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. 

Tomorrow is International Women’s Day. It is an important opportunity to pause and recognise the achievements of women across our society and, in particular, within our school community. We are fortunate as a school community to experience the leadership, expertise and wisdom from women across our  staff, parent community and student body.

As a Rights, Resilience and Respectful Relationships lead school, we have been regularly reflecting on the practices of our school community and how we can increase representation and participation across the curriculum and daily life of our community. The theme for International Women’s Day this year is to Inspire Inclusion and we continue to reflect on our current situation and welcome feedback as to how we can improve.

Student Leadership Badges

It was terrific to gather as a school community on Monday morning to celebrate our Year Six student leaders. Our school prides itself on our student leadership program where students who take the opportunity build their leadership capacity across the year.

It has been impressive to see our Year Six students take action already in their roles and their eagerness to make a positive difference. We look forward to them continuing this across the year.

Curriculum Day

Tuesday 12th March is our next curriculum day. On this day our staff will work with the Primary English Teachers Association of Australia to better understand the Science of Reading and to learn about different reading acquisition models. This is an important part of this year’s Annual Implementation Plan and our School Strategic Plan.

Our Literacy Learning Specialist, Mel McSweeney, has shared more information about our improvement work in this area later in the newsletter.

NAPLAN Assessments

Our Year Three and Five students begin the National Assessment Program-Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) next week. They will begin with the Writing assessment on Wednesday and then complete the Reading, Language Conventions and Numeracy assessments over the following days. NAPLAN is a great opportunity for our students to showcase their learning and we then use the school results to reflect on the effectiveness of our teaching and learning programs.

District Swimming

Last Friday we had students across the senior school participate at the Chelsea District Swimming. It was impressive to see so many of our students taking the opportunity to represent our school. We had 13 students and 3 relay teams qualify through to Division Swimming and we wish them well for their events on Tuesday 12th March.

Foundation-Year One Swimming

Next week our Foundation and Year One students begin their intensive swimming program. This is an important opportunity for them to begin to develop self-organistion and independence as they prepare for their swimming lessons each day. We also hope they have a lot of fun!

House Cross Country

Today our Year Three-Six students participated in our annual House Cross Country. It was great to see students pushing themselves to give their best effort on the course. It was a wonderful community event and we appreciated the support and assistance of so many of our parent and carer community. Thank you to our staff involved in marshalling and supervising our runners and a special thanks to Katie Scott for her organisation of the event. We could see the impact of running club!

Annual Report to School Community

Our Annual Report to the School Community will take place in the staff room on Wednesday 13th March at 6pm. The report will be presented at this meetingand it will be publicly available after it has been endorsed.

Night on the Green

A reminder that our annual ‘Night on the Green’ takes place on Friday 15th February. We look forward to welcoming our school community from 5-7pm in our school courtyard. Please see the flier further in the newsletter for more information.

Enjoy your long weekend,

Tom

• Please note that donations of books and baked goods have now been closed. Further details about where, when and how to donate your baked good prior the event, will be provided in next weeks Newsletter.

• We are overwhelmed by the community support and response to our event and thank you for this.

Literacy Update

This year, as part of our School Strategic Plan, the teachers are turning our professional learning focus towards how children learn to read.

At Aspendale, we have a long, proud history of our students achieving excellence in reading, with NAPLAN results consistently above similar schools over the last 5 years, and we have prided ourselves on adapting and innovating our instruction to best cater for the needs of our students.

For the curriculum day on Tuesday, we have Karen Rogers from the Primary English Teachers Association of Australia (PETAA) coming to work with staff about best practice teaching of reading from Foundation to Year 6.

We are excited to delve into research and explore the evidence that has informed the development of a variety of reading models, in order to build clarity about what, how and why we teach reading at APS.

In the meantime, we have been busily adding high quality literature to our library and decodable readers to the foundation classrooms and take home reader sets. Thanks to all the wonderful volunteers who have taken some books home to cover - our students are sinking their teeth into these new books with glee!

To begin the new lunar new year- the Year of the Dragon- we held our very own a lantern festival at lunchtime. Students answered riddles and won prizes. 
When it was over, we asked.... why should we stop with one day of celebrations?

APS - VIOLIN AND VIOLA LESSONS 2024!

Introducing Peter O’Shea

Aspendale Primary School has a new violin and viola teacher this year!

Our new violin teacher is Peter O’Shea. Peter is a vibrant local string teacher. Peter has experience in teaching both individuals and groups, and is currently working both in schools and home studio settings.

Peter has studied at Monash University and University of Melbourne. He enjoys playing a teaching a diverse range of World Music (Fiddle Music) AMEB, ANZCA and Suzuki repertoire and pedagogy.

He has produced is own Elementary Violin teaching Book “Violin Fever Volume 1”.

We look forward to having Peter become part of the Instrumental Teachers’ team at APS and part of the community.

Please contact Peter directly if you would like to find out further about our program run by Peter.

Peter O’Shea (B.A. Music, Grad Dip Music, Dip Music.)

Email: posheamusic@gmail.com

Phone: 0409193004