Friday 18th October – Student Disco Book your tickets now

Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th October - Vision Portraits

PUPIL FREE DAYS

• Monday December 16, 2019
• Tuesday January 28th, 2020
• Wednesday January 29th, 2020
• Two extra days yet to be confirmed in 2020

TERM DATES

• 2019 TERM 3: Monday 15th July - Friday 20th September (2:30pm finish)
• 2019 TERM 4: Monday 7th October - Friday 20th December (1:30pm finish)
• 2020 TERM 1: Tuesday 28th January - Teachers start (All students start Thursday 30th January) - Friday 27th March (2:30pm finish)
• 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 05Aug to Wed 07Aug 2019)
• Year 5: Lady Northcote Recreation Camp (Tue 08Oct to Fri 11Oct 2019)
• Year 6: Canberra Camp (Mon 25May to Fri 29May 2020)
• Year 4: Anglesea Recreation Camp (Wed 27May to Wed 29May 2020)
• Year 3: Arrabri Lodge Camp (Mon 27July to Wed 29July 2020)
• Year 5: Lady Northcote Recreation Camp (Tue 06Oct to Fri 09Oct 2020)

WELCOME BACK I would like to extend a warm welcome back to school for students, staff and families as a lengthy term commenced on Monday, October 7. As always, plenty of highlights to look forward to this term including the Lady Northcote Camp in Bacchus Marsh for the Grade 5 students and their teachers (they are having a great time!!), a sleepover for the Grade 2s, a late night experience for Grade 1s, graduation for our Grade 6 students, a student disco, Christmas Carols in early December and much, much more. Add to the above the usual complexities of staff selection and contract renewals, determining budgets for 2020, transition and grade selection and you can see we won’t have much time to ‘smell the roses’! We are sure, though, that it will be a productive and engaging term and one we are all looking forward to.

TIMES OF DUTY A reminder that staff are expected to be on duty by 8.50am each day until 3.50pm. Whilst these are the minimum times, student supervision cannot be guaranteed outside of these hours. Accordingly, if you need to drop students off earlier, or collect later, they should be booked into our exemplary Out Of School Hours Care program.

STAFF CAR PARK A further reminder that the Staff Car Park is exactly that – a car park for staff. Parents using this car park compromise the safety of their own children and others – please refrain.

FAMILIES MOVING SCHOOLS IN 2020 If there are any families who are moving schools in 2020 for whatever reason, could you please advise the office, or Bill Kersing personally, as soon as possible please? This will ensure that your children are not included in grade placements for 2020, and it gives us a greater degree of certainty when planning grade structures, determining whether or not we need to select new teachers and a range of other organizational matters.

PARENTAL REQUESTS FOR STUDENT GRADE PLACEMENTS Over the next four weeks we will be requesting input from our families with regards to the placement of students into classes for 2020 (if that is necessary). At this stage, we have not assigned teachers to grade levels for next year, and in fact still need to select a few teachers to fill those roles 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, if there are special circumstances that we need to know about, you are welcome to let us know of these.

Such special circumstances might include but are not limited to health, emotional or learning matters, peer or sibling relationships or changes in the home situation. Selecting a particular teacher does not fit within the realm of special circumstances, and if your request includes that information it will be denied. Information requiring our consideration needs to be addressed to ‘The Principal’ and handed to the office by Friday, November 1. Please note that letters received after this date will NOT be accepted.

You are welcome to contact your child’s classroom teacher for advice before submitting your WRITTEN request. This especially pertains to peer relationships and learning matters that they will have significant and specific knowledge about. You may find that you have no need to submit the request having spoken to your child’s teacher.

All letters will be dealt with in the strictest confidence. Whilst each request will be given consideration, no guarantees can be given as there are many factors that need to be taken into consideration whilst grade lists are being compiled, with gender balance, diversity of learning styles, abilities and friendship groupings being some of the major ones. 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!! We do appreciate your trust in our professionalism in these regards.

That’s it from me this week. Congratulations to the ‘Tiger’ supporters in our community!

Kind regards,

Bill Kersing

Principal

Welcome back to Term 4. I hope everyone found some time to unwind and relax during the holidays.

Term 4 has started with a bang, with our Year 5 students and numerous staff and parents heading off to camp at Lady Northcote. I had the pleasure of attending on Tuesday and Wednesday and the students were certainly enjoying all their activities. It was 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.

UNIFORM 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. Also, please name all uniform items clearly. We endeavour to return named lost property however unnamed items that remain in lost property will be sold at our second hand uniform shop which opens Friday mornings on selected dates.

Have a great week.

Gill Nicholls

School Values Thank you to everyone who participated in the review of the School Values. This has been a lengthy process but necessary so that all voices are heard and have an opportunity to contribute. The below is a summary of the outcome of the voting:

To come up with a recommendation of 4 Values for School Council, a decision was made to add the position of each value, and then rank from the least to highest numerical value to come up with a ranking – lowest = the most popular choice; the higher the value, the least popular the choice. For example, Kindness was ranked 1st, 2nd and 2nd – if we add these numbers together we get 5, Cooperation/Teamwork ranked 7th, 3rd and 4th = 14. Kindness would rank higher that Cooperation/Teamwork.

The final tally then became:

A discussion was then had regarding the ‘tie’ between Resilience and Cooperation/Teamwork. In light of our ongoing participation with The Resilience Project, School Council decided on Resilience as the fourth value.

Moving forward, our School Values will be RRRK – Respect, Responsibility, Resilience and Kindness. You will start to see some rebranding in the coming months as well as a ‘launch’ of our new Values with our School Wide Positive Behaviour participation – stay tuned!

NAPLAN As many of you are aware, NAPLAN (National Assessment Program – Literacy And Numeracy) was completed by most of our Grade 3 and Grade 5 students in May. We were required to participate in the ‘online’ version, but due to the difficulties faced on the first day of testing by our Grade 5s completing the Writing task (Grades 3s wrote on paper), we had the option to complete the remainder of the assessments on paper. Despite the difficulties our students confronted, they put their heads down and did the best they could. The staff of Viewbank Primary School are incredibly proud of the students and the results they produced (while also acknowledging that these are single tests done on one day of the year). There is always room for improvement, and the results will be analysed in the coming weeks and months.

The following is a snapshot of our Grade 3 and 5 results this year. The numbers indicate how many NAPLAN ‘points’ Viewbank PS was above the State average in each assessment area:

Term 4 Reports and Assessment Term 4 is always busy with student assessment and teachers writing reports. Our teachers always do their best to provide you with an accurate report of your child’s learning. There is no time for teachers to write reports throughout the school day, teachers write these after the school day and on weekends – a big commitment particularly as the weather starts to warm up and the craziness of the Christmas season fast approaches! If you are ever concerned about how your child is progressing, please see your child’s teacher or make contact with them via the office. Reports are expected to be made available to parents via Compass in the last week of Term 4 – date to be confirmed!

Day for Daniel - Friday 25th October As done in 2018, Viewbank Primary School will be participating in Day for Daniel. The Day for Daniel is a National Day of Action to raise awareness of child safety, protection and harm prevention. It is about educating children and adults about keeping kids safe through child safety and protection initiatives. It aims to help empower our children to Recognise, React and Report if they feel something is not right.

We are encouraging all to wear something red on Friday 25th October, and bring a gold coin donation that will be donated to the Daniel Morcombe Foundation. We will be watching Australia’s Largest Child Safety Lesson, something that approximately 4000 schools and Early Childhood Centres will be doing as well. You can find more information about Day for Daniel at https://danielmorcombefoundation.com.au/

Have a great weekend everyone!

Patrick

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TERM EXPENSES Just a reminder that term 4 expenses are due today, please make payment and provide consent via Compass.

Thank you

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Save the Dates!

• Friday 18th October – Student Disco
• Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th October - Vision Portraits

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.

DRUM LESSONS Ben will no longer be teaching drum kit at Viewbank due to (exciting) commitments and a heavy touring schedule. We wish Ben all the best and continued success in his music career.

Enter drum roll… we are very excited to welcome to the school our new teacher, James, who you will be hearing more about soon.

Drum lessons commence in week 2.

Parents will be contacted with further information via COMPASS.

STRINGS, DRUM KIT, GUITAR, UKULELE, FLUTE, SINGING, KEYBOARD AND PIANO

Information and “Expression of Interest” forms are available at the general office. Alternatively, you may contact Gabriella on 0413 676 733 or gabriella@the.inter.net.au

We are currently looking for a volunteer to coordinate the Walk To School program for our school. If you are interested in this role can you please email the school. viewbank.ps@edumail.vic.gov.au

Psychology service for students at Viewbank Primary School This is just a reminder about our new psychology service that may be of use to you - DBT in Schools.

Areas that DBT in Schools can help with (from http://dbtinschools.com.au/individual-therapy/):

• emotional stress such as depression and anxiety
• grief and sadness
• bullying
• sexuality issues
• substance abuse issues
• trauma
• family breakdown or parent problems, or
• friendship and relationship issues

If you would like any more information and may like to access this service, please contact the school (9459 1512) or send an email to viewbank.ps@edumail.vic.gov.au

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

SCHOOL BANKING Don’t forget to hand your bankbooks into your class teacher every Tuesday for banking.

Volunteer wanted for School Banking. Please contact the office or Jing on 0434 576 518 if you are able to help.

Banking Day is every Tuesday. Banking books are to be handed to the office by 2pm.

To participate in the program:

• Parents open a Youthsaver account for their children
• Students can then bank each Tuesday at school
• They receive a Dollarmites token every time they make a deposit to their savings account at school, regardless of the amount
• Once a student has 10 tokens, they can redeem them for a variety of reward items, including a handball, scented pencils, key rings and more
• The more tokens they save, the more items they can redeem throughout the year.

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!

SCHOOL CHOIR Every Wednesdays, 8.30, in the Music room. Everyone from Year 2 to 6 are welcome!

The program is scheduled on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Of course, volunteers are essential to the success of the program, so we are always looking for anybody willing to work with a small group, in the kitchen or garden. You do not need to be a ‘masterchef’ or have a green thumb! Enthusiasm is the only requirement. If you are interested in volunteering, please complete the Volunteer Information form and return it to the school office. Once you have completed the form please book in to volunteer via one of the program staff.