to the school account (armstrong.school.creek@education.vic.gov.au) advising us of this donation. Those of you who made a donation at the commencement of the school year – thank you so much! Your combined donations of $5,850.00 will be valuable as we look to increase our library stock (both physical resources and online) and your tax deductible receipt will be processed this term and emailed to you.
A Special Morning Tea
Evie earned 50 creek coins and had a special morning tea with Kathryn this morning.
Well done Evie!
VCAL - PET ADOPTION
A message from our VCAL students....
"We are trying to get pets to great homes as part of the VCAL and would like the pets to get adopted. So please, please adopt the pet so they can go to a good home. Please look at the animals for adoption in the front office.
Sirius is looking for a good home to go to!"
If you are interested in adopting Sirius, please contact Geelong Animal Rescue (GAR).
A Proud Sporting Achievement
We would like to acknowledge the sporting talents here at Armstrong Creek School. Congratulations to Mex who ran Cross Country with Geelong Little Athletics Centre on Sunday and beat all of the kids in his race, competing against students from the district level and some high level athletes. He ran an impressive 90 seconds faster, a time of 6.10!! This time is competitive at State level! We are so incredibly proud of Mex and his achievement. We look forward to seeing what he has to show us in the coming years and are so proud that he represents Armstrong Creek School. Well done Mex!
If your child has any incredible sporting achievements please let your PE teachers, Rhiarn and Zoe know.
Democracy Sausage
Tomorrow our school will be utilised as a local voting centre for the Federal Election. Thanks to our highly committed parent group, PACC, if you are voting locally you will be able to pick yourself up a sausage and drink while you're at it!
All proceeds will go back into school programs and we thank the local businesses who have supported us with this and we will be sure to publicly acknowledge you in future editions of the Newsletter.
A Big Thank You to ACS Community
"Thank you very much to the Student Representative Council at Armstrong Creek School and the school community 😊 it’s truly been beyond heart-warming to see so many schools come together to raise funds for the flood affected students and schools! So we are very grateful. "
Student Free Day
Remember that this Monday, May 23rd is a Student Free Day so please make sure you have alternative arrangements for students and we look forward to seeing everyone back Tuesday!
Take care and enjoy!
Evan Savage
Principal