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 are awaiting feedback from our friends at the Bunurong Land Council.

If you wish to share more feedback, please scan the QR Code below which will take you to a Google Form. 


~ Thanks Cait Fletcher & the Global Awareness Team 

 

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Important dates:

December
Saturday 2nd	Years 1 & 2 Working Bee 10.30am – 12.30pm.
Monday 11th	Curriculum Day
Tuesday 12th	State Wide High School Transition Day
Wednesday 13th	Year 6 Graduation
Monday 18th	Year 6 Big Day Out
Wednesday 20th	Final Day of Term 4

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Hello everyone,

I hope you’ve enjoyed your week. It was lovely to see Laura St full of families enjoying spending time together in their costumes on Tuesday afternoon. I hope you were able to partake in a lolly or two.

I’d like to start by thanking Mel McSweeney for being our Acting Assistant Principal for the past three weeks. We have appreciated your expertise and support in the role during this period. Mel will continue as our Literacy Learning Specialist and our Year Four Learning Leader.

Foundation Transition

On Tuesday morning we welcomed many of our 2024 Foundation students for their first transition morning. Their families looked on with pride as the students headed into the classrooms with our current Foundation teachers. They spoke about what they were looking forward to about school and familiarised themselves with the spaces. It was lovely to see the students’ excited faces and we look forward to welcoming them further over the coming weeks.

Sister School Lesson Exchange

Our Year Five students have had two opportunities to participate in a lesson exchange with our Sister School, Xuri Jing Cheng, this week. Xuri Jing Cheng is located in the city of Nanjing in Jiangsu province. On Tuesday afternoon, Cait Fletcher taught an English class to a class at their school via Zoom. They read the book Diary of a Wombat and our students taught them about Australian animals.

Tomorrow, our Sister School will teach our Year Five students about Nanjing street food. Thanks to Hong Ma and Cait Fletcher for organising this opportunity and to our Year Five students who represented our school.

Monday 6th Nov

This Monday is the day before the Melbourne Cup Public Holiday. Many of our staff who have attended camps this year have been directed to take time in lieu on Monday. We have made arrangements for replacement staff on Monday. If your family is enjoying an extra long weekend over this time, could you please let your child’s classroom teacher know so their absence is explained on the role.

Staffing Update

Teresa Baker has been a valued member of our staff for eighteen years. She has filled many roles during her time, including leading Learning Enhancement and student achievement, mentoring staff and as a passionate educator, working in the early years. Next year, Teresa has accepted a leadership position at Keysborough Gardens PS. We wish her well in this new opportunity and look forward to hearing about her next adventure.

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PYPX  Reflection Fun times

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!

Term 4 Week 2 student blog
Hi, we are Jas, Holly, Keita and Amelia, Year Six students from 6M. We are here to tell you what we have learnt and done this week for our PYPX. We hope you enjoy reading about what we have done this week!

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! 

This week, we have also be concentrating on our 'form' questions- our 'what is it like?' questions and targeting specific websites that help us gather information. 
When asked the usual suspects of Kids Britannica , KidsNews and National Geographic for Kids are the favoured websites. But, overall, our go to for research this week is..... BTN. 

Term 4 Week 1
Do you know why faces can't be remembered? (Meg) Or can we bring back some dinosaurs and animals that are extinct? (Oscar) What about how much of the ocean is unexplored?(Lucas M) 

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 .

Student Blog Entry   Week 1

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.

Term 3 Week 10

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! 

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Congratulations to the Environment Leaders for winning second place at the Big Green Conference!
On Friday 20th October, 10 Environment Leaders headed off to St Louis' for the second Big Green Conference. They were coveting the Kingston Council 'Golden Chook Award.' 

They presented on their roles as Environment Leaders detailing all the things they do at APS:
- Empty and sort all the recycling bins
- Run the Nude Food program and speak at assembly about it
- Attend/ host Garden Club each week
- Work as a team in Leadership time
- Plant trees!
- Support the Great Olive Harvest and Oil production of 2023
- Create actions for the school to do.
They should be very proud of how well they presented and came together at the end. There have been a lot of ups and downs as Enviro Leaders this year, but it was fantastic to see how excited everyone was at the conference.

After presenting, St Louis' showed us around their school! It was a very HOT day but we got to explore their garden, frog bog, guinea pig enclosure, greenhouse, reptile house and chook shed. We found tadpoles and looked for frogs. We played with their pet turtles and learnt what we need to do to make our worm farm thrive - spoiler alert: we need to add more water.
We were all very inspired. It was very cool to hear what all the other schools we competed against are doing to make their schools more sustainable. So many ideas for Ms Fletcher to ponder over.  Thank you to St Louis' for organising the day. (And Carrum PS for the first day of the Conference.) 

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Our very own Michael Riant has been selected for the State Softball Team to represent Victoria. As we have always done here at Aspendale Primary School, the community is rallying around Michael and supporting him and many different ways including a dress up day on November 9th. 

Here is a message from Michael:

Hi APS! I’m Michael and on November 17, I'm leaving for Adelaide for SSV and I will be representing the state of Victoria in softball. We have had multiple trainings for the national tournament. I’m going to have two fundraisers, one is a jelly bean in the jar guess where a team will be stationed outside the canteen starting on at recess and lunch time. It is 50 cents a guess or a $2 for 3 guesses, so please bring in your pocket money to see if you can win this huge jar of jelly beans. Also on November the 9th, everyone can come dressed up as a sporting hero for a gold coin donation. 

Thanks everyone for supporting me and my sporting adventure.

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This week, the Year 5 students have been given the opportunity to have a lesson exchange with our Sister School in Nanjing. We met online for the first time on Tuesday and will meet again on Friday. 
On Tuesday, Ms Fletcher and Ms Ma taught an English lesson to the Year 5/6 students at Xuri Jingcheng Ps. 

On Friday, some Year 5 students will be taught by teachers from our sister school. The lesson will be in English and Mandarin. Stay tuned for next weeks newsletter to find out how it goes!

Tuesday lesson
Ms Fletcher and Ms Ma read 'Diary of a Wombat,' and five brave Year 5 students : Lucy, Jack, Abi, Phoebe, Kai and Andrew, spoke about other Australian animals. 


Students in both China and Australia, wrote stories based on animals they knew. We then shared our stories in English. Our students were impressed by the writing and speaking skills at our Sister School.

We then got to have a short question and answer session where many students stepped up to the laptop and asked questions about hobbies, subjects and whether or not they celebrated Halloween. (Spoiler altert, they didn't.)  

We ended the session buzzing and we were all really excited to be back in contact.Afterwards, Ms Fletcher asked for the highlights and the Year 5s said: 

- It was really nice teaching them about animals and then them teaching us about pandas!

- I liked how we helped them pronounce animal names. 

- The Q&A was the best bit! (lots of nodding and cheering with this.) 

- It was fun to interact with them. They saw us all wave...and make jokes. 

- It was interesting to see how the classrooms looked online- they look so neat and organised! They raise their hands differently too. 

Thank you to all the Year 5 students who volunteered to join and watch the session. You all did APS proud. Ms Fletcher and Ms Ma loved how everyone was so supportive of our sister school students speaking in English. Lots of clapping and cheering. 

And to the next group that get to join in on a lesson tomorrow, jiā yóu! (You got this!) We can't wait to hear how it goes.

Thank you Ms Ma for organising this experience and communicating with our Sister School when the sound/microphones didn't work at the start.

  

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SATURDAY, 2^nd December 2023, 10.30am –12.30pm

Dear families in Yr’s 1 & 2,

Term 4 School Working Bee will be held on Saturday 2^nd December at 10.30am for the parents and students in your child’s class.

Each term the Buildings and Grounds Sub-committee of the School Council organises a working bee aligned to 1 or 2 levels of the school. You are asked to attend just one Working Bee each year. Any amount of time you can contribute will be greatly appreciated, even one hour would be great, as a number of labour-intensive tasks are planned for these mornings.  It’s also a great way to catch up with the other Year 1 & 2 parents!

The convenor for this Working Bee will be Mr Kevin Riant please see Kevin upon your arrival, to go through the OHS Volunteer Induction.

Light Refreshments will be provided at 12:30pm for all adults and children!

TO ASSIST WITH PLANNING, PLEASE CLICK THE LINK PROVIDED BELOW TO RSVP

https://forms.gle/LqKXyhsnaVJ4ApX27

Thank you in advance for contributing to the maintenance and beautification of our grounds to the benefit of all students.

Yours sincerely,

2023 School Council Buildings and Grounds Sub- Committee        

AREA	STANDARD JOBS LIST JOB	EQUIPMENT REQUIRED School has a lot of equipment. If bringing your own, please clearly name this.
Grounds & entrances	Removing sand, rubbish, leaves, from all asphalt & yard areas, paths, entrances, steps	Brooms and rakes, gloves wheelbarrows
School Hall (if required)	Sweeping/blowing around exterior, clearing/killing weeds as required	Brooms, Blower, gloves, smaller container for weeds
Sandpits	Raking and removing debris, tidying edges on long jump pit as required.	Rakes, forks, wheelbarrows, spades.
Play equipment areas	Spreading/turning over soft-fall mulch	Spades, forks, wheelbarrows
Weeding (if required)	Killing/clearing weeds –a) around fenceline; b) within play equipment areas c) around all steps, porches, concrete areas.	Gloves, brushcutter, wheelbarrows, Smaller containers, gloves
Drains	Clean out/sweep all drains.	Shovel, broom, gloves
Gardens	Pruning, weeding, spreading mulch if required, some watering (from tanks)	Wheel barrow, spade,

 

 

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