Healesville Primary School
NEWSLETTER
Week 5 - Term 1 - Thursday 25 February 2021
From the Principal's Desk…
Dear Parents and Carers,
This week we saw the performance of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It was funny, engaging and entertaining with an important message about treating everyone with respect regardless of our differences. There is a photo below that shows how engaged our students were.
Our school was also host for a moderation session between five schools in the Yarra Valley on Wednesday night. Teachers worked across the schools to look at writing, specifically looking at the traits of a good quality piece. This was an incredibly beneficial session as it also gave teachers the opportunity to connect with teachers from other schools.
Our School Council met on Tuesday night and we need more parents to join our school council. This is a great opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of HPS. Our meetings are discussion based and we look at future directions and initiatives for our school. Our next meeting will be Tuesday 23rd March at 6:30pm. Council meets twice a term (eight per year) and generally goes for around and hour to an hour and a half. If you would like to join our school council please come and see me as I have the nomination forms. If you know of a parent who would be interested please talk to them and also suggest they come and chat to me.
Our teacher / tutor program has begun, Bek Clarke and Fenna Hogg have been looking closely at which students would benefit most from this program in term one. If your child has been selected you will be receiving a letter from us outlining this initiative. We are very lucky to be able to offer quite a bit of support this year. Eleanor has already begun her Levelled Literacy Intervention (LLI) Program to support reading and Tina has been working with students in Quick Smart Maths.
On Wednesday we had our second Playgroup session. Sharyn Borg was in charge and had a huge amount of fun reading stories and making hand prints with paint. See photo below.
I was notified by an assistance carer this week that they were unable to leave the driveway of the resident they were visiting because a parent had blocked it with their car while waiting to collect students at the end of the day. Please be aware that road rules state that you should not block driveways.
I just wanted to also remind parents about our SunSmart policy with regard to hats. All students need to have a school hat to wear in the yard in term one and term four. Thankyou for your cooperation.
Tracey Robertson-Smith
Monday 1 Mar - Division Swim
Friday 5 Mar - Assembly
Monday 8 Mar - Labour Day Public Holiday
Thursday 11 Mar - House Athletics
- Newsletter
Friday 19 Mar - Colour Run
- Assembly - TBC
Tuesday 23 Mar - School Council
Wednesday 24 Mar - SCHOOL PHOTO DAY
Thursday 25 Mar - Newsletter
Friday 26 Mar - CURRICULUM DAY - PUPIL FREE DAY
Monday 29 Mar - District Athletics
Thursday 1 Apr - Last Day of Term 1 - student finish 2.30pm
- Assembly
Students of the Week
P1H: Maddison O & Savannah CY for showing confidence in learning.
12LB: Evan K - Always willing to help others
34B: Taylor H - Being a kind, hard working member of 3/4B.
34W: Ava K - Fabulous effort and creativity with work during lockdown
45V: Ruby C - being a confident and independent learner during home school.
56B: Brookley H - being supportive to other students.
56SK: Zaine D - Helping out a student who was struggling.
Art: Makenna G, Eloise S, Sky H & Olivia W - for outstanding teamwork and creating a fabulous campsite out of clay.
PE: Nikki R - for a fantastic start to P.E. this year.
A Note about Excursions/Incursions and Camp permission.
What a great day we had for our first event of the year – swimming sports. It was lovely to see so many smiling faces, both on the children and parents.
- A large number of parents were cut off from giving permission for this event once the portal closed. The portal always closes a week before an event (earlier in the case of camps) in order for the event organiser to organise buses, teams, entry numbers etc. It is not something that can be done the day before or even the morning of the event. Arrangements also need to be made at school for children who are not attending the event.
- We received a lot of late permissions for this event which we decided to allow as it was the first one of the year – especially after such a long break. However, in future, we cannot accept late permission. We ask for your cooperation with this as it can be very distressing for a child to miss out on an event for this reason.
- It is a legal requirement that written/email/Portal permission from a child’s parent or legal guardian is received before a child can attend an event. Verbal permission cannot be accepted under any circumstances.
- We cannot stress enough that, if you are experiencing difficulties with either dojo or the portal, to call or come and see us in the office and we will help you to get connected. These platforms are our main means of communication and it is vital that they are working for you.
- Prior to the portal permission system, a vast number of parents were not getting excursion information as children would either lose them, forget to hand them in – both to the parent or to the school once permission had been given. Our School Council met and determined the protocol for our excursions. The implementation of the portal system allows parents/guardians to be in control of payments and permissions.
Points to note:
Please do not download the Sentral 'app'. The app is clunky and very slow and is best avoided. Instead, use your phones web browser to type in the Sentral web address https://sentral.hps.vic.edu.au/portal2/#!/login and then save this address as a bookmark on your phone (if you are unsure of how to do this, please come and see us or a quick google search will show you how). We have noticed that the best functionality of Sentral is via a desktop or laptop.
Our process for excursions is as follows:-
- Information about the event is posted to class dojo along with a link to the portal. We do this so that parents/guardians can, with one or 2 clicks, give permission for the event. We will always try to allow plenty of time for you to give permission.
- A few days before the permission cut-off, a reminder is posted along with the portal link again.
- Once the permission cut off has passed, the event closes and parents/guardians will be unable to give permission. In turn, this means that the child cannot attend the event.
- Payment is required before an event, but, you can give permission immediately and make payment a bit later on so please don’t wait to give permission until you can make payment.
Louise George
BUSINESS MANAGER
Physical Education at HPS in 2021
Hello HPS families,
This term in PE, we are focusing on developing our track and field skills for our upcoming athletics carnival. Our grade 3 – 6 students have been practicing standing and crouching starts, and baton exchanges for the relay races. We have had lots of discussion about where our power comes from when we accelerate in a sprint start and have started to work on developing our endurance by doing a few laps of running around the oval to start every lesson. Currently students are aiming to finish 2 laps, but we are working towards increasing that number by the end of term. In the next few weeks, we will focus on field-based events with some jumping and throwing practice and fun games.
The P-2 students have been developing safe running techniques, focusing on looking forward when we move and using our arms and legs to help us run faster. We have also been working on our sportsmanship by playing relays and games and picking a ‘team spirit’ winner for the group who is cheering and encouraging their team mates the best. In the next few weeks, we start activities based around jumping and leaping, and finish the term working on our throwing and catching skills. P-2 students are aiming to complete 1 lap during our endurance training, but I was so impressed to see many can complete 2 quite quickly already.
I’d like to congratulate all our students on such a great swimming sports carnival. All the HPS staff were so happy to see so many of our students stepping outside their comfort zone and participating in different events. Congratulations to everyone in Chum house for being the overall swimming carnival champions.
We had lots of students going on to compete in the district swimming carnival, with Summer C, Taylor C and Jett B qualifying to compete in the divisional swimming sports which will be held next week. Good luck legends!
Miss Bryan, PE Coordinator
Sustainability
In sustainability we have been growing lots of fruits and veggies like tomatoes, chillies, butternut pumpkins, strawberries and many more fruits and veggies.
Down near the oval, there is a chicken coop where we have 4 chickens that have been laying lots of eggs that you can buy a dozen for $5 at the office.
We have lots of things in our gardens and all the students can help to plant more things.
We are going to divide the school into 9 zones and each grade will have a garden.
Written by Georgia and Chloee
Junior School Council
We are very excited to have had our first Junior School Council meeting on Tuesday. We have such amazing kids who are excited to bring ideas on behalf of their peers. There was lots of discussion and a bunch of ideas about our future fundraisers and SWPBS activities. We will be meeting in the next two weeks to finalise our first fundraiser.
Congratulations to all the committee members.
Georgia Horsley and Kelly Laidlaw
SWPBS - School Wide Positive Behaviour Support
Just an update about our School Wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS) Program.
We are continuing to teach in class and around the school behaviours that we want the children to display. We have ordered special tokens to reward the children when we see these in place. The tokens will be collected and when we fill our special container to ¼, ½, ¾ and to the top, there will be a whole school reward. Junior School Council met yesterday to think of some ideas for rewards.
Next term at our first assembly we will be officially launching our program and showing some presentations that the children have made. These presentations will be used to help teach our rules and positive behaviours we want to see around our school.
Thank you for your support.
Sharyn Borg
Well-being Co-ordinator
LINKS FOR THE PARENT PORTAL - TO REGISTER & LOG IN
Please use this link to REGISTER for the portal:
(please note, you will need your access key to link your child.
https://sentral.hps.vic.edu.au/portal/register
You only need to register ONCE.
Once you've registered use the following link as your usual login.
Please use this link to LOGON to the portal:
(once you have registered).
School Banking
Camp Australia - Before & After School Care
School Fee Information for 2021
Please note Uniform Shop at the school open Friday mornings! (see below)
POSITION VACANT - UNIFORM SHOP COORDINATOR AT HPS
The uniform shop coordinator at Healesville Primary School
is a paid position and is currently vacant.
If you are interested in applying for this position, please contact Jenny directly at Surrey Clothing on 9890 3487 or email her at admin@surreyclothing.com.au
Password: HPS
About Us
Email: healesvilleps@edumail.vic.gov.au
Website: www.hps.vic.gov.au
Location: Healesville Primary School, 2 View St, Healesville VIC, Australia
Phone: (03) 59624053
Facebook: facebook.com/healesvilleps