Principal and Assistant Principal's Page

It’s hard to believe it is the final days of the 2022 school year! It is a real credit to students, teachers and parents to have such a successful school year- it is the longest stretch of face-to-face teaching for 2 years and we have made it!

2022 Graduating Class 

Last Thursday the 2022 Graduating Year 6 class celebrated their final days of primary school. They had an all-day celebration, with a disco dress up theme. Students watched graduation videos, enjoyed signing their graduation book, having a special morning tea and bento box lunch and watched a movie. 

In the evening, family was invited to the graduation ceremony to round off the primary schooling. 

A number of awards were given, and we congratulate these students:

I wish all of our graduating class Dakota, Cassie, Daisy, Grace L, Zeke, Micah, Saneyuki, Kenji, Luka, Max W, Maarametua, Taua, Utano, Sophie, May, Gabby, Kirin, Hanna, Scarlet, Salena, Mancy, Mitsuki, Zalia, Eita, Markus, George, Alezia, Leo, Leila, Grace K, Selina, Callum, Oliver, Cate, Bianca, Yuka, Asuka, Jamie, Max S, Denise, Laura, Mia, Yuika, Aiden, Max L, Ren, Anastasia and Hanlin - all the best in the future with their schooling. 

Christmas Concert

What a fabulous night last Thursday, if a little chilly, to celebrate our Christmas concert. It’s been the first concert we have had since 2019 and it was a wonderful celebration of community spirit and Christmas. We even had a visit from Santa! Our students performed well on the night and all the practice certainly paid off! Thank you to Smith sensei and Fukaya sensi for organising the concert and to other teachers for their support. Thank you to Watashi Mo for selling snacks on the night and for organising the Christmas raffle. Congratulations to the following winners:

1st- Abigail 1C

2nd- Tristan 2C

3rd- Tristan 2C

4th- Noa K 3/4C

5th- Ellen 4A

6th- Naoto 2C

7th- Holly 1B

8th- Kouki 3A

9th- Conrad FC

10th Alezia 5/6D

11th- Olive 4B

12th- Savina 3A

13th Brian FA

14th- Lilia 3/4C

15th Sarana FC

16th- Gabby 5/6C

17th Matthias FC

18th- Yuika 5/6D

19th- Jenson 3/4C

20th Sophie 5/6D

21st- Bianca 5/6B

2023 Teaching Staff

Our 2023 Staff is as follows:

We welcome back Moe Osugi and Nozomi Koyama from leave- it’s lovely to have them return.

We welcome Ari Gorney to staff. He has been doing extensive CRT work for us and completed his final teacher placements with us, so he is very familiar with the school. 

We say goodbye to Annika McCann will move to Caufield PS and Lauren Chung, who will do some travel in 2023. Ryoko Yamaoka will return to her base school Solway Primary School fulltime in 2023. 

We also thank you Audra Simkus and Yuki Liddell for their work as tutors in 2022.

Service Awards

We have a dedicated staff, many of whom have been here over a number of years. At the end of each year we mark the special milestones of staff who have worked at our school. Congratulations to the following staff:

25 years- Maria Perrella

15 years- Eiji Nishikubo and Gill Penfold

Oakleigh Education Plan 2022

We have had a busy year across Oakleigh Education Plan, as leaders and teachers within our three schools worked closely together to achieve our goals and priorities. 

DESIGN THINKING and STEM

A major focus of our work with Monash Tech School and design studio MoveMerge earlier in the year enabled us to learn from our teachers about their beliefs, perceptions and aspirations regarding STEM learning and design thinking. Through this work and ongoing engagement with the Design2Innovate professional learning series delivered by Monash Tech School, the focus of the OEP has transitioned to place a greater emphasis on design thinking.

A Design Thinking professional learning community is being established in 2023 to provide greater structure to our leaders' and teachers' collaborative work and learning. The professional learning community will further strengthen the collaboration and shared learning among our teachers as they continue building their design thinking capability. 

MONASH MAKER FAIRE

Organised by Monash Tech School, Monash University and the City of Monash, the Monash Maker Faire was held on Sunday, 4 December. Over 9000 people throughout the day visited physical marketplaces, labs and studios at Monash University. Our three schools developed a 'Mission to Mars' project where students engaged in design thinking to identify and address several challenges in mounting a mission to Mars. OSPS students tackled the challenge of food and how to grow, harvest and prepare food for living on Mars. HPS students design the facilities to house mission members and provide a habitat and sustainable environment. SOC students designed and developed robots to construct the buildings and facilities designed by their Huntingdale classmates.

The quality and depth of work were outstanding, as was the enthusiasm and depth of knowledge students demonstrated when presented to visitors who filled the Woodside Building throughout the day. Congratulations must go to all our students, teachers, and the Monash Tech School team, who delivered an incredible event.

JAPANESE

Japanese learning continues to be an OEP priority. This year has featured several engagements with the Japanese Consular General. Students have had the opportunity to visit the Japanese Consulate and welcome the Consular-General to Japanese cultural events during the year.

The OEP, through OSPS and SOC, has successfully applied to be part of the Local Native Speakers Language Assistant program in 2023. This program offers only limited places, and securing the services of a language assistant as part of this program for a second year is a great outcome. In no small part, this success can be attributed to OSPS and SOC jointly funding the appointment of a language assistant in 2023, as the program only provides partial funding.

Reciprocal Japanese learning walks will continue in 2023, continuing the learning walks in 2022 to provide teachers with the opportunity to observe Japanese learning across our three schools. It is essential to identify an explicit teaching and learning focus. This supports successful learning as teachers can understand our classrooms' challenges, teaching strategies, and learning strategies by observing, reflecting, and discussing.

MONITORING AND EVALUATION

As our focus has shifted entirely to implementation, work is underway to identify the most meaningful data. Doing this will enable us to continue to monitor and evaluate our achievement and progress across all aspects of our work, such as building teacher capability in design thinking. 

The OEP has continued to build momentum throughout the year. With implementation continuing to be driven by the principals, leadership teams and teachers at each of our schools, we look forward to what we will achieve to benefit the learning and engagement of all our students in 2023.

2023 Curriculum Days & Start Dates 

These dates have been approved by School Council:

Friday 27 January 2023 (statewide day)

Monday 30 January 2023

Monday 24 April 2023- the day before ANZAC Day allowing all families to have an extra-long school holiday break

Wednesday 21 June 2023 (Parent Teacher Meetings)

We will inform Team Kids of the dates so that all day care can be provided. 

Years 1-6 will start Tuesday 31 January.

Foundation students will start on Thursday 2 February.

As per DET policy Foundation students are required to undertake literacy and numeracy assessments which occur on Wednesdays in February. Students are only required at school when their allocated testing time is. The dates foundation students are not required at school are 1, 8, 15 and 22 February. 

2023 School Start Time

Each day the first bell rings at 8.50am to signify that students can enter classrooms. From 8.50 am to 9.00am students can prepare their belongings in the classroom, be marked off the roll, hand in notices and be prepared for teaching instruction to begin at 9.00am. School will finish at 3.30pm each day as per normal. 

Last day of Term- Finish Time

The last day of Term 4, Tuesday 20th December all students will finish school at 1.30pm. We expect all families to be offsite by 1.45pm. Team Kids will operate for those families who wish to use the service. 

School Uniform

The Summer holidays is the perfect time to assess your child’s school uniform needs. 

Parents are asked to buy items with our Huntingdale logo including- teal polo shirt, jumper, jacket, school bag, hat and school dress. These can be purchased from PSW in Ormond.

All students must wear a Huntingdale hat and will need this from the first day of Term 1.

Other items that are navy blue such as shorts, tracksuit pants, leggings, tights and skort can be purchased from PSW or chain stores such as K-Mart and Target.

Any accessories need to be in navy blue, not black. Black is not our school uniform colour. Our school uniform colours are navy blue and teal. The Dress Code Policy can be viewed on the school website.

We look forward to seeing all our students in their Huntingdale uniform in 2023. 

I hope that our families have a wonderful festive season, a well-earned break and some family time. I plan to go camping and spend some time in the city going to the cricket, tennis and art galleries.

See you all next year!

Ruth Biddle

Principal