Welcome to our first school newsletter for the year. This year you will receive newsletters each fortnight (odd number weeks) on a Tuesday via Compass. On the alternate week (even number weeks) we will have our Community Assembly which is held in The Sherwood Centre. Our newsletter, along with our Community Assemblies are packed full of celebrations and news from around the school. They are an important communication link, together with Compass.

Our start to the 2024 school year has been extremely smooth and the students are very settled going straight into class each morning, even our gorgeous Prep students have settled in seamlessly to their new context showing confidence. There have been many smiles shared.

Along with our new Prep students we have had new staff beginning: We would like to extend a warm welcome to Zoe Tuttleby in 1/2T, Sarette Starfield in 3/4S, Daniel McCann in 5/6M, Marisa Mowszowski in Art, and Kiani Devis and Michelle Ord will be joining our Inclusion Team. Finally, a big warm welcome to all of our new students and families.
I would like to update the school community and let you know that our Performing Arts teacher Mrs Sarah McGaw has accepted a role at Cranbourne East Primary School as their Mental Health and Student Wellbeing Leader. This is an area she is very passionate about and we wish her well.

We are so lucky to have an experienced Performing Arts teacher currently on staff. Mrs Mariana Surenian will be moving to full time and she will be working with our students on Mondays to Wednesday mornings as our Greek teacher and then Wednesday afternoons to Friday as our Performing Arts teacher.

We are very proud of our teaching team for 2024!

Structure of the School Day

As we shared with you last year, in 2024 our school day will follow the below schedule:

8:55am Enter the classroom and mark the roll
9:00am - 11:00am Learning
11:00am - 12:00pm Lunchtime (incl 15 mins eating time)
12:00pm - 2:00pm Learning
2:00pm - 2:30pm Snacktime
2:30pm - 3:30pm Learning

This model has been highly successful in other schools. It maximises student learning time, which leads to improved student outcomes. Having an earlier lunchtime, will support our students to be able to have higher engagement in the middle learning block. It also means our specialist classes will run for an hour, which gives students more opportunity to engage in that specific learning.

Year 1- Year 6 Meet the Teacher Sharing Sessions Wednesday 14th February 2024 12pm-5:30pm

Parent teacher interviews will be held on Tuesday 14th February from 12pm-5:30pm. We will be using Compass as the online tool for booking Parent Teacher interviews in 2024. Each session will be 10 minutes ON SCHOOL SITE. If you can not attend your session onsite, please inform your child’s teacher and they will be able to send you a Webex link.

If you have forgotten your Compass login or are having difficulties accessing Compass please contact the office.

We will send out the booking information on Compass over the coming days.
The meet the teacher sharing sessions will be for all of our Year 1 to Year 6 students. Prep families will have their sharing session as part of their child’s Wednesday one on one assessment interviews.

Please note that this session is for parents to share important information about their child’s strengths and interests, as well as sharing any areas of concern you may have regarding health, wellbeing, and academics.

If you have any further questions, please ask your classroom teacher.

MVPS's 2024 Student Leaders

We are very excited about our 2024 student leadership team. Here is a list of our captains:

House Captains
Ivanhoe- Dulanya & Sonny
Abbotsford- Jayda & Tommy
Rob Roy- Ava & Jamie
Quentin- Scarlett & Jasper M

Specialist Captains
Sport- Jasper O & Eliza
Performing Arts- Lucas & Tiffany
Visual Arts- Daniel & Eddie
Culture- Zoe C & Ivan

They're all off to the GRIP Leadership conference soon to work with other school leaders and get inspired for the year ahead. We can't wait to see the amazing work they do for our community in 2024.

LATE ARRIVALS

If students are late to school (after 9am), parents will need to bring them into the office and sign them in. Students are not allowed to sign themselves into the school, they must be accompanied by a guardian.

Rolls are marked promptly at 9:00am by teachers, so even if you are only a couple of minutes late, please follow this procedure.

Text messages are sent out at 9:30am to all families with students marked absent.

ABSENCES

If your child is going to be away for a whole day, please update Compass as soon as you know your child will be absent. This stops you receiving the absence text message. If you have received a text message, please log into Compass to update the reason for the absence. If they will be at school, but have an appointment do not log anything on Compass, this will be automatically recorded when you drop them off or pick them up.

EARLY PICKUP

If you need to pick your child up early from school, please let the teacher know what time they will need to be at the office for collection. When it is time for them to leave the classroom, the teacher will send your child to the office, with two buddies who will return to class. The office staff will sign your child out of school when you arrive.
Prior notice is appreciated to minimise interruptions and unexpected delays.

Amy Tinetti
Principal

Casey Gould
Assistant Principal

In order to streamline the weekly school delivery run any online orders placed for delivery to school will be delivered by a Spartan driver every Tuesday.

Online orders placed by midday on a Monday will be included in the school delivery the next day. Any orders placed after this time will be delivered in the following weeks run.