IMPORTANT DATES!
TERM 4 2020
PRINCIPAL’S MESSAGE
In our final newsletter for 2020 I would like to share a number of highlights from a challenging year. This term we returned to school with multiple restrictions in place but together, we made it through. Our students had really happy and enjoyable returns to school, our staff got to do what they love to do and support and nurture the social, emotional and academic growth of our students and our families were just so happy to be able to give their kids a sense of some normalcy.
Whilst everything ran smoothly overall we were working extremely hard this term and were able to complete our school review. This is a substantial achievement as it really sets us up to commence 2021 with goals and targets for 2021 and beyond that match our school needs and will support our students to ‘reach their potential’.
Our instrumental music program still continued throughout the remote learning period and by the final week of term we were even able to run band practices. It was so pleasing to finish the year on a high note.
Finally, it was also amazing to see continued achievement for our students during P.E. Many of our students worked through remote challenges and as a school we were able to be awarded for this great achievement.
It is so important that we do find the positives and the increased resiliency of us all has been a feature of this year. I know that 2021 will bring further highlights but before we go I would like to thank everyone for their personal contribution to assisting us all to feel supported during such a challenging year. To our wonderful, resilient and assiduous staff I thank you for the role you have played in supporting our students this year. Your support has been critical in assisting our students to feel valued and proud of their achievements. I cannot underestimate the difference you have made to the students this year. Whilst I may have a little bias here I am constantly astounded by the incredible talents, sophisticated thinking skills and overall happy demeanor of our students. You have been a personal inspiration to me as I have commenced my journey as principal at RGLPS. I do also want to acknowledge our families who have had a really big year. It has been so wonderful to join the family here at RGLPS because you have all made me feel so welcome.
Have an incredible festive season. We are all ready to farewell 2020 but we have learnt from the crisis and will all be better equipped for having the experience. Let us hope that 2021 brings nothing but blue skies, joy and improving outcomes.
Parent Payments and Booklist Arrangemnets
As you know the parent payments have altered significantly this year. We are extremely happy to be able to reduce the costs for our families who have suffered during the COVID – 19 outbreaks. The voluntary fees section does give us an opportunity to continue to support extra – curricular activities and further resource our school. If you do have the capacity to donate through this platform, we would be extremely grateful for the difference that it will make for our students.
Pick up of the book bags will occur across two days. The 27th of January and the 28th of January. Whilst we appreciate that siblings will make this difficult it is more efficient for our office staff to distribute them in year level groups and we thank you for your patience as we learn through experience the best way to distribute these book bags.
27/01/2021
9:00 – 10:00 Prep pick up.
10:00 – 11:00 Year 1 pick up
11:30 – 12:30 Year 2 pick up
12:30 – 1:30 Year 3 pick up
2:00 – 3:00 Year 4 pick up
28/01/2021
9:00 – 10:00 Year 5 pick up
10:00 – 11:00 Year 6 pick up
On these 2 days parent are required to attend the office to pick up book bags for the year.
Please note that the purpose of picking up the book bags is to give you the opportunity to label student items so they can bring their book bag to school to commence the year on the 29th of January. This year all items will be returned to students at the end of the school year.
Thank you to all of the families who have already paid their fees. Do note these can be paid any time between now and the 27th of January. Book bags will not be able to be distributed to families unless payment has been received or a payment plan has been commenced.
2021 Start Date for Students
This is just a quick reminder that we will have 2 curriculum days at the beginning of term 1 to support our staff to implement some changes to our content. Students will commence school on the 29th of January. We can’t wait to see their smiling faces.
On behalf of all the staff at RGLPS have a wonderful festive season, stay safe and take care,
Kirrily Lamers
Principal
ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL’S REPORT
What a Year!
I would like to start with a huge thank you to all of our families, students and teachers. This year has been very extraordinary! We began the year like any other, with students settling into classrooms and developing routines to set themselves up for success in school for 2020.
From Term Two we saw the start of remote learning (Kirrily began her journey at this point!). It took our staff, students, and parents some time to work out how the ‘remote and flexible’ learning model was going to work. This was a huge effort from all involved. We continued to learn, adapt and reflect on our experiences as we went along and moved into ‘remote learning V2.0’. The staff were committed to ensuring the best possible educational experiences for our students and made some changes to the way we worked with our students and families. This saw teacher beaming into houses to engage in lessons via Webex.
Throughout the year we have had some wonderful stories of innovation and resilience. We have seen teachers, students and families enagage to share the learning together and support each other. We could not have made this such a successful year without the continuous support and motivation from all involved.
I feel priveliged to work alongside this community. Your caring, supportive, and positive approach to the development of your children and our school is second to none.
I wish all of you a relaxing break. I hope you can spend some time with your family and friends. Take the time to reflect on this year and appreciate the strong connections you have made with your children and our community.
Look after yourselves, have a great break and we will see you in 2021.
Luke Franklin
Leaving Families
It is with mixed emotions that we farewell our leaving students. On one hand, we have worked alongside them and watched them grow into amazing young people, we will miss them. On the other we are truly proud knowing they are ready to head out into the world, prepared and ready for the next challenge.
There are many families leaving our school community this year. We wish you all the best with your new adventure and want you to know that you are always welcome at RGLPS. We thank you for your contributions and support.
Our leaving families are:
Abdikarim, Abud-Hime, Armstrong, Back, Bake, Bennett, Brooks, Choi, Draper, Edmonds-Vanags, Ellul, Falconer, Foale, Francavilla, Geange-Phipps, Hu, Hughes, Joy, Kennedy, Lee, Lightowlers, Lipman, Maloney, Marquardt, Mayteewarakul, Nieuwoudt, Parker-Hill, Rashid, Robinson, Ryan, Saxton, Shaweesh, Sherwill, Silfverberg, Smith, Sun, Turnbull, Valmorbida, Varier, Waingold, Walkey, Walsh, White, Wilson, Wilson, Zlotkowska-Eddy, Asbury, Cataram, Chen, Cohan, Freiberg, Howard, Jansen, Lauronce, Murnane, Pham, Rana, Wright.
From the staff and community of Rosanna Golf Links Primary, we wish you all the best.
Looking After Your Child's Wellbeing
After such a trying year, it is vitally important that we all take a moment to rest and revitalise ourselves.
The education department has some great resources here: https://www.education.vic.gov.au/parents/family-health/Pages/your-childs-wellbeing.aspx
As always should you need any help or support please don’t hesitate to contact the school.
Luke Franklin
Assistant Principal
DEAF FACILITY NEWS
Wow, what a year! I would like to take this opportunity to thank our fabulous teachers of the deaf, Kate Haysom, Jess Degenhardt, Lisa Pascal, Maddi Huglin, Vicki Christofi, Cathie Sutton, Sharon Armstrong, and Tracey Elso. Also a special mention to Louise Moodie, our replacement teacher of the deaf, who covers when teachers are unwell, and replaced Maddi when she went on maternity leave. They worked tirelessly during remote learning ensuring accessibility for our Deaf Facility students and family support. Another big thank you to our amazing families. Your support of our teachers of the deaf, classroom teachers, specialist teachers, school and myself, allows us to focus on supporting and educating your children.
A big thank you to our two amazing grade six student leaders representing the Deaf Facility this year, Eadie White and Kate McRae. We are proud of the work you have done this year, especially given the challenging circumstances. They will pass the torch to Miriam Clough and Sophie Pilmore who will be our Deaf Facility captains in 2021.
This year we say farewell to our graduating grade six Deaf Facility students, Gaetano, Jeongyeon, Ismail, Kyson, Eadie, Poppy and Ruaa. Next year we are welcoming four new Deaf Facility prep families.
We also say goodbye to Lisa Pascal, one of our teachers of the deaf in 1/2D. Thank you, Lisa, for everything you have brought to 1/2D, our Deaf Facility and school. We appreciate the time you have spent with us, and hope you return to our family after the new addition to your family. As we say goodbye to Lisa, we welcome Dan Anderson to our Deaf Facility. Congratulations to Dan Anderson! He has been awarded a scholarship to the University of Melbourne to student to become a teacher of the deaf. We look forward to you joining our family next year.
Have a safe holiday break with friends and family. Good luck for our exiting families, we know you’ll be back to visit. For everyone else, we’ll see you in 2021.
Individual Learning Plans
2020 Individual Learning Plans are now accessible on Compass.
Hearing Australia 2021
If current ease of restrictions continue, we will have Hearing Australia audiologist, Cathy Chen, visit RGLPS one a month on Thursdays (Term One), then Wednesdays (Terms Two – Four).
NDIS Funded Therapists 2021
If current ease of restrictions continue, we can have external therapists back onsite next year. We value the care teams for your child, including family, school and therapists, sharing knowledge and consistent practice. Please be mindful of students missing curriculum learning for therapist sessions. This can be a challenging balancing the need between both curriculum and learning. If you are planning on therapy sessions during school hours, please liaise with me – thom.jackson@education.vic.gov.au to discuss this and book the therapy sessions. We don’t have therapists in the first two weeks of school because of our start up program, and allow students to develop new friendships and learn new classroom routines and expectations.
Thom Jackson
Deaf Facility Coordinator
TEACHING AND LEARNING
ICAS 2020
The last batch of ICAS certificates arrived at school on Monday and have now been distributed to all participating students. A big thank-you to all students, parents and teachers for your continued patience and flexibility around the many changes to the ICAS testing process in 2020.
High Impact Teaching Strategies
This week I am going to explain the High Impact Teaching Strategy (HITS) of Metacognition.
Metacognition is essentially thinking about one’s thinking. It refers to the processes used to plan, monitor, and assess your own understanding and performance. Helping people develop awareness of their thinking is beneficial for a number of reasons:
- Enhanced capacity for self-regulation and self-control
- Ability to self-motivate
- Increased awareness of your own thinking and actions
- Enhanced decision making
Multiple research studies indicate metacognitive strategies are most effective when they are modelled and explicitly taught to students. They also have a high positive effect on learning and progress across the curriculum. Strategies can involve a range of things from note-taking, brainstorming, reflective writing and just thinking through the consequences of one’s choices and decisions.
Ways parents can help your child/ren with metacognition in the home include:
- Ask your child to reflect on what they learned from a new experience (holiday, film, book, trip etc)
- Encourage your child to seek feedback from other so that they can learn and practise what they did well and make any adjustments where needed
- Ask your child to think through the potential consequences of choices so they can make a considered decision
- Ask your child to teach something they to someone else. You need to be able to understand key steps and important information to teach a new concept or skill to another
- Encourage your child to use a simple thinking tool or organiser such as a T-Chart or a PMI to organise their thinking
Semester Two Reporting
2020 Semester Two reports were released to parents on Wednesday 16th December 2020. These can be accessed by parents/carers by logging into Compass and selecting View Academic Reports and selecting 2020 – Semester Two Reports. A reminder that progression points have only been provided for English and Mathematics during Semester Two 2020 as per Education Department guidelines.
Essential Learnings 2021
With our new straight grade structure in 2021, we have needed to make changes to the Essential Learnings for specialist subjects in 2021. Most of our RGLPS specialist subject Essential Learnings were spread over a two year cycle and these have been modified to reflect our new straight grade structure in 2021. The modified 2021 Essential Learnings for specialist subjects (Auslan, Visual Art, Music, Physical Education and Science) are all located on Compass under School Documentation.
See Compass -> Community Icon-> School Documentation -> 2021 Essential Learnings
Term Newsletters
2021 Team Newsletters will be released to parents in mid-February 2021. This delayed release date allows teaching teams more time to plan for our straight grade structure in 2021.
Final Words....
Finally, thank-you to all members of our school community for your flexibility and support in what has been a very unusual and challenging year for us all. I hope that everyone enjoys a relaxing break and are able to make the most of our additional freedoms by spending time with family and friends and exploring Australia. Stay safe – I look forward to keeping you updated on teaching and learning at RGLPS in 2021.
Kerron Worsdell
Teaching and Learning Coach
STUDENTS OF THE TERM
CHRISTMAS TREE DONATIONS
THANK YOU!!!
A huge thank you to all the very generous families in the RGLPS Community who donated to our Christmas Tree Appeal this year. We had an astonishing number of no perishable food items and children’s toys donated.
When we dropped them to DVCS Thursday morning they were overwhelmed. We hope this will assist those families who have had an extremely difficult year to make Christmas a little bit more merry.
TRAFFIC CHANGES
We have added this section to the Newsletter in an attempt to keep parents informed of the traffic changes which are occurring near RGLPS. We can only supply information that is provided to us by North East Link.
NO RIGHT TURN into Finlayson St and Newtown Rd from Greensborough Road, southbound.
SUSTAINABILITY
Thanks to everyone who participated in the RGLPS Sustainability Tips competition.
Over the coming weeks, we will publish the entries here and put them up around school to remind us all how to be sustainable no matter where we are.
If everyone keeps making small changes with sustainability, it’ll add up to a big difference!
Thank you!
Ms Wheeler
SPORTS NEWS
Swimming Trials
Hello Parents,
The 2021 RGLPS Team swimming trials will be held at WaterMarc, Greensborough from 7:30am – 8:30am during Week 2, 3 and 4 of Term 1 (day to be confirmed by Watermarc, but most likely Wednesday). Parents will be required to transport their children to and from the pool.
The trials will determine which students will be included in the team competing at the Heidelberg District Swimming Carnival. The first two mornings will be practice and the final week will be the timed swimming trial event.
*Students in Grade 3 must be born in 2012 or earlier to compete. Students born in 2013 are unable to participate under the School Sport Victoria regulations
Heidelberg District Swimming Rules:
Distance and technique: Students must be able to complete 50 metres unassisted in the pool, using the correct stroke technique to compete in the trial. If a student can not complete the 50m unassisted, or is unable to swim with the correct stroke technique, I can not select them to go to the District Swimming Carnival.
Individual Events: District rules state that a student may compete in a maximum of two individual events.
Relays: The four fastest freestyle students in each age group will compete in the A team relay and the next four fastest will compete in the B team relay. The medley relay is an open competition where the four fastest in each stroke, no matter the year level or age, will compete for RGLPS. Students are eligible to compete in both the freestyle relay and the medley relay.
If your child is interested in competing, please email me a darren.peters@education.vic.gov.au with their Name, Gender, Date of Birth and any stroke they wish to compete in (Freestyle, Backstroke, Breaststroke, Butterfly).
Thanks and looking forward to a normal 2021!
Kind Regards,
Darren Peters
PE and Sports Coordinator
RGLPS ART GALLERY
5/6 Sneakers – So Cool!!!
SCHOOL BANKING
From Term 1, 2021 the Victorian Government has ceased school banking programs in Victorian government schools. As a result, the CommBank School Banking program will no longer operate at our school after the end of this term. If you are unsure of other methods of depositing to your child’s account, please feel free to contact the Bank’s general enquiries hotline on 13 2221 or alternatively visit your local CommBank branch.
We would like to thank you for your participation and support throughout the School Banking program.
CANTEEN
Dear Parents,
You can order icy-poles and chips etc through Flexischools for recess and lunch. Ask your children to come down and collect recess orders form the canteen. Lunch orders will go to the classroom as normal. Unfortunately we cannot sell over the counter at the moment.
We are using the Summer Menu from Term 1 for the rest of the year. You will see items change on the Flexischools site as stock runs down. In addition, we have had some supply issues recently.
Thanks you.
Margaret Groves
ENTERTAINMENT BOOKS
OSHC NEWS
Dear OSHC Families
Just a Friendly reminder that the aftercare program will start at 1.30pm next Friday afternoon (last day of the year).
Please keep in mind the following dates
The upcoming holiday program is now available on the TheirCare website or from our OSHC room with bookings now open. The holiday program runs from Monday the 4th of January to Monday the 25th January 2021.
Please also note that Monday 21st December will be open as a holiday program day. Please book ASAP to ensure the program is staffed correctly.
2021 enrolments can now be made at https://theircare.fullybookedccms.com.au/family/login
2021 term booking will open in the next few weeks allowing you to make your bookings. Please note that all enrolments should be updated and reviewed before bookings are made to ensure that we have all the essential information needed, including updated medical management plans.
Many thanks,
OSHC team =)
OSHC mobile 0408 136 169
Email rosannagolflink@theircare.com.au
COMMUNITY NEWS
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
