We acknowledge the traditional Aboriginal custodians of the lands, waterways and skies of the Bunurong Peoples of the Kulin Nation where we gather, learn and grow at Aspendale Primary School.

We pay our respects to past and present Traditional Custodians and Elders of all nations,  and their ongoing cultural, spiritual and educational practices.  

We extend this respect to all Torres Strait Islanders and any First Nations peoples who learn or visit these grounds. We thank you for sharing and caring for the land we are learning on.

New version of the Acknowedgement of Country
Above is an updated Acknowledgment of Country that has been written in consultation with staff, students and members of our community. We recieved positive feedback and approval from our friends at the Bunurong Land Council in 2023. 



Aspendale Primary School commemorated Reconciliation Week.
We understand that for many members of the APS community, this is a challenging time.

Reconciliation Week is a time for all Australians to learn about our shared histories, cultures, and achievements, and to explore how each of us can contribute to achieving reconciliation in Australia.

Now more than ever, these conversations are important to be having. 

As a school, we commemorated the week by focusing on developing our sense of community and connections with a whole school event. 

Our School Captains made a video during camp to commemorate the week. It starts with our school's Acknowledgement of Country. You can watch the video here. 


Thank you to Gus, Surina, Warren & Edie for helping create the video. You all did an amazing job understanding the purpose of the week. 

PRICE DAY 

The school was buzzing on Monday with the PRICE Day celebrations. Students moved into multi-aged groups to participate in their selected activities. There was something for everyone with opportunities for building, creating, cooking, crafting, mindfulness, coding, team building, sports, scrapbooking and loads more. A big thank you to all the teachers and students for displaying our values of Passion, Respect, Integrity, Commitment and Empathy throughout the day.  

Division Athletics:

Congratulations to the 30 students who participated in the Division Athletics last Friday. Great determination and commitment have been shown from this team. We are excited to cheer three students on at the Regional Championships next Wednesday after they placed in their events: Tilly Curnow (District Champion), Harry Irlam (District Champion) and Angus Nevans.

Breakfast Club and Running Club:

It was lovely to see the Community Leaders with Mrs MacDonald at Breakfast Club on Wednesday morning in the courtyard.  They had lots of hungry customers after the return of Running Club with Ms Scott and Ms Hale. If you weren’t able to get there this week, we look forward to seeing you next Wednesday before school. 

Life Education:

Students across the levels have been excitedly participating in the Life Education program over the last two weeks, with some looking forward to their upcoming visit next week. Healthy Harold has been sharing many adventures about friendship, safety rules, broadening and developing emotional literacy and building positive, safe and respectful relationships. 

Play Leaders:

Our first two groups of Play Leaders took to the playground on Tuesday and Thursday at lunch time to facilitate a range of games in both the junior and courtyard. After rounding up some keen participants the Play Leaders introduced, ran, and monitored different games like Poison, Ships! and Hey, You! Let’s hear from some of the year 3’s who got involved:

River: It was so fun, I hope they do it again.

Isla: I liked how the Play Leaders were kind and didn’t argue.

Edie: Thank you for making my lunch time special!

Charlie B: Thank you for giving us chances and more opportunities to be in the game!

Elsie: It was so fun, they were kind and its great for our mental health and to be active. 

Oskar: The games were really fun and I want them to run them again. They made it fair for everyone to get a turn. 

Charli R: I liked that they let people choose if they wanted to ‘it’ in the games. 

Performing Arts Showcase – Foundation to Year 4. 

Ms Tideman and Ms Matthews last week shared information about the upcoming Performing Arts Showcase for students in foundation to year 4. This is set to be a fabulous opportunity for our students to perform to an audience. Make sure you have marked the dates in your diary! See the article later in this newsletter.  

Student Movement

We are turning our minds towards 2024, in terms of workforce planning and school structure. If you know that your family is moving next year, or your child is moving schools, could you please let the office know as soon as possible via the school email address: aspendale.ps@education.vic.gov.au This will help us to make informed decisions when planning for 2024.

For those heading to the disco, have fun grooving away to your favourite tune! 

Amelia Busuttil

While Exhibition is over, many of our students have taken the time to reflect on their PYPX Learning Journey. This is a very important part of the process because many students originally thought that PYPX was really about the Exhibition night. We have worked hard for students to understand that it is more about the process of creating their own inquiry, unpacking questions, researching, creating something, presenting and then reflecting!
Below are a sample of their reflections. Canva is very popular in Year 6 at the moment, so you will see many of our reflections have been created there.












Term 4 Week 7
And that's a wrap!

And just like that, PYPX is over. The Year 6s put on such an incredible event on Tuesday evening, showcasing their awesome work that they had been completeling over the past two months. There work was viewed by many the Year 6 parents and carers along with other members of the Aspendale community . We are very grateful for all of the support the Year 6s received from their Aspendale PS mentors, families at home and experts members of the greater community.










Student Reflection: Jett & Liv

This week was exhibition week, which means Year 6’s eight weeks of PYPX have almost come to an end. It has been a great journey and also a hard one, at times! 

On Tuesday night we had our final exhibition to the parents, carers, family and friends of our community. It has been a great 8 weeks of working hard to reach our final goal of spreading awareness of our or trying to solve our issues. Our research has been full of interesting facts, like how the FIFA Women’s World Cup prize money is 4 times less than the Men’s. We also all took an action which could be writing an email, raising money for charities related to our issues. I emailed 5 A-league clubs (Melbourne City, Melbourne Victory, Sydney FC, Perth Glory and Brisbane Roar) as well as the Matildas but unfortunately no one responded. Some of us also created interactive games for the students seeing our projects. I made a mini penalty shootout game against Matildas goalkeeper Mackenzie Arnold. On behalf of Year 6 I would like to thank all the teachers around the school for helping us and being our mentors, the school community for supporting us and most of all the Year 6 teachers who were with us every step of the way. This was an awesome experience and we are all very proud of ourselves.

We all started with an idea and hope that we could change a problem in that category. Most of us tried to raise awareness of our problem and did a great job. We all got people that were interested in our problems coming up to our stands looking at our information and learning new things. Some people had more than others but we all still raised awareness. I know I had heaps of fun preparing and setting up for my exhibition and I hope everyone else did as well. For my action Hugo and I asked a few Year three girls if they would like to play a game  of basketball in the hall. Surprisingly lots of them were interested and they had fun playing a game of basketball. The next week we asked if they would like to play a game of footy- this time, there was only three who were interested in playing. Advice, I would give to Year 5s? Make some of your presentation interactive to attract people. And to also make the words you use as simple as possible.

 
Term 4 Week 6
The countdown is well and truely on! We have 2 more days to set up our displays before it all begins.

"Creative chaos" is the best way to describe the Year 6 spaces at the moment...

We are in build/ develop/ cut/ print and put together mode. The teachers favourite questions are 'Excuse me...can you just print this for me?' 'Is their a spare table I could use?' 'What do you think about this?'

On Monday and Tuesday next week, we are looking forward to showing our school community - and other schools all the learning that we have been doing for the past 8 weeks. 

On Tuesday night from 5.30 -7.30 families will be invited in for the official, PYPX Exhibition night. 

The Year 6 teachers are very impressed by the students marathon commitment to their displays. It is really challenging to stay on task for so long and now that the end is in sight - we are all a mix of excitement and nerves! Thank you for all those who have supported us so far. We only have 5 more days!!!!





Term 4 Week 5 student blog

Term 4 Week 5 student blog - By Ivy & Jack

Hi, we are Jack and Ivy and the issues we are looking at are Fast Fashion and ADHD awareness. 

This week we are getting ready for the PYPX exhibition. It has been a bit chaotic in the classroom with everyone making their posters, graphs, diagrams and their projects. I have been emailing some NGO (Non-governmental organisations) that are facing a problem or an issue about fast fashion. I have also emailed Reliable Uniforms about what they’re doing to make their clothes sustainable and to help the environment.


 

This week we had 4 guest speakers!!! We started with Amanda Dudley who came in and taught us about psychology and the different types of health (mental, physical ect) and talked about the 6 pillars of wellbeing that includes things like exercise, relationships, body needs/ biological etc. 

We also had a visit from our old Assistant Principal Mrs Regester who now works at the Resilience Project. She came in with her colleague Elias and they spoke to us about G.E.M.EL (Gratitude, Empathy, Mindfulness and Emotional Literacy).
  

Emma Bowd came in to tell us about her journey to becoming an Author. She began by writing books for adults and it wasn’t until she visited her children’s classroom as a helper that she decided she loved working with children and writing stories for children. She now writes a lot of children's books and some chapter books as well. We have a couple of her stories in our school library as well! ‘Wonderful Shoes’ and ‘The day you were born’.  

We also have our last guest speaker coming in tomorrow, such a busy time in Year 6! A massive shout out to our special guest speakers for taking time out of their busy lives to come and chat with us, we truly appreciate it.  

Term 4 Week 4 student blog

Term 4 Week 4 student blog - By Jett & Hugo

Hi, we are Jett and Hugo. We are both researching similar issues for our PYPX project, ‘inequality and pay rate differences compared between male and females in sports both basketball and AFL.’ As part of our action we decided to run some lunchtime clubs for the Year 3 girls to raise awareness for women's sports and its population. We started on Tuesday this week and played basketball, we ran some warm ups and finished with a basketball game. Next week we will run a footy skills session and play a footy game. The following week the year 3’s will vote if they want to play another footy game or another basketball game. 

This week we had a guest speaker come in, his name was Paul Zappa he spoke to us about Respectful Relationships. We learnt a lot from him, he told us about his journey and experiences he has worked through with experiencing depression and anxiety. He taught us about how to identify if someone has something going on in their life and if they might need some help a really simple thing you can do is ask ‘Are you ok?’ He also taught us how to have some good habits to calm down and other strategies we can use. 

We are also now half way through our research and at the thinking stage before our big exhibition. We have almost finished researching, so now we’re up to thinking about what we’re going to show at our exhibition and how we are going to share our learning journey with the community.

We have had meetings with different teachers outside of our year level. They are called our mentors so if you see a big scary year six in your classroom, don't be worried we are probably just having a meeting with your teacher. 

We have all chosen a change maker we would like to research about. The change maker I chose most people do not know but he is important to my sister. His name is Geoff Lachlan, he started the first Edi Asp Under 8s Footy team, and convinced some other clubs to get under 8 teams as well. 

Thank you for reading our PYPX Blog and we hope you enjoyed hearing what we have done this week to improve our projects. Bye!!

Written by Jett and Hugo.

There is no doubt Year 6 students have been hard at it this week. There were a few lightbulb moments and Ms Fletcher, Mr Powell and I really enjoyed witnessing our students taking advantage of all the opportunities they have been given and embracing this journey. One of my favourite moments was reflecting on how far we have come. 

Questions included:

• What is the hardest part? 
• What is the coolest thing you have learnt this week? 
• What is the best part? 
• What is advice I would give to someone who was yet to begin?

Students were keen to share their highlights, and cool facts with the group. Many students, able to explain lots of challenges but also amazing experiences. Next week we look forward to planning out ideas for exhibition and more guest speakers. Huge thanks to Paul Zappa who gave up his time to come and talk with our Year 6 students.

Term 4 Week 3 student blog

Hi we are Milly, Milla, Rose & Ky, 4 students from 6P. We hope you enjoy reading about what we have done so far this week!

This week was an exciting week for PYPX! We started off with two full blocks of PYPX on Monday, then one full block on Tuesday, and a full block on Wednesday! On Monday we chose our Learner Profile Attributes (LPA’s) and then designed a card saying what the LPA was and a picture that represents the LPA. For our task before that we did an activity where we were given a job and we had to choose which 3 LPA’s would be the best. On Monday we also filled in a cheat sheet that we can use to help guide us when we meet with our mentors. 

This week most of the Year Sixes have met or are meeting with their mentors. Our mentors help to guide us through our PYPX journey so that we can be the most successful possible.

On Thursday our expert speaker, Miss Fletcher, will be talking to us about history.

We hope that you enjoyed reading our update about PYPX and look forward to reading next week's update.

Written and designed by Milly O’Donnell, Milla Youngs, Rose Stokes, and Ky Perkin!

Special thanks to Miss Fletcher for presenting to us to help with our PYPX!

We have had two guest speakers this week to show us what they are passionate about and what they do to help give us ideas on what we might want to focus on for our inquiry projects. 

On Tuesday we had our first guest speaker, Samantha Vella, an Artist and Teacher. She showed us her art work and told us her journey through becoming an artist. Since then she has had an exhibition and sells her work online. Our second guest visited us on Wednesday and her name is Emily Bourke. She is a teacher at APS who has a therapy dog named Dave that she brings to school. She explained to us how she got Dave and how having a therapy dog reduces stress and boosts joy. Did you know that when you see a dog it can lower the stress hormone cortisol and increase serotonin levels! This happens even when you see a picture of a dog. 

  

This week for our task we have been looking at the Key Concepts. With this task we had to look through each lens of the key concepts eg form, function, connection and many more. Everyone focused on their personal issue and looked at it from a different lens, asking questions around their issue so that later on in our PYPX we have more questions to answer and research to unpack!

For our PYPX we have been given a checklist to guide us each week and this week on our checklist we have: 

• Check in with your coach, (discuss what you have done or what you want to get done this week)
• Respond to the weekly prompt also known as your blog. 
• Email your mentor to book a time to meet (your mentor is a teacher in the school who helps with research and someone who is an expert on a particular topic. 
• Create a bibliography to show where all of our research came from. 
• Write an email to our mentor to schedule and organize times to meet and check in. 
• Post on our Google site and Padlet to keep that updated with our blog for each week and the Key Concepts. 

This week all of the year 6’s started to research for their PYPX. We are all researching a variety of issues for lots of different topics including Ocean pollution, Fast fashion, Animal testing and Mental health. Most of our research has been based around our Sentence of intent which is a sentence that represents your goals and what direction you intend for your PYPX to go in.

Written by Jasmine Reid, Holly Savic, Keita Rogers and Amelia Young. Thanks for reading and also a big thank you to Emily Bourke and Samantha Vella for coming in to share their stories with us! 

What about how will and has artificial intelligence changed our lives? (Kai)  Why do humans blink? (Georgia) Can you predict the next 50 to 100 years? (Woody) Do you know why our bodies adapt or how do our brains receive signals from our body?(Matilda)

The Year 6 students had the chance to ask Dr Karl Kruszelnicki all these questions on Wednesday. Our students were impressed by Dr Karl’s knowledge about so many different topics. It was a great way to see someone so passionate about learning!  

Some of the other questions were: 

How have humans evolved? (Charlotte R) Why do some animals lay eggs? (Harvey) What was the first creature created and how? (Jett) If our earth and oceans and lands are always moving and changing and how countries were all split apart. Can this happen again in our future?(Ella R) How does Hawking Radiation escape a black hole? (Jayden M) What happens to water when the tide is high and low? (Milla) What made you want to be a scientist? (Lucas) How can most bugs climb up walls or vertical surfaces? (Tilly) What is the first country to be discovered and where was it? (Finnegan.)  

Week 1  has really  been about organising; our sites, our padlets, our ideas and our checklists! 

Students have been unpacking our loosely held ideas and talking/ clarifying our inquiries. We have found out who our coaches are (Year 6 teachers). Unpacked the  transdisciplinary themes and decided which one matches up with our ideas. The next steps include writing a sentence of intent which means that our students are clarifying their ideas, if you ask a Year 6 Student next week ‘what is your PYPX project?’ they will be able to give you a one sentence answer .

Hello! We are Olivia and Emily, two Year Six students and we are here to tell you about our week so far. As you may know we have started our PYPX journey to Exhibition in 8 weeks. 

On Monday we planned and asked questions about PYPX and we discovered that we have a coach and mentor. Our coach is a Year 6 teacher and our mentor is any teacher around the school. We were so excited that Ms Fletcher had to put the timer on - lucky we didn't stay in. We also got to put in our preference for coaches and we found this out on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, we looked at the transdisciplinary themes we have learned throughout Primary School. Each inquiry we do has a transdisciplinary theme and so we get to choose our own for our PYPX. I (Emily)chose to do an inquiry within the Sharing the Planet and I (Liv), have chosen to do a Where we are in place and time inquiry.  After a long anticipated day we finally discovered our Coaches and everyone was excited. 

On Wednesday, we met with Dr Karl on video call. Some lucky Year 6 students got to ask Dr Karl questions like:Why do we have to blink? And How do we get allergies? These were amazing questions and Dr Karl answered them magnificently. We also did our want to know and what I know and what I need to know.  

On Thursday we checked some things off of our checklist which include: Create a padlet for our PYPX journey and post on our google sites. On Friday, we will write our sentence of intent- which will be a sentence that explains to anyone who asks, What our inquiry is about. It is also a sentence  for our perspective Mentors to read to decide which students they would like to mentor. 

We hope you enjoyed reading this, And hope you are looking forward to next week’s update! 

Written by and designed by Oliva McAuliffe and Emily Northey

Special thanks to Dr Karl for letting us interview him.

Year 6 students have been asked all year to hold their ideas for PYPX lightly. Holding our ideas lightly has allowed us to hear different ideas, reflect on the news and be open minded to different perspectives, as the year has progressed.

This week, we have formalised the start of our PYPX learning journey. Today, our provocations are related to unpacking key concepts, exploring issues within topics and brainstorming our ‘ideas’ less lightly. By the end of our first week back, our Year 6 students will have chosen their issues and we will be locking in their teacher mentors. 

Over the next 8 weeks, our Year 6 students will be embarking on a PYPX learning journey. It is a time that culminates in  our Year 6 PYP Exhibition. It is a time where our Year 6 students independently tackle an inquiry into an issue and/or solve a problem that exists today, they apply all the knowledge from their PYP experience- whether it be seven years from when they began in Foundation or more recently, when they arrived at APS. It is a celebration of the amazing skills and passion they show about an issue.

We hope to update this blog twic a week, with a teacher entry and student feedback. Watch this space! 

Year 5 Update

In Year 5 we have been conducting experiments as part of our How the World Works unit of inquiry. Before our test began, we had to come up with a range of question we would like to know the answer to. After we had chosen one question, we were required to write up the beginning of our scientific report, which we had been practicing writing during our writing sessions. We had to include a title, aim, hypothesis, materials, method, results, discussion and conclusion.

In the experiments we need to have a control and a certain number of variables.

Experiment day came and we were all very excited! 

When we did our experiments, we saw how some of the experiments were proving that the hypothesis was right, some proving the opposite. A great example of one of the experiments that took place in our class was Kobi's. She was trying to figure out what liquids would change the size of gummy bears (when left to soak). The liquids were coke, water, vinegar and control. She thought that the coke one would grow the biggest but was surprised to see the water grew by .4 of a cm in length. All in all, it was a fun and great learning experience that allowed us to inquire into different areas of science that we are interested in. 

We are Storytellers!

This term in Year One, our students are investigating the wonderful world of storytelling, as we explore the many ways ‘stories can be conveyed through a variety of media’.

To spark our thinking and ignite our curiosity, last Thursday we took a deep dive into the magical world of blacklight puppetry through a delightful performance of ‘Dreamer in the Deep’ by Dream Puppets.  Students laughed, cheered and engaged with the story of Dreamer as he adventured to save a leafy sea dragon from the evil scorpion fish at the bottom of the ocean. Students were intrigued by the wordless storytelling and the expressive nature of the different styles of puppets. They were given opportunity to ask lots of questions and explore the mechanics behind the scenes that made the puppet show come to life.

We are so excited to see where our curiosity takes us next!

This year we have seen 45 Year 5 and 6 students successfully participate in Victorian High Ability Program. Through the governments funding for high abilities, students are selected externally, for the program based on NAPLAN results and teacher judgements. They participate in a terms online learning. The Primary Maths program focuses on coding and number and the English program ‘Power of the Pen’ encourages creative thinking when writing.

In August we had over 100 students from Years 3-6 complete the Australian Maths Trust’s competition. They had to answer a range of unique problems designed by leading educators and academics to challenge and extend students’ problem-solving skills. We are waiting for the certificates to arrive and students receiving a credit or distinction will be presented at an assembly later in Term 4. An overview of results is as follows

Year 3 11 credits and 4 distinctions

Year 4  5 credits and 2 distinctions

Year 5 8 credits and 11 distinctions

Year 6 12 credits and 3 distinctions.

Eric Stancu of Year 4 was awarded Best in School. This award recognises the student with the highest AMC score in a school (after statistical calibration), based on the minimum achievement of a Distinction award. Congratulations Eric.

Throughout the year we have been able to provide a number of opportunities for high ability students to participate in a range of workshops. Coral Vass, an author, worked with groups from 3-6  aiming to further develop the students’ writing skills, particularly focusing on sentence structure, generating ideas and story development. Various virtual maths sessions have been facilitated this year by Monash Tech School. At the end of Term 3 a group of Year 5s enjoyed a virtual maths games day with the Mathematical Association of Victoria and the support of Mr Grindley.

A lunchtime club provided students with the chance to explore the University of Melbourne Statistics and Research competition. The competition offered the opportunity for students to work collaboratively on an open-ended research question. They worked in teams and identified a question to work on for the term. The aim of the competition is to allow students to use their creativity and problem-solving skills to make choices about how best to ask and answer questions about their chosen project. Congratulations to Matilda and Milla in Year 6 for their submission. We look forward to hearing how the judging of the 560 entries progress.

Carla Youngs

This year our students have been eagerly collecting tokens and redeeming them for a large variety of activities as part of our PBL program. We have had students using them to wear free dress, have some extra recess time, popcorn parties at lunchtime and sit in the teachers chair for the day to name just a few.

 

Noah (Yr 1) – Teacher for the day                     

 

Lakaia and Pia (Yr 2) – Teachers for the day   

Having a tangible reinforcement to accompany teacher praise has been invaluable in assisting to reinforce the behaviours we expect students to display at our school. Along the way however we have broken or misplaced some of our tokens. If any families are able to collect their plastic (not cardboard) bread tags over the next couple of months we would love them to come to school to be recycled for use as part of our token system. Tags can be sent to Mrs Peterson or via classroom teachers to forward on.