I feel like I say this every fortnight, but wow, what a busy and exciting couple of weeks it has been at Orchard Park Primary School! We've had students off on different excursions, the launch of our Tutor Learning Program, some outstanding learning happening across the school and of course, our outdoor cinema night!

An exciting development in the past fortnight was the commencement of our Tutor Learning Initiative, run by Mrs Danielle Searles. Given the disruptions to our regular teaching programs over the past couple of years, the Department of Education and Training (DET) have invested heavily in learning catch-up through the initiative. Mrs Searles will run these sessions throughout the year and our focus may change throughout the year both in terms of year levels and subject areas. Having carefully unpacked a lot of our 2021 learning data, we have decided that Danielle's work initially will focus on developing phonemic awareness within our Year One/Two area. Danielle will be taking small groups of students throughout the week for some really targeted intervention. So far all students have been participating really enthusiastically and we look forward to monitoring the growth of our students over coming weeks and months.

Another highlight of these past two weeks has been our CHIPS (Christians Helping in Schools) excursion to the Phillip Island Adventure Resort. CHIPS have a long affiliation with local schools and of course provide us with our lovely School Chaplain, Jay Ramaiah. Jay organises these days that are then run by the legendary Captain Eric. Captain Eric is a larger than life character who is a fantastic story-teller and passionate about making a difference in the lives of young children. The group that went on Monday was relatively small, made up largely of the students with whom Jay works. However, from all reports they had an incredible time; going on some of the activities at the resort, listening to Captain Eric's stories, going on wildlife walks and tucking into the cooked lunch provided! Mr Scanlon and Mrs Griffiths also made their way down with Jay and the kids. Check out some of the photos from their day below.

This Thursday was a particularly exciting day for students as well with the opening of our Spark Buck shop for the first time this year. Students earn Spark Buck by demonstrating our school values of Respect, Responsibility, Resilience and Safety. They then save these up and can purchase prizes from our prize shop. Our prizes are typically rewards within the classroom that don't come at an expense to the school such as additional reading/writing time, sitting in a bean-bag for a day or having a favourite stuffed toy with them in class for the day. These are examples of prizes at the cheaper end, ie 10-20 Spark Bucks. However, if they really save then they can buy prizes such as an additional PE, Art or STEM session, a cooking class with Mr Jagoe or myself or, and this one is my favourite, they can take Mr Jagoe's chair to class with them and sit on it for a day! These prizes all cost 50 Spark Bucks.

It was so great to see so many students coming to cash in their well-deserved Spark Bucks. There was a line of students almost all the way through the Admin building and they certainly kept Mrs Ferguson, Mrs Griffiths and our Chaplain, Jay, very busy indeed!

And in addition to all of this, we have continued to see some very enthusiastic and positive learning taking place across the school. Our Preppies continue to astound us with just how well they have settled into a school routine and how quickly they are grasping some of our key literacy and numeracy concepts. We've also had our Orchard Sparks presentations and incredible learning taking place in our Specialist areas as well.

There has been so much to celebrate that I could go on forever. We are so incredibly proud of our students and out teachers for the way that we have commenced the 2022 school year. The only negative is that the glorious summer weather that we have had is slowly disappearing as we head into Autumn! However, rain is important and Mr Jagoe is desperate for the football to return!

Until next time though, take care and I look forward to seeing you around the school.

Kind Regards

Danny Forster

Assistant Principal

Orchard Park News

Going Further Together

Issue 3 · 11 Mar 2022

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