WELCOME BACK

Welcome back to Term 3. We hope that everyone was able to enjoy some time with family and friends over the break. 

The students have settled back seamlessly into school.  Thank you to our staff for the preparation and organisation they have put into supporting their return and the wonderful learning experiences and events ahead. 

Term 3 has already started with some fantastic events. Our preps celebrating 100 Days of School, Pyjama Day, our whole school Science focus and even more Funtime Lunchtime Clubs.

2023 PREP ENROLMENTS

If you have a child commencing in Prep in 2023 and they are not  yet enrolled, please submit the enrolment form as soon as possible. Forms are available online on our website or may be picked up at the office.  Thank you to families who have already submitted enrolments.

As in all school communities, some families relocate at the end of the year. It is very helpful for our planning and much appreciated at this early stage,  if you could advise the office if you know you will not be returning to Chelsea Primary School in 2023.

Workforce planning for the year ahead commences in Term 3. Prep enrolments and information about families leaving CPS helps us plan for the overall organisation of the school in the new year.

NATIONAL CONSISTENT COLLECTION OF DATA

Every year, all schools in Australia participate in the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability (NCCD). The NCCD process requires schools to identify information already available in the school about supports provided to students with disability. These relate to legislative requirements under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and the Disability Standards for Education 2005, in line with the NCCD guidelines (2019).

Information provided about students to the Australian Government for the NCCD includes:

• year of schooling
• category of disability: physical, cognitive, sensory or social/emotional
• level of adjustment provided: support provided within quality differentiated teaching practice, supplementary, substantial or extensive.

This information assists schools to:

• formally recognise the supports and adjustments provided to students with disability in schools
• consider how they can strengthen the support of students with disability in schools
• develop shared practices so that they can review their learning programs to improve educational outcomes for students with disability.

The NCCD provides state and federal governments with the information they need to plan more broadly for the support of students with disability.

The NCCD will have no direct impact on your child and your child will not be involved in any testing process. The school will provide data to the Australian Government in such a way that no individual student will be able to be identified – the privacy and confidentiality of all students is ensured. All information is protected by privacy laws that regulate the collection, storage and disclosure of personal information. To find out more about these matters, please refer to the Australian Government’s Privacy Policy (https://www.dese.gov.au/about-us/resources/department-education-skills-and-employment-complete-privacy-policy-0).

Further information about the NCCD can be found on the NCCD Portal (https://www.nccd.edu.au).

If you have any questions about the NCCD, please contact the school.

School Review 2022

Please refer to the information below outlining our current school content and our Intent, rationale and focus for our subsequent SSP (Strategic School Plan 2023-2026).

Thank you to our school council president Rohan Anstey, for playing a pivotal role in our school review and to our school council committee and parents who volunteered their time to be part of the school review process.

Context challenges

What is your school's current context?

Chelsea Primary is committed to teaching and learning excellence and achieved a great deal in the previous strategic plan.

At Chelsea, we provide a culture that creates opportunities for all students to learn and grow through the provision of high-quality teaching and learning and an engaging curriculum.  The move to create a calm, orderly environment and implement a consistent pedagogical model to teach a clear, viable curriculum has ensured teachers understand what they have to teach and how to teach it. The core literacy and numeracy skills are developed through the use of explicit, direct instructional learning in the Junior Years. In the Middle & Senior Years, explicit instruction and student-centred learning are combined to broaden analytical thinking and problem-solving. This is accomplished through collaborative planning, professional development, research, and innovative teaching strategies that promote student success. We provide a safe and secure learning environment, encouraging children to take risks and to engage in a diverse curriculum provided by a team of teachers committed to high-quality instruction.  Across the whole school, we have established routines and consistent learning and teacher protocols that ensure an environment where all students can reach their potential.

Our teachers are highly talented and dedicated.  They collaborate to develop a school culture that values teaching and learning.  They encourage all students to strive to achieve their best with their academic learning, including developing their social and emotional well-being to ensure all-around success. Our teachers are approachable, highly capable and dedicated to ensuring that every student in their care achieves the very best of their abilities. Fostering a strong partnership between the family and the school through clear and continuous communication is a key element in students’ success at Chelsea.  Parents are encouraged to be actively involved in their child’s education, school events, and decision-making opportunities. Our school promotes values that empower students to contribute positively to the school and the wider communities.  Our students live and learn by our values: Respect, Resilience, Responsibility and Relationships.  We celebrate the diversity of our school’s culture and community.

The self-evaluation and review found that CPS has created a solid platform for students to understand and take more ownership of their learning. Our school has grown considerably in the last four years (from 219 to 325 students) and with that has been an increase in the number of staff. A challenge has been to ensure all teaching staff are able to deliver the Instructional model consistently throughout the school confidently. A focus throughout the next SSP will be to ensure teachers are implementing the school Instructional Model, using the High Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS) and using data-driven curriculum planning to meet the needs of our students. This will include a focus on students' Goal Setting,  Learning Continuum and development of the school's Middle Leadership.

To do this effectively, CPS needs to further develop a strong Professional Learning Community with the FISO improvement cycle as the core way of working. The PLC's challenge is to improve literacy and numeracy learning by continuing to imbed a curriculum that ensures low variance between classrooms. There is a culture of collegiality and collaboration that has helped to establish high levels of relational trust amongst staff. Staff have shown a willingness to participate in professional learning, and our next step is implementing a rigorous peer observation and feedback cycle with fidelity to ensure we deliver high-quality teaching and learning in every classroom across the school. 

Chelsea Primary School must develop a shared student voice and agency model within its evidence-informed framework. The review identified that students were very engaged and proud of the school but were not completely sure about the endpoints of learning and how to monitor their own learning more independently. The PLC challenge is to engage students in exploring feedback-driven meta-cognition and facilitate goal setting and monitoring to reflect on successful behaviours in reaching their targets. Further challenging high-performing students is also a challenge. The percentage of students in the top two bands has increased over time, and we need to continue to seek growth in these students.

Intent, rationale and focus

A priority of the next Strategic Plan will be continuing to focus on implementing a PLC structure to help teachers implement: a knowledge-rich curriculum, challenge and inspire our students, and build a culture of data-driven practice. Embed student voice and learner agency so that we have a common understanding and language to define student voice and learner agency, including Student Goal Setting, Student Engagement and Well-being to build student agency and lead to a pathway of independent learning.

Our aims are to develop, refine and improve our:

• Literacy and Numeracy teaching and learning
• High Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS)
• Data-driven curriculum planning
• Video Instructional playbook
• PLC inquiry cycles
• Student voice and learner agency so that we have a common understanding and language to define student voice and learner agency, including Student Goal Setting
• Peer observation structure
• Student engagement and wellbeing

More specifically, we will:

• Develop, refine and continue to document and video the instructional model and agreed instructional approaches in literacy and numeracy
• Embed agreed professional learning community structures to embed high-impact teaching strategies to improve student learning growth
• Build the capability of staff to use assessment and data to evaluate the impact of instructional strategies on student learning to refine classroom practice.

Improve student engagement and wellbeing outcomes by developing a shared understanding amongst staff and students of student agency and empowerment, including the capacity of students to monitor and evaluate their learning. Build the capability of staff and students to give and receive targeted feedback through a peer observation structure to improve student learning. Develop and implement a consistent approach to student involvement in goal setting and monitoring their learning based on data and evidence captured.

A CPS model of student agency and voice to align with the very distinct culture created at CPS is an area the school is keen to imbed, to challenge and inspire our students; formative assessment practices will be implemented with student input embedded via feedback-driven metacognition to build student agency and a pathway to independent learning. This is important as it creates the best possible chance of improving our literacy and numeracy outcomes for all students and developing a stimulating curriculum with more students’ buy-in to generate further learning independence, motivation, and engagement in all classes at CPS.

It is cold, wet and windy outside but that hasn’t bothered the preps at all. Everyone is in great spirits and pumped to be learning our Production songs. Production has been a major highlight for students and families in the past and we’re thrilled to have it back this year. Individual classroom teachers will provide information regarding costumes, choreography and positions for classroom volunteers in the coming weeks.

100 Days of Prep was a major success. It was hilarious watching so many Benjamin Buttons strolling into the classrooms with chronic aches and pains that come with age. Thank you to all the families getting around this momentous occasion. The imagination and attention to detail was not unnoticed and the Preps will remember this day for the rest of their lives. After-all, you’re only ‘100’ once in your entire school career.

It is a curriculum day on Friday the 5^th of August.

Our school excursion to The Big Goose is booked for Friday the 19^th of August. Students should bring along a light bag to carry their snack, lunch, warm jacket, beanie and a water bottle.

Stay tuned for more updates to come,

Justine, Bianca & Matthew

Welcome to Term 3  

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday!

The students have settled in well to Term 3!

We will be looking at science this term in Inquiry starting with biological science. So we are off to Moonlit Sanctuary to learn more about animals.

We will be continuing to base classroom behaviours around our school values Resilience, Relationships, Responsibility and Respect.

The students were excited to have Pyjama day last Friday and we raised funds for foster children.

Things to remember are:

• Curriculum day Friday 5^th August.
• Concert Thursday 15^th of September.
• End of Term Friday 16^th September. (early finish)

What a wonderful start to Term 3!

In literacy this term, we have our mentor text of Matilda that we are working through. The kids have absolutely loved engaging with this text. Some of the children have even grabbed a copy of the book and are reading it at home as we go. How good is that! We also have been focusing on figurative language and learning how to intertwine it through our writing to make it more interesting and engaging. 

On the topic of literacy, it would be great if we could get more Middle school students reading lots of books and logging them for the Victorian Premiers Reading Challenge. So far, 4A is leading with already having three students complete the challenge.

In Maths this term, we are concentrating on fractions and decimals in parallel with measurement, including length and capacity. 

We have a few hands-on activities planned for students coming up in the next few weeks to allow them to apply the content knowledge they have learnt in a real life situation.

For inquiry we are now looking into science. In particular, we have been investigating biological sciences, which has included the life cycles and classifications of animals and plants. 

The middle school team is currently planning a science-based excursion before the end of term for us to look forward too - how cool is that. More details to follow, so stay tuned! 

It has been so good to see all middle school students displaying all of the Chelsea Primary School values this term. Let’s keep up the awesome work!

What an amazing start to semester two for our senior school students. The past few weeks has been filled with fun learning, science experiment and loads of sport. Students are well and truly fitting into senior school life and are showing their leadership throughout all aspects of the Chelsea primary community. Here are some of the wonderful things we have been doing over the past few weeks.

In literacy we have begun to study a new chapter book called ‘Boy Overboard’ by Morris Gleitzman. ‘Boy Overboard’ is a story of adventure, ball control and hope. Jamal and Bibi are the two main characters and dream of leading Australia to soccer glory in the next World Cu, but first they must survive the environment they are in. Students have been engaging in reading groups, vocabulary lessons and writing structures surrounding this fantastic novel. Students have also thoroughly enjoyed Thursday writing lessons using the Behind the News, a kid’s news outlet. We read interesting articles and follow relevant world news ending with a well-planned learning activity.

Our numeracy lessons are jam packed full of enriched content surrounding statistics and probability. Students have learned skills to interpret data, formulate meaningful questions for survey’s and ways to calculate chance and probability. Students loved our rock-paper-scissors challenge where they calculated the most probable way to win. They did this by recording 100 games of rock-paper-scissors and which one would win the game. Students then organised their data into a frequency chart and analysed what action is most and least likely to win in a game of rock-paper-scissors.

The fun does not stop at literacy and numeracy, Inquiry is covering elements of science this term and our seniors are becoming little scientists. In the last two weeks we have looked at matter, and the characteristics of different types of matter. This has involved two super cool experiments involving compressing the three types of matter and expanding gas using a reaction from two chemicals, which could be found in the everyday kitchen. We ensure that they theory behind the experiments is well understood before conducting them, so students can fully grasp the concept of what they are observing. 

With some much going on and many more events to go our seniors are busy working hard and planning for exciting things to come in semester two.

FOUNDATION

Foundation students are having their first painting experience.  Done in three stages, this art piece has a solid background.  The elephant is then traced onto the sheet and painted. The third stage sees the ears/eyes and flower or heart added.  The three foundation grades are well on their way to completing the second stage.  With only 6 students painting at a time, the remaining members of the class are undertaking other small art projects that help to develop their art skills.   

YEARS 1 & 2

The students are having a wonderful time creating their very own ‘Wild Things’, inspired by Maurice Sendak’s, ‘Where the Wild Things Are’.  After viewing a youtube reading of this popular story, the students drew up plans for their own ‘wild thing’.  Their models will be showcased in a diorama………the results so far have been terrific.  The Year 1’s have created their ‘wild thing’ in plasticine, while the Year 2’s will attempt papier mache.  I am really looking forward to the finished product.

YEARS 3 & 4

In Week 1 of term we had a Cartooning Workshop scheduled, but sadly, due to covid, that was postposed till Week 2.

The two sessions were fantastic and students really showed a great deal of talent.  Brett Cardwell certainly gave the students lots of tips for success.  They are currently using these new found skills to create their own comic strip.

Here's a sample of just how well the students did….sorry they are so light.

YEARS 5 & 6

Our first project in Term 3 is ‘The Chelsea Block’.  Each of the 5 & 6 grades have two teams that are each creating a model house.  We have been sponsored by Shoemakers Warehouse in Mentone and received from them in excess of 100 shoe boxes.  Each shoe box is a room and the students will furnish these rooms with recyclable materials (mainly from the family shopping waste). 

If anyone can donate small boxes, plastic moulded packaging, pizza box spacers, champagne corks and wire covers; anything that can be painted and decorated to look like a piece of furniture, send it along to the art room.  All donations gratefully accepted.

Lost property

Please check the lost property container in the sick bay of the main building if you are missing any items. Please ensure that all children’s belongings are clearly labelled with their name (not just their initials) and grade. Sometimes items are not returned to their rightful owner because they are not labelled correctly or clearly. If you find named belongings in your child’s possession, could you please return them to the school office. Thank you for your co-operation.


Sick bay