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Viewbank Voice 11.10.2018 Term 4 2018, Week 1

Thursday 18th October - Viewbank Primary School Walkathon

Tuesday 23rd October - Parents & Friends Meeting - All welcome!! 7pm

Saturday 27th & Sunday 28th October - Vision Portrait photoshoot BOOK ONLINE NOW

Friday 2nd November - Day for Daniel - Free dress day (gold coin donation)

Thursday 8th November - Special Lunch Day

Saturday 24th November - State Election Day Fundraising BBQ

Thursday 6th December - Special Lunch Day

Tuesday 18th December - Year 6 Graduation at Viewbank College

ANNUAL WORKING BEES — Saturday November 3 (Term 4)

PUPIL FREE DAYS — Monday December 17

TERM DATES — TERM 3: Monday 16 July - Friday 21 September, TERM 4: Monday 8 October - Friday 21 December

CAMP DATES — Year 5 Lady Northcote Camp 9 - 12 October, Year 3 Arrabri Lodge Camp 29 - 31 October.

WELCOME BACK A warm welcome back to all students, staff and families to the final term of the 2018 school year. In particular a very warm welcome to our new Assistant Principal, Patrick Walsh, who commenced his appointment with us on Monday, and to our four new students and their families. The term has started off well, with our Grade 5 students heading off to the Lady Northcote Camp in Bacchus Marsh on Tuesday, accompanied by the first rain in ages (ironically!). As always, there is lots on the agenda for the rest of the year and I encourage you to regularly check our website, Compass and these newsletters to ensure you don’t miss any critical dates or reminders. It is a big term administratively, as well, as we get our staffing organised for 2019, we look at grade structures and the placement of students into classes for 2019, we organise transition and graduation events and we celebrate our achievements as well as working to improve or consolidate what we do.

CLASS STRUCTURE FOR 2019 Unless our numbers change dramatically over the next eleven weeks, we are looking at maintaining our numbers for 2019 at around the 650 mark, with 28 classes in total. To avoid large grade numbers in the upper school (Grades 3 to 6), we will need to form two Grade 3/4 composite classes and two Grade 5/6 composite classes, to accompany the three ‘straight’ Grade 3, Grade 4, Grade 5 and Grade 6 classes. We plan on having four classes at each of the Foundation, Grade 1 and Grade 2 levels as well.

TOILET RENOVATIONS I’m glad to report that most of the money raised through Fundraising events so far this year has been put to good use. Our School Council President, Kate Ryan, initiated a survey earlier this year on behalf of School Council seeking feedback on potential ‘projects’ to fund now and into the future, and one of the ‘now’ projects was to upgrade and improve the student toilet facilities. This is, as I write, a work in progress with new bowls, locks, toilet roll holders, vinyl on floors, paint on walls and mirrors being installed over the next few weeks. Very grateful for the ‘tradies’ hard work, for donations and fundraising monies, and for your support in getting this project done!

INTENTION TO LEAVE Each year, we have a number of families moving into the area and enrolling students at Grade levels other than Foundation, and this seems to ‘ramp up’ around this time of the year. Similarly, and often because of circumstances relating to job transfers, moving house, defence force postings and the like we have families leaving us with students attending other primary schools in the following year. PLEASE, if you are one of these families and you know for certain, or are fairly sure, that you won’t be returning in 2019, could you let us know at your earliest convenience? Some fairly important decisions are made based on enrolment information, and the more reliable the information, the better the decisions! An email to viewbank.ps@edumail.vic.gov.au or a hand written note presented at the General Office will suffice. Thank you.

PARENTAL REQUESTS Up until Cup Day, parents have the opportunity to provide in writing grade placement requests for 2019. Once again this year, we have subscribed to ‘Class Creator’ –software that generates classes for 2019 balanced by class size, gender, behavior, special needs, EAL and academic abilities, all the while taking into account recommended student separations, pairings, friendships, student sociograms, social dynamics and parent requests. It saves many hours of work for staff and retains a history of parent requests over the years of a student’s education at our school.

At this stage, we have not assigned teachers to grade levels for next year. There are no guarantees that teachers currently teaching at certain grade levels will be teaching there next year, as leadership needs to take into consideration a range of factors including the development of our teaching staff and teacher preferences before this allocation is completed. Having said that, we do invite your input into grade selection if there are special circumstances that we need to know about. Occasionally we may not be aware of these special circumstances which might include but are not limited to health, emotional or learning matters, peer or sibling relationships or changes in the home situation.

There is no place to request a particular teacher by name, NOR to request your child does not have a particular teacher. Selecting a particular teacher does not fit within the realm of special circumstances.

Information requiring our consideration needs to be addressed to ‘The Principal’ and handed to the office by Monday, November 5. Please note that letters received after this date will NOT be accepted. All letters will be dealt with in the strictest confidence. Whilst each request will be given consideration, no guarantees can be given. We are planning to announce class placements by December 12 and these will be provided with your child’s 2019 reports. Finally, if you consider you have special circumstances, please make the request in writing EVEN if it has been made before –as much as we would like to think so, we can’t remember everything from years gone by!!

SPORTING UPDATES Congratulations to the girls Grade 3 and 4 Hoop Time team for making the State Finals and also to all of our Divisional Level athletes on their performances yesterday. Further details later in this newsletter, but worthy of a brief mention and congratulations here!!

That’s it from me this week. Glad that we finally got some rain earlier this week and hoping to catch up with our Grade 5 campers today.

Kind regards,

Bill Kersing

Principal

Welcome back to term 4. I hope everyone managed to relax and recharge the batteries ready for our final term.

Year 5 Camp This week I have had the pleasure of attending the Year 5 camp at Lady Northcote. We have had a fabulous week so far with the students giving one hundred percent on the challenges and activities that fill their days. It is wonderful to see the students encouraging each other, teaming up with others they may not normally chose to work with and really stretching themselves physically and mentally. I’m sure they will all come home with many stories to tell of their adventures. I’d also like to take the opportunity to thank our wonderful staff and parents who are also on the camp. The planning and organisation that goes into a camp as well as the 24 hour supervision of the students is enormous so please take the time to thank them all when you next see them.

Departmental School Nurse Just a reminder to our Foundation families that the school nurse, Ms Merrin Sullivan, will be visiting Viewbank next week to meet with all Foundation students who returned a School Entrant Health Questionnaire (SEHQ) with signed consent last term.

Hats On Finally, please ensure that your child has their named hat at school each day. Children who do not have a school hat are required to remain in the middle courtyard in the shade at recess and lunch.

Have a great week.

Gill Nicholls

Thank you for the warm welcome to Viewbank. I have met many of you and your children this week, it is going to take me a little while for all the names and new faces to lock themselves away in my memory!

I am looking forward to working in collaboration with you, your child and the committed and professional staff of Viewbank PS. I have heard so many great stories about this community and the commitment shown to providing the best possible outcomes, not only for individual students, but for the school community as a whole. Feel free to drop in and say hi.

  • I have 3 daughters aged 18, 16 and 11. Driving lessons and VCE x 2 teenagers is not always a good combination for a peaceful household!
  • I enjoy going to the gym and riding my motorbike (it is a midlife crisis thing!)
  • I live in Bulleen.
  • I was Assistant Principal at Bonbeach Primary School from July 2016 to September 2018. My main role there was Student Welfare. Before that I was a Leading Teacher at Templestowe Valley PS (Curriculum) and Watsonia North PS (Assessment and Reporting).
  • I have taught every grade level except for Prep.
  • My favourite subject to teach is maths - particularly Statistics and Probability.
  • And, yes, I am a Collingwood supporter!

Day for Daniel Viewbank PS is participating in Australia's largest personal safety lesson for students aged up to 8 years old on Friday 26th October. In 2017, over 100,000 students across Australia tuned in to this personal safety lesson. In 2018, the lesson has been developed using age appropriate, evidence based personal safety education strategies for children between the ages of 3 and 8. This is a nationally streamed event, in Victoria we will participate between 10:30am and 11am. The students in Prep – Year 3 who are not at swimming will participate on this day.

We will be celebrating this as a whole school on Friday, 2nd November. All students are encouraged to wear something red and make a gold coin donation.

TERM EXPENSES Term 4 expenses have been posted on Compass and are due by Friday 12 October. Please note that some year levels will have an extra inquiry activity which will involve an additional cost from the term expenses.

Kind regards

Lucy Addati

Business Manager

Parents & Friends Meeting - All welcome!! The Parents and Friends Committee has operated in various formats for a long time at Viewbank Primary School and has raised significant amounts of money over the years. The next Parents and Friends meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, October 23 at 7pm in the school staff room. Our ‘meetings’ are very informal, and we would love to see you there. New people are always welcome!

ICY POLE FRIDAY Students are able to buy icy poles over the counter at lunchtime. All icy poles cost $1.00 each. We are asking for parent helpers to assist with the sale of these icy poles on Fridays from 1pm to 1:30pm.

Hooptime Junior 3/4 All Star Regional Finals On Tuesday 9th October, Viewbank Primary School was represented at the Hooptime Basketball Regional Finals by the Girls Gr 3/4 All Star team. Congratulations to Madeline Hayes, Indiana Jovanovski, Emily Jones, Jessica Read, Isabella Read, Georgia Groidis and Chloe Slots who won all five of their ‘pool’ games, and continued their winning ways in the Regional Final. As a result, the team progresses to the State Finals on the 26th of November. What a spectacular result! A big thank you to those parents who attended and offered invaluable help organising and supporting the girls.

Viewbank Primary Kindness Project. The Foundation students wanted to spread a little bit of kindness around the school and our community. They have worked very hard painting kind messages and pictures on rocks to either hide or to put in the kindness garden. If you happen to find one of our rocks please take a picture and share it with the hashtag #vpskindnessproject. We would love to see where they turn up!

Here is what the Foundation students have to say!

  • “We want to spread kindness all around the world” April Foundation R
  • “This kindness rock garden is to make people happy” Mia Foundation R
  • “We are kind so that we can make new friends and be happy” Leia FP
  • “If we make people feel happy, we feel happy too” Edward Foundation P
  • “If people feel lonely, we can help them” Abbie Foundation P
  • “We made the garden to make people happy” Jonathan Foundation M
  • “It is nice to be kind” Benjamin Foundation M
  • “We made the rocks to be kind” Luke Foundaion M
  • “The rocks were very pretty and I liked painting” Angus Foundation M
  • “It’s nice to be kind and make friends” Lennox Foundation E
  • “I got to paint rocks to be nice” Harley Foundation E
  • “We can hide the rocks and make people happy” Jensen Fondation E
  • “I loved decorating the rocks to spread kindness around” Milla Foundation E
  • “I want to be kind to everybody” Luke Foundation P

This October Viewbank Primary is excited to take part in the state-wide Walk to School program.

About Walk to School VicHealth’s Walk to School encourages Victorian primary school kids and their families to walk, ride or scoot to and from school everyday. Along with the health benefits it also reduces traffic congestion and parking, helps us connect with the community and saves the environment!

Part way is okay! If you can’t walk the whole way, why not try parking at your nearest meeting place and walk, ride or scoot the rest.

Safe Routes to School Map Banyule Council has provided a Safe Routes to School Map. Viewbank Primary’s has convenient meeting places highlighted where families could meet in the mornings before they start their walk. The maps are available at the front office so you can familiarise yourself with the safest way to walk to school.

For more information go to walktoschool.vic.gov.au

HATS ON From 1st September until 30th April school hats must be worn outside during all outside activities.

TRANSITION DATES Please download the below timeline for your future reference.

SCHOOL CHOIR Every Wednesdays, 8.30, in the Music room. Everyone Welcome!

RUNNING GROUP Every Thursday from 8:15am on the oval, for any students in years 4-6. All abilities welcome. Pack a spare pair of socks/shoes in case the oval is damp. Hope to see you there!

Facility Hire Viewbank Primary School provides a venue for hire with kitchen facilities. Please submit a written application to the office, outlining the details of intended use via email at viewbank.ps@edumail.vic.gov.au Please note that conditions do apply. At the discretion of the school, venue costs may also be waived in some instances. All applications will be considered on a case by case basis

All Big Group Hug donations can be left in the Grade 3/4F classroom.

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