Principal's News
It’s been an extremely busy week at Old Orchard with numerous additional events and activities complementing our normal classroom programs.
On Monday afternoon, we celebrated the special achievements of our Year 5 & 6 students at the annual Awards Assembly. Many students were recognised for their contribution to the school or significant achievements throughout 2018 and many parents were in attendance to share the occasion. Additionally, we had musical performances from a few of our talented students. The major award recipients were:
- Principal’s Award: Hamish Lee & Amelie Ebbage
- Citizenship Award: Zac Mladenovski & Tate Reid
- Academic Award: Victoria Chiorsac & Holly Burgess
- Music Award: Lena Goldwyn
- Visual Arts Award: Elissa Wilton
- Sport & P.E. Award: Marc Petheriotis
- Mandarin Award: Xander Lee
Our current Preps (and their teachers!) forgot about school uniform for the morning, wearing their PJs to school for the Prep Breakfast. There was a wide range of culinary delights on offer (cereal, toast & fruit) and the students displayed superb manners. We also had many other staff on hand to assist, which was terrific. Quote of the day came from Kingsley from Prep AP, when told that there would be strawberries on the menu:
“There might be noodles in them!”
Ellen assured him that the strawberries had been cut up carefully and inspected prior to serving!
On Thursday evening we welcomed families of our 2019 Preps to the Prep Information Evening. There was an excellent turnout and Ellen, Claire and Sarah presented key information, ably supported by some of our Prep and Year 6 presenters:
Old Orchard is committed to becoming a more sustainable school. This is being addressed in a number of ways, as we look to educate our students, ourselves and the broader school community in responsible and proactive environmental practices. In 2019, we are aiming to be a Nude Food School. In simple terms, this means that we are looking to remove landfill rubbish from our school environment and hopefully encourage families to adopt some of these positive practices at home. The following links provide more information:
kidspot - nude food movement kidspot - nude food lunchbox
Six of our Old Orchard Netball teams are playing in Grand Finals this Saturday. For those wishing to support them, the teams are playing at Vermont South. Good luck to all players and coaches.
Our Year 5 & 6 students have been taking part in special transition activities this week. The Transition Week has been running for a number of years at Old Orchard and provides the students with a taste of what secondary school will be like – our class teachers run a number of different classes in more traditional style and we are very well supported by staff from Blackburn HS who assist with specialised classes such as Science.
Our Carols on the Green is always a highlight of the December activities. We hope to see as many families as possible at the Carols next Wednesday. The actual singing will now commence at 6.30pm, not the 7.00pm that was previously advertised.
Congratulations once again to the staff, students and parents on their success completion of the 2018 GVBR – 3 day event.
The group faced some challenging conditions at different stages, but came through with flying colours and should be extremely proud of their achievements. Particular thanks to Kevin Purvis, Wendy Scott and Curtis De Witt for their leadership and to our shirt sponsors:
- Metro Trade Services
- Darren Hunt
- ANZUK Education
- Direxa Engeering Australia P/L
Warm regards
Duncan