• Saturday 14th November - School Fair

PUPIL FREE DAYS

• One extra day yet to be confirmed in 2020

TERM DATES

• 2020 TERM 2: Tuesday 14th April - Friday 26th June (2:30pm finish)
• 2020 TERM 3: Monday 13th July - Friday 18th September (2:30pm finish)
• 2020 TERM 4: Monday 5th October - Friday 18th December (1:30pm finish)

CAMP DATES

• Year 3: Arrabri Lodge Camp (Mon 27July to Wed 29July 2020)
• Year 5: Lady Northcote Recreation Camp (Tue 06Oct to Fri 09Oct 2020)

Term 2’s newsletter commonly begins with a warm ‘welcome back’, and I see no reason to change with tradition. So, a warm welcome back to the Viewbank PS community, albeit in vastly different circumstances. Yesterday saw the first day of remote learning for most of our students, and an eclectic mix of successes and hiccups, frustrations and applause. As we said from the ‘get-go’, in the ideal world we are all praying for normality, but right now we do our best managing from the relative safety of our homes with the fundamental goal the health and safety of all.

Whilst there remains a few mixed messages between State and Federal Government, we take our directions, in Victoria, from the Victorian Government. Deputy Secretary of Education, David Howes, yesterday repeated the Victorian Government’s directive that all students who can learn from home must learn from home. He quoted Victoria’s Chief Health Officer, Dr Brett Sutton, who stated:

“My advice to the Victorian Government was and continues to be that to slow the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19), schools should undertake remote learning for term two.

This is because having around a million children and their parents in closer contact with teachers and other support staff has the potential to increase cases of coronavirus not just in schools but across the community.

By having remote learning, it can contribute to physical distancing and therefore supports efforts to drive transmission down.”

We have had very small numbers of students at school, and will continue with our staffing profile of one person in reception, one for First Aid and support, two classroom teachers implementing the online program at school for the few students in attendance, and Gill, Patrick and myself. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the whole community, staff, students and parents for your support, patience and understanding.

We have had some road blocks in progressing the building program, but at time of writing this massive piece of machinery, residing just outside my window, will start the demolition process late Monday.

We have also had some other works completed, and the brightening up of the stairwell leading down to the library and the library void itself, is very apparent even from these poorly taken photos (not my strong suit).

We would like to think that we are still on track for an early August hand over of the new buildings – watch this space!

The first few days have been extremely busy both remotely, and on-site. My updates here at school will be more frequent as the dust settles, metaphorically and literally! Don’t hesitate to contact staff via email for advice on remote learning, and the General Office for other procedural matters. More advice will be provided early next week on a range of other matters including the status of school camps, updates on learning programs, School Council arrangements for Term 2 and more. Stay safe.

Kind regards,

Bill Kersing

Principal

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Welcome back to term 2, although it is a very different beginning to what we usually experience.

The last few days of the holidays and over the Easter period were incredibly busy from a leadership planning perspective but the time was certainly well spent with our first two days of remote learning beginning by and large positively.

I’d like to pass on a huge congratulations to our staff and school community. Our staff have stepped up to every new challenge placed before them and supported each other tirelessly to ensure that our students had the best possible start to term 2 remote learning. In our ‘new normal’ world of remote staff communication (Webex is our chosen tool) questions are being asked and answered constantly as we all learn together. At the end of this we will certainly have learnt a wide range of new skills. Our school community has been so positive and supportive and we thank you for your patience, your willingness to adopt new procedures and your kind words of support and encouragement.

If you have not assisted your child to log on to Google Classrooms yet, please do so. It is important that the students stay connected with their teacher and classmates and remain engaged with their learning.

As you can imagine we are experiencing a different kind of ‘busy’ with remote learning. Instead of children’s voices asking questions and staff popping in to have a quick word there is now a constant ‘ping’ of notifications on our laptops. Personally, I think I’m beginning to suffer from notification and unread email anxiety. Definitely time to remember my mindful breathing. Please be kind to yourself as the term progresses. Look after your wellbeing and there is certainly nothing in your child’s daily learning that cannot wait until tomorrow if you find that you all need to take a break.

On behalf of the school community I’d also like to wish Kori Stuckey and her husband George the very best as they await the safe arrival of their second child. We are very sorry that we could not farewell Kori as we normally do at our final term assembly but we look forward to meeting baby Stuckey in the future.

Have a great week and stay well

Gill Nicholls

Remote Learning I would like to echo Mr Kersing’s and Mrs Nicholls’ comment re the unusual start to Term 2. Hang in there, we are all learning as we go. Everyone (staff, students, parents) are doing their best to try and make this work the best way possible.

I would like to remind you of our Remote Learning page on our website http://www.viewbankps.vic.edu.au/remote-learning. We are slowly building the resources here so that it is a one stop shop. Currently, it has some bare-essentials information about Google Classrooms (including a ‘helpdesk’ email address support@viewbankps.vic.edu.au) . This will be expanded to cover areas such as Health and Wellbeing while working and learning from home, as well as other technology guides for you.

Google Classroom has been a fabulous tool for us at the moment. Some staff are posting links to sources on the internet (such as YouTube, Mathletics, Study Ladder etc) that normally go through the internet filters at school. However, because you are at home, the school filters are not in place and rely on your home settings. We strongly advise you to use the Parental Controls on the devices and internet router at your home. These are not perfect, so you will need to continue to carefully monitor what your child is viewing on the device at your home.

Contacting staff We realise that some of the challenges for you are around contacting staff for assistance and advice. Please note, for parents, and unless otherwise specified, you are NOT to contact staff through Google Classrooms. Google Classrooms is primarily for communication between staff and students. You can, however, contact classroom teacher staff through the information provided to you from one of the team leaders on Tuesday afternoon/evening, and to the specialist teachers in the communication sent via Compass this afternoon. This will be to an email address that ends in ***@viewbankps.vic.edu.au (please see the information provided) . We also have a staff member in the Office to answer phone calls, and you can of course send an email to viewbank.ps@edumail.vic.gov.au and this will be forwarded on to the appropriate person.

Have a great weekend everyone,

Patrick

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New Office Hours The new office hours are from 9am to 3.30pm. To contact the school outside of these hours you may send an email to viewbank.ps@edumail.vic.gov.au or leave a message on the answering machine.

Attendance On Compass Can all parents continue to mark any school absences on Compass as normal. This will allow the school to be aware of missed lessons.

Thank you and take care

Lucy Addati

Business Manager

Hello fellow Viewbankians!

We hope that you have enjoyed your first week of online learning. The grade 6s have had a lot of work to do and we are sure you have too.

The School Captains thought that it would be fun to make some puzzles for us kids to do while we’re at home. Luckily Mr Kersing approved of this idea. :)

They will be in the newsletter every week from next week until life goes back to normal. Hope you have fun solving them!

Luke, Phoebe, Joel and Annabella.

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Uniforms can be purchased online at www.aplusschoolwear.com.au with one of three delivery options:

• Free collection in store during trading hours.
• Postage to address of customer’s choosing, at $12.50 for two items or less, or $17.50 for three items or more.
• Free delivery to school, to an existing student at Viewbank Primary. Please note, this option is not available if the customer does not already have a student at the school.

A little bird told me about this month’s bonus offers with Entertainment. You can spend and save, get extra membership months and receive a gift with purchase. Don’t forget you would also be supporting Viewbank Primary School fundraising. https://www.entertainment.com.au/orderbooks/1891w37

For those Parents and Students looking for new reading material while remote learning this term, Scholastic Book Club is available for online ordering and delivery to your home. Due to access restrictions to School, we can only offer the Home Delivery option, for an additional fee of $5.99.

Copy the link below and share https://scholastic.com.au/book-club/virtual-catalogue-1/

After accessing the online catalogue above, you can place your order using your Scholastic LOOP account or app.

It is recommended that orders for Issue 3 be placed no later than Wednesday 6th May.

Thank you for supporting our school.

PHONE NUMBER: 0448 075 422

EMAIL: viewbank@oshclub.com.au