IMPORTANT DATES!
PRINCIPAL’S MESSAGE
Victorian School Sports Awards
This year’s Outstanding Teacher Contribution Award winners went the extra mile to keep students active during remote learning. Physical Education (PE) teachers who stepped up their game during remote and flexible learning were among those recognised at this month’s Victorian School Sports Awards.
The annual awards for students who have excelled at a sport, and teachers who have made an outstanding contribution to school sports, are the highest sporting accolade presented in Victorian government schools.
Darren Peters, today received an Outstanding Teacher Contribution Award for his efforts to keep students active and connected during remote learning in 2020.
During remote learning last year, Darren motivated students to take out School Sport Victoria’s Virtual Track and Field competition, earning their school prize money to build new soccer goals in the process.
The competition invited students to try skills featured on the School Sport Victoria web page at home and enter their results.
Darren promoted the competition and updated students regularly on the school’s progress. This led to more than 12,000 entries, equivalent to about 24 entries per Rosanna Golf Links Primary School student.
Darren said the Virtual Track and Field challenge created community when the school was apart and brought comradery and a team atmosphere at a time when all junior sport was cancelled.
‘Most importantly, it gave students the opportunity to strive to achieve their personal best and feel that they were part of something bigger in a year of disconnection,’ he said.
‘Though it may have been the most challenging year we may face in our lifetimes, it brought me joy to know our students could unite and focus on a unique sporting challenge and then revel together in celebration of their amazing achievement.’
Darren’s award also recognised his efforts to build partnerships between the school and local sports clubs, leading to more students than ever before taking part in sport outside of school.
Annual General Meeting
Don’t forget that on April the 1st at 6:30pm we will be holding our Annual General Meeting. This meeting is held every year and is an open meeting for our community. During this meeting we present our Annual Report to the School Community. The 2020 report is presented at that time and will then be uploaded to our Website so that our entire community can access it.
Progress Reports
As you already know we completed our strategic review at the end of 2020 and have altered some of our practice as a result of our new strategic direction. Most notably we have two important foci this year. We want to improve the data literacy of our teachers and we want to improve the opportunities that students have to demonstrate agency in their learning. We believe that we can work on both areas through the progress reports but we know that this work will take some time to master. In 2021 we will be using the Seesaw platform to report progressively throughout the year. The ‘I can” statements will be put aside for the time being as we develop stronger continuums of learning to really demonstrate what is the next skill or stage of learning.
Ten pieces of work per term will be posted on seesaw. Six pieces will be portfolio tasks. These will be fully annotated by the teacher, pointing out what the child has achieved and articulating what is the next piece of learning. The remaining four pieces are to be chosen by the students. They will articulate why they are proud of these pieces of work using ‘I can” statements. The idea is that students will be able to challenge themselves, become self-motivated learners and that they will share in the responsibility of learning. We are also improving our own data literacy as we unpack and moderate learning tasks as teams.
Early Finish Thursday the 1st April
Our final day of term is Thursday the 1st of April. We are finishing at 2:30pm with a short assembly at 2:00pm. We are all looking forward to a fun filled last week with our Year 5 and 6 students spending the last few days on camp.
Take care,
Kirrily Lamers
Principal
STUDENT OF THE WEEK
ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL’S REPORT
You will be aware that as a result of a Ministerial Order, mobile phones and any device that may connect to or have a similar functionality to a mobile phone such as a smart watch, must not be used at Rosanna Golf Links Primary School once on school premises, unless an exception has been granted by the school principal.
Mobile phones owned by students at Rosanna Golf Links Primary School are considered valuable items and are brought to school at the owner’s (student’s or parent/carer’s) risk. Students are encouraged not to bring a mobile phone to school unless there is a compelling reason to do so. Where students bring a mobile phone to school, Rosanna Golf Links Primary School will provide secure storage. Secure storage is storage that cannot be readily accessed by those without permission to do so.
At Rosanna Golf Links Primary School students are required to store their phones. These should be handed into the school office before 9am to be placed in a lockable cupboard. Students can pick up their mobile phones from the school office once dismissed from class.
Our office has a secure storage area where our students have been placing their phones. We have noticed that many of our regular students have not been handing their phones in. We are unsure if this means these students are no longer bringing these to school or if they are leaving them in their bags.
Please remind your children to hand in mobile phones to the office each morning.
For our school policy or further information and research please see the link below.
https://www.rosanna-golflinks-ps.vic.edu.au/community/#additional-school-policies
Tuning into Kids
From time to time we have flyers for webinars or free parent sessions being run. We have had great feedback about past initiatives and sessions. Please have a look at the attached flyer for another event.
Tuning into kids is a free program for parents in our community.
Luke Franklin
Assistant Principal
TEACHING AND LEARNING
The Importance of Reading to Your Child
Recently, I have been exploring a range of research around the impact of regular reading on children’s overall learning. Current research emphasizes the impact of parents reading with their child. A study by Mol & Bus (2011), found that children who are read to more frequently at an early age enter school with larger vocabularies and more advanced comprehension skills. Reading to pre-schoolers has also been found to be related to language growth, emergent literacy and reading achievement. (Bus et al., 1995). The study shows that there is an important role for parents in the development and educational performance of their children. Parental reading to children increases the child’s reading and other cognitive skills at least up to the age of 10–11. This is an early-life intervention that seems to be beneficial for the rest of their lives.
You can read more about the summary research project commissioned by the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development and the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the following link: https://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/about/research/readtoyoungchild.pdf
Term 2 2021 Team Newsletters
Following Planning Days this week, year level teams and specialists are currently finalising their Term 2 2021 team newsletters. These will be published on Compass for parents to read before the end of Term 1.
We request that parents read these newsletters carefully to get an overview of upcoming events, learning foci for the term ahead and general reminders.
Portfolio Tasks - Evidence of Student Learning
Parents will have seen a recent flurry of notifications as portfolio samples are uploaded to Seesaw. All students should have an annotated learning sample in Reading, Writing and Number uploaded before the end of Term 1. Specialist teachers will also upload a portfolio sample for each of their classes. (Please note that Specialist portfolio samples will not be annotated due to the high volume of students they teach each week.)
We hope all parents can make time to look at the evidence of your child’s learning from Term 1 and celebrate their learning achievement and progress.
NAPLAN 2021
NAPLAN for Year 3 and 5 students will be held from Tuesday May 11th – 13th 2021 as follows:
Make up tests will be held for students on the afternoons of the above dates and on the Friday 14th May 2021. If your child is participating in NAPLAN in 2021, parents are requested to avoid making external appointments on these NAPLAN testing days. NAPLAN tests are generally conducted in the earlier sessions of the day so the school asks that all students are especially punctual to school on the above dates.
If you have any questions about the upcoming NAPLAN tests, please contact the school on 9457 4178 or by email.
Maths Olympiad #1
Well done to the 2021 RGLPS Maths Olympiad team who recently participated in their first Olympiad for 2021. It was very pleasing to see so many students persist with difficult questions and use varied strategies to solve the five problems on the Olympiad.
Maths Olympiad #2 will be on Wednesday 5th May.
Hope everyone enjoys a great last week of term!
Kerron Worsdell
Learning Specialist
SILK STREET CROSSING
It has been brought to our attention that an increasing number of our students are crossing Silk Street near the intersection with Lower Plenty Road, rather than walking a few extra metres to cross at the Silk Street Crossing. (Silk Street being the location of St Martins School). This is an incredibly dangerous road at drop off/pick up times and we strongly encourage parents talk to their children about the importance of crossing at the designated crossing.
Thank you.
LIFE EDUCATION
Dear Parents of Grade Five and Six,
In Term Two from: 11th to the 21st May
, as part of our Health Curriculum, a Life Education educator will be attending our school. This educator will be delivering a number of units on Sexual Education.
This year is the first time at RGLPS we will be delivering separate Grade 5 and Grade 6 programs, ensuring the lessons are age appropriate.
Booking Dates:
Tuesday 11th May – Thursday 13th May
Monday 17th May – Thursday 20th May
Selected Modules:
Grade 5: Healthy Relationships, Identity, Puberty
Grade 6: Healthy Relationships, Identity, Puberty, Reproduction
As a charity, Life Education relies heavily on the generosity of local organisations to keep its fleet of mobile learning centres on the road delivering positive health and life messages to over 200,000 children in Victoria alone.
Please look on Compass for the ‘Event’, ‘Permission’ and ‘Cost’ early in Term 2.
Thanking you for your time,
Sharon Armstrong
P.S. The ‘van’ will no longer visit, a Health educator will attend each session in individual classrooms.
RGLPS HELPING HANDS
RGLPS ART GALLERY
FUNDRAISING
Easter Raffle
NEWS FLASH: We have a very generous gift voucher donated for our Easter Raffle- $100.00 at WATERDALE JEWELLERY.
We cant wait to have the fun of the Easter Raffle at our last assembly of the term!!
RGLPS has a long history of a huge and exciting Easter Raffle!! Many kids holding their breaths and crossing their fingers in the hope that their family will be lucky enough to win.
This fundraiser relies on your generous support. If you have the means, and would like to make a small donation of an Easter Egg for the hampers, please drop them at the office before the Monday 29th March.
Each student will be given 10 raffle tickets to be sold at $1 each. Tickets and money are due back no later than Wednesday 31st March.
Thank you for your support and good luck!
SUTAINABILITY NEWS
CSEF – CAMPS, SPORTS AND EXCURSIONS FUND
The Camps, Sports and Excursions Fund helps eligible families to cover the costs of school trips, camps and sporting activities.
If you have a valid means-tested concession card, such as a Veterans Affairs Gold Card, Centrelink Health Care Card or Pensioner Concession Card, or are a temporary foster parent, you may be eligible. There is also a special consideration category for asylum seeker and refugee families.
Payment amounts this year are $125 for eligible primary school students. Payments are made direct to the school to use towards expenses relating to camps, excursions and sporting activities for the benefit of your child.
If you applied for CSEF through our school last year, you do not need to complete an application form this year, unless there has been a change in your family circumstances.
If you would like to apply for the first time, please contact the school office on 9457 4178 and ask for an application form.
You can also download the form, and find out more about the program and eligibility, on the Department of Education and Training’s Camps, Sports and Excursions Fund web page.
Check with the school office if you are unsure, and please return completed forms to the school office as soon as possible.
The closing date for new CSEF applications is 25 June 2021.
STATE SCHOOLS RELIEF
Just a reminder to parents who are eligible for CSEF that State Schools Relief also offer assistance with uniform and stationery. Applications are made via the School and will be provided by State Schools Relief from its own supplies unless a school logo is a requirement or they are unable to supply a similar item. Please see Kaylene in the office if you have any queries or would like to place an order.
LETS GO KIDS HOLIDAY BOOKLET
We have Lets Go Kids Holiday booklets for distribution to families who may enjoy some activities over these holidays. There are multiple options with discounts available – some examples:
Puffing Billy – 20% discount;
Eureka Sky deck – 20% discount;
Luna Park – 20% discount;
Ice Bar – 15% discount.
There are also suggestions for free or low cost activities such as;
Fire Services Museum;
Parliament House;
North Williamstown Railway Museum;
CERES Community Environment Park.
Booklets are free to take and available at the office.
CANTEEN
THEIRCARE – BEFORE & AFTER SCHOOL CARE
COMMUNITY NOTICES
Disclaimer: Rosanna Golf Links Primary School (RGLPS) does not endorse any product or service advertised in this newsletter. RGLPS takes no responsibility for the content of advertisements or the quality and reliability of products or services offered in the advertisements
