Dear Parents,

Thank you for the warm welcome I received from many of you last week when I was finally back as Principal. I am glad that I accepted the short term promotion I was offered as I learnt a lot about how the region works. Another positive is that I built relationships with regional staff that may come in handy for our school in the future. However, I found being away from the school physically for ten weeks difficult (bad for the waistline) and I missed everyone, particularly the children.

Our priorities for the term and next year will be:

The health and wellbeing for our students, staff and parents
Every individuals learning, which is always a priority
Transitions to the next year level

Like most organisations we are having to make multiple plans because we don’t exactly know what the restrictions are going to be. It is nice that we can see restrictions starting to ease, like school photos, but we also know that some of the restrictions are here to stay for a very long time.

Year 6 to year 7 transition onsite is something we are hopeful will be able to go ahead and we are also hopeful a modified grade six graduation dinner will be allowed. One thing I have already conceded is that our traditional Christmas Market/Carols night will not be allowed this year.

I do think that the immediate future is looking good and I’m feeling really positive about the term ahead.

TRANSITIONS

Transitioning from one year level to another is one of our priorities. This year we are going to try something a little different. Each year we ask the students to nominate three friends that they would like to be with the following year.

We try hard to accommodate the student’s request and we guarantee they will get at least one of their choices. The flaw in this system is that students tend to only pick students in their own year level because they often don’t know the children in the year level above or below.

This year we will have what we are going to call, ‘transition week’. For one hour each day in week five, students will step up to their new year level and complete collaborative activities. Early in week six, students will then be asked to write down their friend requests for 2021. We will also be increasing the number that students can nominate to four.

We are hoping this new process will help us to make the transition process smoother and better for the children.

OUT OF ZONE ENROLMENTS

We have cut off all enrolments from outside our school zone for 2021; as we have reached our quota. The popularity of our school is a testament to the fantastic job our teachers are doing.

GRADE 5/6 MOTHER DAUGHTER NIGHT

This year’s mother/daughter night went ahead last week in a virtual way. The school planned the night by having great local female role models.

I took a grab from an email that Veronica sent:

“Wasn't it lovely to hear back from all 3 live presenters, how impressed they are with our school that we offer such valuable experiences and opportunities for our grade 5/6 girls.

They loved the depth of the questions from the girls as well.

We have a great group of visionary girls with such bright and hopeful futures ahead for them”.

The four guest speakers who shared their journey with our girls and their mothers were:

Shae Sloane – A teacher, plays AFLW for Melbourne, was captain of the Australian Volleyball team for 4 years. Shae grey up in Upwey.

Kristen Lyons - a Professor of Sociology at the University of Queensland, and is passionate about education, understanding it is one of the most important weapons we have in the fight for environmental and social justice.

Bonnie Anderson – actor, singer and winner of the masked singer 2020. She is an actor on neighbours and grew up in Yarra Glen.

Esther – Created the Kick-start program which is a project helping disadvantaged children in Kenya access quality education, and supporting young people to create a brighter future for themselves and their families. They aim to break the cycle of poverty. She grew up in Healesville.

A big thank you to our wonderful 5/6 team of teachers, Andre and Veronica for organising this special event.

VIRTUAL LEARNING

Our school struck up a partnership with Cobram P.S. when they began doing learning walks with their teachers of our school a few years ago. Last week I walked in on a book club session with our 5/6 students and Cobram's 5/6 students. Considering Cobram is 300kms away I thought it was a fantastic innovation. What struck me straight away was how engaged, polite our students were and also how brilliant their insights were.

OUR STRUCTURE FOR 2021

We can already announce to parents what our approximate numbers and class sizes will be for 2021:

Classes	Approximate class size
4 grades of prep classes	15
5 grades of 1/2 classes	24
4 grades of 3/4’s classes	25
4 grades of 5/6 classes	20

As you can see above we do our best to keep class sizes low so that teachers are able to give more individual attention to their students. I can also announce the teachers that will be taking prep in 2021.

The teachers are: Jess Howe (Prep Team Leader), Libby Bemrose, Melissa Greig and Bonnie McKercher.

WEAR YOUR FOOTY COLOURS

I just had to share some photos of footy colours day!

Congratulations to all the Tigers supporters in the school!

100 DAYS OF LEARNING

To celebrate 100 days of learning the preps had a dress up day on Monday. They had to come to school as old people. Unfortunately I didn’t need to dress up for the occasion!

IT'S SO GOOD TO BE BACK!

This week I went past a sign that said, ‘Make sure you make someone smile today’! I think we should all do that at least 20 times a day. But remember when life gets a little difficult, escape to the wonderful world of a book! It is so often my salvation.

Oliver Thockloth

Principal

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