As School Council president for Kingsville Primary School this year, I am delighted and honoured to be able to provide an update on the selection process of a new Principal for our school.

Throughout this Term, I and the Principal selection panel have undertaken a very thorough and diligent selection process to be able to announce today, the provisional appointment of Emma Vasilevski as Principal for Kingsville Primary School.

Emma was informed yesterday and the teaching staff just earlier this morning. Following the required two-week grace period, Emma will become the substantive Principal, ready for commencement of Term 3.

I’d like to thank the selection panel and my fellow School Council members for taking the extra time over this term to support the process and to be in a position to be able to make this important announcement for the school.

I am sure you will join me in celebrating and supporting Emma on this significant milestone and wish her and the teaching staff all the very best.

I am excited for this next chapter for the school and to continue supporting our school to be the best it can be. Have a great term break and see you back in Term 3.

Thanks,

Clive Domone
School Council President

I have been sitting in front of my computer for ages now trying to put my thoughts into words and I am still not there! I cannot sum up my experience at KPS over the course of the term as I have watched our teachers and students interact with each other and the learning engagements offered, with such open mindedness and enthusiasm.

Last week, I ran a ‘celebration and reflection’ meeting with our staff to really reflect upon our term and achievements. I posed the question ‘What are you most proud of this term?’ and I want to share with you their responses:

• The kids!
• Building strong relationships with the kids
• Remembering that this job has so many rewards.
• Routines within the classroom that make it feel like a cohesive class unit.
• Seeing my impact on students and being able to teach with my natural personality.
• The progress of the students
• Becoming more confident in my teaching.

For me the question is easy, I am most proud of our people. I am proud of the teachers that come to school every day ready to provide the best possible educational experiences for our students. I am proud of the students who give it their all. I am proud of the support staff that we have, who work tirelessly to keep our school running and the unconditional support that they give to our teachers. I am proud of our families for their engagement in our school and the trust that they show us daily…..and now I am extremely proud to be leading our school as the Principal over the coming years.

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday break and I look forward to continuing our 2024 journey together next term.

Emma

Hello there everybody, welcome to the second edition of the Captain's Corner where four silly year 6’s share some random junk that you probably already know, regardless, we do it and we enjoy it, (maybe a little too much,) today, we will be talking about the highlights of the first semester. 

These are some of the favourite experiences from the different students: 

 * Playing with friends, inanimate objects (Lego). - Adeline FFW 

 * SLC – Goldie FFW 

 * Sport – Luna FFW 

 * Film Festival – Maeve FFW 

 * Portfolios- Charlie A FMC 

 * Drawing- Essie FMC 

 * Italian- Kai L 3/4I 

 * Art – Jacob 6AW 

 * Performing arts- Dante 1/2A 

 * Lunchtime – Bella 1/2A 

 * Movie- Harvey 1/2A 

 *Swimming – Felix 3/4I 

 *Cross Country – Eamon 3/4I 

 *Athletics day – Liam 3/4I 

 *Hot march night- Alycia 3/4I 

 *3/4 sport – Louise- teacher of 3/4I 

Here are some of the things that we have loved: 

Parliament house excursion 

GRIP conference 

Beach program 

5/6 sports 

Thank you and goodbye 

It is very pleasing that high interest is regularly shown in our school. Prospective parents have, since our information night, walked the school visiting classes as part of our Foundation tours. The tour begins in the main foyer with a member of leadership explain the history of the school before making a stop at the large map on wall that paints an amazing picture of the diverse cultures and backgrounds of our school community. A visit to our well-resourced library then into the yard is always an unexpected insight into the resources and spaces available for the children. There is often surprise on the faces of these visitors when they see the many passive and active spaces within our large grounds. A drop in visit to a Foundation class, is a demonstration of how well the current students have settled into the routines and expectations of school life. The tour finishes off with a visit to a year 6 classroom, and an opportunity to see and engage with the type of student that journey through 7 years at KPS.

Through these encounters, we gain feedback about Kingsville and information, which clearly indicates that our learning environment and practices are held in high regard.

Reminder to current families
Parents / carers who have younger children / siblings of current students to enrol for 2025 should have or be planning to make contact with the school to collect an enrolment form for completion. 

The enrolment form must be submitted to the Kingsville Primary School office by Friday 26th July 2024

During this week, students welcomed their families into their classrooms for Student Led Conferences. These opportunities are a celebration and a source of pride for all involved. The cold, wintry Melbourne weather didn’t deter families, who turned out in large numbers. There is a distinct “buzz” throughout the school during conferences, as students share with their families their learning through their portfolios.

The portfolios shared during the conferences are collated from activities and experiences in the classroom. Student voice is represented through the selection of work shared by individual students, with student’s reflecting on the tasks, their learning from this and their next steps to develop as a learner. We are always very impressed with the way students welcome their families into their conference and share their learning progress through their portfolios.

Students have now taken home their portfolios to share further with you or other family members. Your child is very proud of their portfolio, and the range of experiences contained inside that demonstrate their growth and learning. Please make sure that, after you have shared a comment in your child’s portfolio, that they are returned to the classroom so that students can continue to add evidence of their learning for the remainder of the year.                
We strongly believe that the student-led conferences are an impactful and beneficial way to share student learning and growth, and we hope they have been enlightening, enjoyable, rewarding, and possibly humorous for those who were able to attend.

Well done to all Kingsville learners. Well done to families for their support. And well done KPS staff for guiding students through this process.

Sam Eason
Assistant Principal

Once semester reports are shared with families, there is an opportunity for parents/carers to make a booking with their child’s teachers to unpack or discuss aspects of the report.  To facilitate this, the first week of Term 3 will be “meeting free” for staff, allowing added flexibility for parents and teachers to organise any discussions.

This opportunity is designed to answer specific questions or queries that haven’t already been addresses in the semester reports or during the student led conferences.

If parents/carers would like to take up this opportunity, we ask that you have read the reports and shared with the teacher the questions you have from the report. This context allows the teacher to be prepared and for the meeting to be focused.

To arrange a time (10-15 minutes) to meet with your child’s teacher you will need to contact them directly to arrange a mutually suitable time. Email is the preferred option for this.

Blagma Veljanoska
Assessment and Reporting Coordinator

On Monday 24th June, the Year 6 teaching team began planning the learning experiences for the Year 6 Exhibition. For those who are unaware, the Exhibition is the culminating, collaborative experience in the final year of the PYP. It is an authentic process for students to explore, document and share their understanding of an issue or opportunity of personal significance.

This year, the Year 6’s will explore the transdisciplinary theme of How the World Works throughout the exhibition. The theme explores the concepts of:

• the natural world and its laws
• the interaction between the natural world (physical and biological) and human societies
• how humans use their understanding of scientific principles
• the impact of scientific and technological advances on society and on the environment.

The Exhibition culminates in Year 6 students sharing their learning journey with the school and wider community. We have set aside the 17^th, 18^th and 21^st October as the dates for sharing with our community, with Monday 21^st October to be the dedicated, evening community session.

Alongside this, as in all our Exhibitions, we are looking to see if there are members of our parent and wider community who would be interested and able in supporting us. If you have an interest, passion or work in an industry that aligns with any of these ideas and concepts we'd love to hear from you. In brainstorming ideas that align with the concepts on Monday we explored ideas that include physics, geology, mathematics, space, modern industry, and the materials used, the impact of technology on the environment, the scientific process, and inventions just to name a few!

Opportunities to support us through the Exhibition include:

• discussing your knowledge or work with the students
• being a primary resource for groups of students to contact and ask questions of
• support us through providing connections in the community or in industry
• sharing resources that align with the trans theme

If you are interested in supporting us can you please complete this short form to help us via the link or through the QR code.

Link: https://forms.gle/dKbMBoxWBHiUXzKh6

QR Code:

 “Change is like eating an elephant, you have to take one bite at a time. But once you're done you feel like you’ve accomplished something phenomenal.”  -William H 

In 2023, the seven of us - Alice, Aizah, Hazel, Sophie, Willy, Austin & Violet - became the original Meg Languages Global Citizenship Student Ambassadors at Kingsville Primary School.  

As Student Ambassadors and global citizens, we created an ongoing project called Little Litter. Read on to find out the story of KPS, Stony Creek and Cruickshank Park, the Little Litter project and how we just recently presented all our great work at the National Education Conference! 

“I wanted to be a part of this project because I wanted to fix a big problem in school, pollution. We had done nude food days where you had to not bring wrappers and put your snack, fruit and lunch in your lunch box and not in the bin if you don’t like it.”  - Austin B 

 


At the start of 2023 we joined the Global Citizenships Ambassador Program (GCAP) as student leaders. It was a fantastic opportunity to use and develop cooperation and teamwork as we worked together to change our community. Our main thought going into the project was: “No matter what we do, we can make a difference in our school.” Over the course of the project, we discovered that change can come from small things and, if a handful of Year 5 kids can improve the environment of a park and creek, perhaps we can change the whole world! But change doesn't come easy, as we learnt during our project.    

“We can do incredible things if we just start small”  - Violet F  

The Little Litter Project 
Little Litter began as an idea as we brainstormed the problems we saw in our own school and local community. We chose to take action in Cruickshank Park because we wanted to make a real difference in our local environment. We decided to focus on litter because Cruickshank Park is a place that many of us, and our school community, use regularly. We realised the litter from our school was directly impacting the park and creek, and we wanted to change that.  



A big part of the project and our learning was about Student Voice and Agency. We made sure we had voice and agency in what we did - we made the decisions together about what we wanted to focus on for our project. We also made all the choices about how we wanted to work together to solve the problem of litter in KPS and Cruickshank Park. We didn’t do it all alone - we had help from our families, the teachers and Lottie (GCAP program facilitator), but we were the ones driving the Little Litter project.  

“This project has taught us life lessons that changed our perspectives. We have developed our skills, in particular, taking on responsibilities.”  - Alice K 

We used the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the Good Life Goals, when planning our solutions for Little Litter. The Good Life Goals are a simpler version of the SDGs which we thought would be better as we were working with primary students. 

Lottie helped us understand the goals, and we narrowed our focus in our project down to five Good Life Goals: 

• Number 4: Learn and teach 
• Number 11: Love where you live 
• Number 14: Clean our seas 
• Number 15: Love nature 
• Number 17: Come together

With these goals in mind we decided to educate our school community about the problem. Inspired by a past experience with a park ranger in Cruickshank Park, we created and ran engaging activities like scavenger hunts for younger students. We also designed presentations and lessons to teach different grades about the importance of keeping Cruickshank Park clean. To share our message and educate the community we did lots of actions such as; creating posters, websites, sharing at assemblies and creating surveys and questions to spread awareness beyond our school.  

 “The Global Citizenships Student Ambassador program shows that anyone can do anything, all you need to do is persevere”  - Sophie M  

To help us take action, we ‘became the teachers’ and helped the students at our school understand more about Cruickshank Park. We planned this by dividing the school’s different age groups across the seven of us. We modified our presentations and lessons for the different levels. For younger students we used the Good Life Goals to discuss what we were trying to do, and created scavenger hunts. With the help of our teacher, we made a timetable for every class to go for a walk with us in Cruickshank Park and have a lesson with us there. We checked students' understanding after the lessons and any follow up actions they wanted to do. Lots of students took action after this, based on their new knowledge. We could see how grateful and engaged the younger students were.  

To educate others and spread awareness we used Digital Storytelling tools. We had a real purpose to create content to help get our messages out.  

‘During the project, especially during digital storytelling, we faced a lot of trial and error, but used our mistakes to improve our work, as a team’  -Hazel M                       

We learnt how to make a website with the help of our community. There were some tricky parts to making a website. Making all the buttons work took some coding knowledge.  We also designed a Little Litter logo, and used it on posters and t-shirts. This was a new experience, and trying to make it simple, aesthetically pleasing and for it to link to our project took a bit of work.  

The term “Little Litter” came to mind when we thought about all the tons of rubbish in Cruikshank Park and how students could never get rid of all the rubbish in one year, but we could definitely make a difference in Cruikshank and Stony Creek.  We decided on the name Little Litter because there’s never going to be no litter in the park but we could minimise the amount of litter to get “Little Litter”.  

 “Believing in yourself is all it takes to be a good a leader”  - Aizah F  

 One of the best parts of our project was taking classes into Cruickshank Park after our presentations. It was rewarding to see students become more aware and caring towards the park. Our project created a ripple effect of awareness and action. We enjoyed designing our Little Litter logo, creating digital content, and being the teachers for younger students. This experience improved our public speaking and helped us connect with other students.  

“The Global Citizenships Student Ambassador program shows that anyone can do anything, all you need is perseverance”  

Sophie M 

 National Education Conference 

As we shared at the beginning, we got invited to share our work and journey at the National Education Conference: Classrooms of the Future sessions. We all loved the experience, and wanted to share our personal reflections with you: 

Willy: The National Education Summit conference was an enjoyable experience giving us as students a taste of the media of sorts. I thought it was one of the best experiences I've ever had and with such a supportive group of peers around me, it was easy to relax and have fun. 

Austin: The conference was different to what I thought it would be like, but the atmosphere and the pressure was huge. It was one of my best experiences that I've had. Everyone was so supportive. Before, I was quite stressed and nervous but when I got on stage all of the nerves were gone. I'll say it again. I really enjoyed the experience of going to the city and presenting in front of 20 to 30 people.      

Hazel: The conference was a unique opportunity that I enjoyed immensely. It was amazing to enjoy such an experience with a great group of peers.It taught us skills that would further help us when presenting, and a day that we would never forget.We faced our fair share of challenges but that just made the whole experience way more enjoyable and interesting.  

Aizah: So we went to the National Education Summit Conference and presented our project. We each had lines about different sections of the Little Litter project.  It was really fun and great how we got to share our hard work and what we had done. For me it was one of the most enjoyable and great experiences and a good chance to express the things we did that would inspire other people to help their own communities. 

Alice: After our project concluded, Lottie invited us to an Education Summit to teach educators about how they can help their students become young changemakers. We acted as an example that great things can start with a bunch of immature grade 5s wanting to make change. We did, in fact, start as some immature, silly grade 5s, But now  we are immature, silly, confident grade 6s that have just presented at an Education conference! I felt supported and encouraged to be myself and I expressed that through how I confidently presented my speech. 

Sophie: Going to the National Education Conference was very different to what I thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be loud, fun, big and overwhelming but it turned out to be everything but overwhelming and we met Amelia Moseley! 

Thank you for reading our long article and reflection. We are also very excited to let you know that an article similar to this one will be published later this year in the ReConnectEd magazine - we’ll make sure to share this when it happens!! 

As we finish this semester, I wanted to take a moment to say another thank you to the Kingsville Community for my time at KPS. As I’ve been tidying and packing my office, I’ve been able to stop and reflect on my time at this amazing place. My reflections have kept bringing me back to two key ideas – the incredible staff I have worked with and learnt from, and the amazing young people I have worked with and learnt from!

Much like Emma said, I have been staring at my screen for a while waiting for the words and inspiration to come. Unlike Emma though, I don’t think I will get my thoughts down. In visiting classrooms this week, I can say my first and lasting memories of KPS will be the same – I am extremely lucky to work in such a supportive, caring, and dynamic place.

In stepping into the next phase of my career, I want to share a heartfelt thank you to the supportive community that is KPS. I am extremely glad that I am able to leave the school as Emma has been appointed Principal, and I wish her all the best as she also embarks on the next phase of her career. Alongside Jeff, the other members of the Leadership team, and the staff at KPS, I am sure things will continue to move from strength to strength.

I’ll take my last Kingsville bow and wish each and all the very best for the school holidays, and the rest of 2024.

Sam Eason
Assistant Principal

Happy Birthday to Poppy A, Jethro B, Mikayla M, Jacob S, Tilly P, Estelle K, Atticus E, Hazel M, Vivienne C, Sophie M, Essie J, Kai L, Cleo J, Elsa O, Polly M, Eden C, Benji S, Lukas R, Ammar A, Xavier N, Ollie W, Clara G, Arthur J, Sabrina A, Alice K, Anouk M-G, Fergus M, Henry M, August N, Zelda D, , Rupert W, Maisie W, Luka N.

2024 Student Free Days

Term 4 - Monday 18th November

2024 Term Dates

Term 2            Monday 15th April to Friday 28th June
Term 3            Monday 15th July to Friday 20th September
Term 4            Monday 7th October to Friday 20th December