Acting Principal's Report
Acting Principal’s Report 24th February
Acting Principal Position
As you may be aware Greg has taken 12 months secondment, leading a team centered around middle leadership at the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Learning. Speaking to him on occasions, he is doing well.
Starting on Monday 6th March, Nicole Walker will be the acting principal for the remainder of the year. Nicky was an assistant principal here at Lyndhurst Primary School until the end of 2019. She has since been a substantive principal at Cranbourne Carlisle and Balnarring Primary Schools. We welcome Nicky back to the Lyndhurst PS community.
School Council
On Tuesday night this week, we held our first school council meeting for 2023. Thank you to all members of our school community who nominated for the school council positions. At this meeting we inducted new members from our recent elections and finalised committee roles. Aden Hogan will act as president for 2023, with Emma Thomson as the vice president. Our secretary is Cory Webber and Dianne Gakhal will be our treasurer.
I look forward to working with school council so that our school remains a school of choice through quality education for our children and tight partnerships with the community.
I would also like to thank the school council members of 2022. Your contributions are vital in making up the Lyndhurst PS community. A special mention to our outgoing school council president, Aftab, who was involved in our school’s review in 2021 and numerous other roles. Thanks for your contribution.
Student Leaders
Our school captains and SRC chairs have done a wonderful job in leading the student voice across the school and running our assemblies. If you have a Monday morning spare, please come down and watch these leaders in action. I am meeting with them next week to continue developing assemblies, to make them interactive and purposeful for all.
This week we had Sam dress up as a superhero for our Super Strengths program (formerly Healthy Habits, Happy Kids) and Charlotte conducted an interview with Maddi in Year 4 who played netball with some radio personalities. They are truly supporting and celebrating what we have on offer and the amazing achievements that have occurred within our school community.
Announced over the past week, we have had our house captains, specialist captains and SRC representatives. We are now in the process of getting the badges made with an official assembly to occur in the coming weeks.
Social and Emotional Learning & Super Strengths
Around 5 years ago the education minister mandated the Rights, Resilience and Respectful Relations (RRRR) program. This has been phased out through schools and in 2022 we start to embark on this journey. With a strong wellbeing program, last year we spent time in auditing what we do and how we can incorporate similar messages from RRRR.
In light of this, Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) will occur in classrooms during the year. Along with this, our Super Strengths have similar approaches to our fortnightly wellbeing focus with it linking more with the SEL sessions.
Library and Readers
The use of the library has changed with classes now coming in once a fortnight and using the space as an area to enjoy literacy. The design of the area has been slightly modified and can cater for our junior students to read books in their spaces and for our seniors to conduct further research.
In the junior school, our readers are now coming home more regularly with a change to the way we loan out the books. Our year level teams (PLTs – as we call them – Professional Learning Teams) are assessing this process in the coming weeks. The aim is to have the learnings at school being followed up at home with regular and enjoyable reading with parents, carers, family members or friends.
Partners in Learning (PiL)
In the last newsletter, we mentioned that next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we have our PiL sessions. We have structured the sessions to be interactive with classroom walkthroughs and year level presentations. We believe the event will provide key information about what happens in each year level, along with an opportunity to meet the classroom teacher(s).
Enjoy your fortnight,
Regards
Jamie Sharp