• Friday 26th March - Parents & Friends, Easter Raffle and Bakery Lunch Orders due by today
• Monday 29th March - Parents & Friends, Easter Raffle to be drawn
• Thursday 1st April - Parents & Friends Bakery Lunch Day
• Thursday 1st April - Last day of Term 1, 2:30pm dismissal
• Monday 19th April - First Day of Term 2

TERM DATES

• 2021 TERM 1: Wednesday 27th January Teachers start (All students start Thursday 28th January) - Thursday 1st April (2:30pm finish)
• 2021 TERM 2: Monday 19th April - Friday 25th June (2:30pm finish)
• 2021 TERM 3: Monday 12th July - Friday 17th September (2:30pm finish)
• 2021 TERM 4: Monday 4th October - Friday 17th December (1:30pm finish)

2021 CAMP DATES

• Year 3: Arrabri Lodge Camp - Wednesday 4th August to Friday 6th August
• Year 4: Anglesea Recreation Camp - Wednesday 19th May to Friday 21st May
• Year 5: Lady Northcote Recreation Camp - Tuesday 5th October to Friday 8th October
• Year 6: Coonawarra Farm Resort Camp - Monday 17th May to Friday 21th May

WORKING BEE Sunday dawned as grey and overcast with plenty of drizzle around and after Saturday’s downpour, I must admit I expected numbers to be quite low for our first working bee for ‘ages’. Nonetheless, we were very thrilled to host a substantial number of diligent and hardworking community members on Sunday. It felt very normal! Many thanks to representatives of the following families (sometimes entire families!) – Deane, Parrent, Pavlovski, Allibon, Doran, Cadusch, Butler, Hemingway, Ordonez, Moon, In, Cullen, Booth, Lai, Lei, Zhou, Di, Thurlow, Power, Nguyen and Carpenter. I’m certain there were more families represented and we are all very grateful for your support. The hedge and roses which have in the past framed the entrance have been past their use by dates for some time, and so the large task of extracting these and putting the remnants in a skip occupied much of our time on Sunday. Thank you to the Parrent family for kick starting this on Saturday and everyone else for finalising this on Sunday. There was much moving of mulch and other general maintenance and gardening tasks achieved. You will see the benefits of replanting on either side of the main entrance very soon.

ATHLETICS A fun day was had last Friday at Willinda Park, Greensborough, for our school athletics carnival. It warmed up a little by the time we had finished but the day was a great success thanks to the outstanding organisation of the PE Department supported by our teaching staff and volunteer parents, and the enthusiastic approach by our students. These athletics serve as the selection trials for the District event to be held on March 26.

PLANNING WEEK Next week is a planning week for staff to prepare in teams for Term 2 with Grade teachers and specialists being replaced for a single day during the week. The normal specialist program will therefore not operate in quite the same way, and students will have a replacement teacher for one of the five days next week.

THE RESILIENCE PROJECT PARENT SEMINAR Don’t forget the wonderful Resilience Project Parent Seminar coming up next Tuesday night. When we hosted a parent seminar in pre-Covid times a few years back we had over 200 parents and guardians attend the session in the gym. It really is a ‘must not miss’ event and whilst it is a virtual event the messages of gratitude and resilience still ring just as true.

ASSEMBLIES, PRESENTATIONS AND ACCESS TO CLASSROOMS AND BUILDINGS Just for clarity for all concerned, we continue to run assemblies when weather permits, on Monday mornings on the Tiger Turf. We have been carefully scheduling the presentation of captains and leadership badges at these assemblies and inviting the parents of students receiving these awards to attend these. If other parents remain for assembly, you are required to physically distance as well as scan the QR codes available on buildings, for the purposes of potential Covid contact tracing.

When it rains, or if the surface is wet, we need to hold assembly inside the gymnasium. The density limits set by the Department of Health and therefore, Department of Education and Training, mean we can only hold half school assemblies – Foundation to 2, or Grades 3 to 6, as the capacity is limited to just over 300.

We continue to ask parents and guardians not to enter buildings unless you have an appointment or need to visit the office, and we continue to ask families to vacate the school grounds no later than 3.45pm each day. Some of these ‘rules’ may be inconvenient, but we all remember the alternative if things got out of hand again with Covid, and understand that the new ‘normal’ is way better than lockdown.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Kind regards,

Bill Kersing

Principal

National Day Against Bullying and Violence 19 March Join with us in The National Day of Action against Bullying and Violence (NDA) on Friday. Students are invited to add something orange to their school uniform - hats, hair accessories, socks, scarf to show their support.

We will be standing together against bullying and violence and working towards creating positive change for students, staff and the school climate.

At Viewbank, we are proud to say ‘Bullying. No Way!’ By standing together we can build supportive learning environments and find workable solutions to address bullying.

Bullying and violence are never okay.

REMINDER: SAVE THE DATE

Parent Zoom session with Hugh van Cuylenburg.

Tuesday 23rd March, 2021 - 6:30pm-7:30pm

During the parent presentation, Hugh will share his experiences and combine them with practical strategies that can be implemented every day to improve our overall wellbeing.

We are extremely excited to also be able to share PROJECT+ with you!

PROJECT+ has been developed to ensure The Resilience Project continues to support the wellbeing of students and the wider school community. Twice a term, they will be sending out PROJECT+ (a bit like a traditional Newsletter) with a whole range of additional ideas, activities and resources that can be used by the whole school community.

PROJECT+ will be housed on Teachable, The Resilience Project online Teaching Resource Hub, where families will be able to access both current and previous editions.

The first edition of PROJECT+ and the necessary links can be found below.

Parent/Carer Support

• Implementing GEM Chat at home - Gratitude Questions (Click HERE to view)

Planning Week As Bill mentioned, next week is Planning Week across the school.

During the week, all classroom teachers will be timetabled to spend a whole day planning for Term 2, along with the other teachers in their team. Specialist teachers also receive time throughout the week to plan for the following term.

In teams, teachers reflect and provide feedback on the learning that has occurred across this term, discuss student data that has been collected and use this information to inform future planning.

The teaching and learning for Term 2 is discussed and planned for, with curriculum planners being developed for English, Mathematics and Inquiry. Common assessment tasks will be discussed and excursions and in school activities researched and booked.

Planning Week allows our staff the opportunity to engage in professional discussions and develop the rich, differentiated learning programs that allow our students to engage fully in their learning.

Teaching teams will plan on the following days with students having specialist lessons for the day:

• Monday - Year 3
• Tuesday – Year 4
• Wednesday – Year 5 & Year 6
• Thursday – Foundation
• Friday – Year 1 &2

Have a great week

Gill Nicholls

Michael Ymer- Classroom Sessions The staff at Viewbank have previously engaged in professional learning with Michael Ymer to develop their skills when teaching mathematics. On Monday and Tuesday, we were then able to watch Michael demonstrate various ways to teach and learn mathematics. When visiting our students, Michael spoke about the various strategies that students could utilise to extend their own knowledge and challenge themselves. Michael demonstrated exciting learning opportunities that can be built upon to extend a student’s understanding of mathematics.

Supporting mathematics at home The Department of Education has provided a variety of resources for parents that would like to assist students with numeracy skills at home. These are general tips and resources to enable parents to include activities into everyday life whilst building numeracy skills. Please see the below websites to find relevant resources:

Year 2 Taskworks The Year 2’s participated in an incursion as part of their current ‘Relationships Inquiry’ to develop their creativity, problem solving and relationship-building skills. Through the exploration of technology, the Year 2 students worked on cooperating in teams to solve a problem communicating and developing good relationships. After the session, the students were then given opportunities to discuss and write about their conflict resolution strategies that they used during the session. Congratulations Year 2 for all your teamwork during this event!

Have a great week.

Karen Butler

OSHClub (Outside School Hours Care) Please be aware that if your child is not registered with OSHClub they will be unable to access the program in an emergency. Therefore it is highly recommend that you register your child/ren for OSHClub in case you may need it one day.

School Tours We will not be running any school tours in term 1 due to the current Covid guidelines. Detailed information about our school and enrolment process can be found on our website

Enrolments We are currently accepting enrolments for 2022 and are happy to assist with any queries.

Camps, Sports and Excursions Fund (CSEF) The Government assisted Fund provides payments for eligible students to attend camps, sports, incursions and excursions ($125 per child). Applications for the Governments ‘CSEF Fund’ can be accessed by filling in the application form and returning it to the office with a copy of your current Health Care Card. Families holding a valid means-tested concession card or temporary foster parents are eligible to apply i.e. a Centrelink Health Care Card or Pension Concession Card or Veteran Affairs Gold Card.

Funds are paid to the school and will be automatically allocated to the Term Expenses unless otherwise stated by the parent at the start of the year.

Thank you

Lucy Addati

Business Manager

Bakery Lunch Orders Are Back!!! - Thursday 1st April, 2021

The Viewbank Primary School Council has approved for the Lower Plenty Bakehouse to provide the school with Lunch Orders every second Thursday. These lunches will be implemented via our Parents and Friends Committee and all money raised will be used towards our major school oval upgrade.

Our first Bakery Lunch order day will be the last day of Term 1, Thursday 1st April. Orders need to be placed in advance via Compass Canteen.

Orders will close on Friday 26th March, 2021.

Please see attached a Parent User Guide on how to order via Compass Canteen. Please note a 35 cents order fee will be charged at check out.

​2021 VIEWBANK PRIMARY SCHOOL EASTER RAFFLE

$1.00 per raffle ticket, great prizes to be won!! Please return all sold tickets to school by Friday 26th March, 2021. Raffle to be drawn on Monday 29th March, 2021. Please ensure name and phone number are clearly written onto all sold tickets.

All money raised will be going towards our schools fundraising oval upgrade project.

Thank you for your support.

​​ICY POLE FRIDAY Students are able to purchase icy poles over the counter at lunchtime every Friday. All icy poles cost $1.00 each.

Year 3 to 6 House Athletics Last Friday all years 3-6 students attended our House Athletics. It was fantastic to see so many competing and giving it their all, especially in the difficult conditions. There was great sportsmanship on display with students encouraging and supporting each other. A special mention must go to Cathal in grade 6, Jade and Abbie in grade 3 who’s sportsmanship was exceptional. A huge thank you to all the teachers and parent helpers who did a remarkable job running the event. Most of all we hope everyone had fun!

We also had some of our students attend the Victorian Athletics State Championships over the week and achieve some amazing results. Congratulations to the following students:

• Jade 3T 2nd in High Jump
• Alex 4N 9th in Shot Put
• Julia 5F 11th Discus
• Zoey 6B 5th javelin, 9th Shot Put, 21st discus

Hot Writes Our Hot Write Awards have moved to the newsletter! In the next few weeks you will begin to see student writing pieces highlighted in this section. Keep in mind that the work put into the newsletter will be published in its original form. This means the work has not been corrected, as we want to celebrate the child as a writer and not search for errors.

What is a Hot Write? A hot write is a piece of writing in which a student shows exemplary achievement or growth as a writer. These pieces will be selected by classroom teachers who are always on the lookout for developing writers.

Keep your eye out for some wonderful pieces of writing!

Cybersafety sSessions Jayne Crossling is coming back to school (via MS Teams again) to run a couple more Parent Cybersafety sessions. They are the same as last time, so parents who attended last time do not need to attend again.

The details are below:

Cybersafety Sessions:

• Monday 29th March 7-8pm
• Tuesday 30th March 1.45-2.45pm

via: MS Teams (no account required)

A link will be sent out closer to the date to registered families.

RSVP: Please click here and fill out the Google Form.

BOOK CLUB Issue 2 catalogues have sent home this week. All orders are due by Thursday 18th March. Every dollar you spend earns points to buy more books for the Library. All Orders are required to be placed via Scholastic LOOP. No cash can be accepted at the school. Thank you for your support.

CLASSROOM CUISINE provides lunch orders to our school on a MONDAY, WEDNESDAY and FRIDAYS.

Lunches must be ordered online using the CLASSROOM CUISINE website.

Extra Curricula Clubs We have a range of weekly extra curricula activities that students are invited to participate in. Some are free and others require parent payment. If your child wishes to join please encourage them to go along on the scheduled day or you may like to contact the school office or the classroom teacher to discuss participation.

Library Lunch Open Times 1:30pm to 2pm (See timetable below)

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SECOND HAND UNIFORM SALE - Every Friday 8:45am to 9:15am, next to the music room. Jumpers with the school logo, long and short sleeve school polo tops and school dresses will be $5.00 and all other items $2.00. We are currently asking for donations of any unwanted reusable school uniform items to sell at our stall.

Instrumental Music Enrolments 2021 Can all students who would like to join or continue to participate in our school instrumental music programs in 2021 please inform the relevant teacher below of your expression of interest.

SINGING WITH GABRIELLA - Gabriella

• Email: favrettogab@gmail.com
• Phone: 0413 676 733

STRINGS WITH MR CAI - Gabriella

• Email: favrettogab@gmail.com
• Phone: 0413 676 733

GUITAR/BASS GUITAR - Alec

• Email: alec.stalder@gmail.com
• Phone: 0422 690 842

PIANO/KEYBOARD - Ella

• Email: ellac.blackburn@gmail.com
• Phone: 0410 938 840

DRUMS - James

• Email: orangejimmy@gmail.com
• Phone: 0405 845 628

PHONE NUMBER: 0448 075 422

EMAIL: viewbank@oshclub.com.au

A PLUS SCHOOLWEAR Our uniform supplier is A Plus Schoolwear which is located at 41-43 Northern Road Heidelberg West. Open hours are Monday, Wednesday and Friday’s from 9am to 4.30pm (closed on weekend and public holidays).

You can also purchase your uniform online at www.aplusschoolwear.com.au