From the Principal

Dear Families,

Connections: Over the weekend I attended a 20 Year reunion of the Blackburn Football Club Premiership team that occurred in the 100 Year anniversary of the club with both seniors and reserves teams winning the flag. Catching up with people from that period of my life, listening to their life stories, successes, failures, health conditions, battles and struggles, reminded me of how important connections are. Some of my closest team mates back then apologised for not catching up or reaching out or whatever – but it doesn’t matter as we can now make an effort to reach out, check in on each other or just send a message to know that we are around. I encourage all of you to reach out to old friends, school mates, sporting clubs or wherever it is that you made the connections and say hi to an old friend!

Parents & Friends: What a great team of dedicated families we have around the school, led by Georgia Fiske. It is so nice to walk into a busy staffroom with parents chatting and organising and preparing different events for our community. Thanks so much. It adds a special dimension to school life and enables more and more opportunities to occur. If you’d like to join the P&F, send an email to ogpsparentsclub@gmail.com and Georgia will help you.

Fire Services: You will have noticed that new hydrants have started popping up around the school as the Fire Services upgrade continues. There are few variations to the scope that are being reviewed and approved by various authorities and then work will recommence and we will see the tanks positioned on the oval and a new booster cabinet being installed along Field St North.

Apple Fair: Last Friday I met with a great bunch of Apple Fair committee members to work through some initial planning such as dates, times etc and we hope to put a proposal to School Council very soon. Adele Smith and her team are doing a great job but as the old saying goes “many hands make light work” – we need some more helpers. Sometimes in a larger school we think someone else is doing that, but in this case, we need you! We all agreed that the Apple Fair should come back in 2023 and that has been an overwhelming response from our community too. Please contact the office if you want to help in any small or large way so we can get the OGPS Apple Fair up and firing next year.

Book Week Dress ups: I am sure Thing 1 & Thing 2 will be out and about this Friday as we have a dress up for Book Week celebrations. A short assembly on Friday Morning - possibly in the gym or on the Soccer pitch (weather dependent) to see all the costumes. There won’t be an assembly in the afternoon. I hope the preparations are going well.

Planning & Preparation: Each week our teaching teams have planning time and Kristy and I are privileged to see the work staff do in this time. The discussions about student progress, types of learning and activities to support students (we call them enablers and extenders) is very high quality. We are always so impressed with the intricate knowledge staff have of your children and then the program they plan to deliver to a variety of abilities. In a recent planning session, teams were talking about the skill of touch typing and how we could help students improve in this skill. A suggestion tabled was to encourage students to use a blue tooth keyboard linked to their iPads. We are encouraging families that have a keyboard, to let your children bring them to school and use to them to improve their keyboard awareness and develop this skill. It’s not compulsory but a possibility.

The Grove that Grew: Last week I mentioned a little about the history of Ocean Grove and Noah B’s family sent in the book The Grove that Grew, which tells some of the stories about Ocean Grove.  This week I learnt that around 1887, 2500 blocks of land were on the market and the advertisement read: “Land for Sale in Ocean Grove. Terms one-fourth cash, balance in six, twelve, eighteen or twenty-four months, interest 6% per annum. Price of lots – five, ten, fifteen and twenty pounds. Certificate of title guaranteed for two guineas.” 

Have a great week everyone.

Scott McCumber

Principal