Welcome back to all our families. We hope you all enjoyed the Easter break and had the opportunity to spend time with family and friends.

Welcome
We can now formally welcome Mr Dean Darmanin, our newly appointed Assistant Principal to our staff. Dean’s main roles will be in the areas of Curriculum Development and Student Welfare, but he brings with him many areas of expertise. Dean has spent the past week getting to know students and staff and is looking forward to working with all members of the school community. We are extremely pleased to have Dean on board.

I will be on leave from Tuesday 27^th – Friday 30^th April. Dean will be Acting Principal during my absence.

Teacher Contact via Email
We respectfully remind parents that as per our protocols, if they need to contact teachers via email, they send it via the school’s account at sunbury.west.ps@education.vic.gov.au

Parking
We have had concerns expressed by community members that parents are parking across driveways. We respectfully remind families to be careful to not park across people's driveways as not only is this illegal and you may be fined by the parking inspectors, but it also may hinder another familiy from being on time to take their children to and from school.

We are extremely happy to be offering our Prep Information Sessions and tours again this year.

The first of these will be on Thursday 29^th April at 6.30pm in the Library.

The following dates are Thursday 6^th May at 9.15am and Wednesday 19^th May at 2.00pm.

We look forward to welcoming new families to our school.

Welcome back to Term 2.

It is great to see that we almost got through a whole term without lockdowns and home schooling and that the school is returning to normal activities.

This year sees some new faces on the School Council, with Lisa Hennessy joining school council and our new Assistant Principal, Dean Darmanin taking up a role on the school council. A big welcome to both of you.

We have also found out that we have a couple of departing members. Katie Nichols will be leaving the school council after four years of service. Also our long time President of the School Council, James King, has stepped down after 4 years, as he and his family will be off on an adventure to the other side of the world, we wish James, Naomi, Lily, Noah and Sam all the best for their travels.

I would like to thank both Katie and James for their service to the School Council.

Our 2021 School Council comprises of the following members:

Inga Wilson - Principal

Dean Darmanin – Assistant Principal and School Council Secretary

Eric Penny

Pina Readman

Darren Watt – President

Lance Robertson – Vice President

Claire Smyth – Treasurer

Shane Mattox

Glenda Cooper

Lisa Hennessy

This year is an exciting time to be part of the school community, with the planning of new building works which commenced early in Term 1, developing our school into a modern 21^st century learning facility.

Our school’s 50^th birthday celebrations are also happening this year, of which we have an event booked for Saturday 4^th September 2021. For more information on these celebrations, please contact the school office.

Until next time, stay safe

Darren Watt

School Council has now endorsed our next Curriculum Day which will be in Term 3, on Monday 26^th July.
Staff will be continuing their professional learning in Literacy on this day and students will not be required at school.

This term, our P-2 scientists are learning to be ENGINEERS! That’s the ‘E’ in S.T.E.M! Our term 2 topic is called ‘Let’s Build It!’ Each week, we will read a fairy tale and then work with a partner to design and build something from that story.

We collected lots of different data such as our favourite activity from our holidays and different colours of unifix in our tubs and learnt how to put this data on a graph! We even collected data about the different colour cars we saw drive past Sunbury West. We saw some of our families drive past and beep! It was a great real world experience which we all enjoyed.

Last week, the Preps and 1/2’s were learning about ANZAC Day. We read different picture story books and discussed what we knew about what the word ANZAC means. We celebrated this learning by making ANZAC day biscuits and researching why these particular biscuits are important on ANZAC day. We learnt that families made these biscuits for the soldiers at war and sent them over on ships. Because the ingredients don’t perish easily, they were able to be eaten even after long periods of time.

We have talked about our own families connection to the ANZAC story and discussed all the people who served in the war, young people, women and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We have read picture story books, Meet the ANZACS, The Anzac Tree and Alfred’s War and watched several Behind the News stories about ANZAC day. We have written about the things we know now about ANZAC day and we made poppies to wear at our Sunbury West ANZAC service.

The 3/4 ‘s were proud and respectful at our service and this was noticed by others. Fantastic 3/4!

We loved sharing our teddies stories and their names with our classmates and buddies. We even got to have a real picnic outside with everyone and their teddies. Our favourite activity was when our teddies got to come onto the floor to learn with us during writing!

On Friday our Junior School Councillors facilitated our ANZAC Day Service at assembly. Unfortunately our guidelines have not yet changed regarding density limits so we were only able to invite the parents of our JSC reps to attend.

There was a great atmosphere as children enjoyed games and activities in between events and all House members showing great support for their team mates. It was fantastic to be able to have the P-2 students come out and cheer their housemates and buddies on.

Congratulations to all year 3-6 students who participated. The sportsmanship displayed by all students was outstanding.

Congratulations to Concorde who was the winning House and to Noah May and Maleah Whitby who are the 2021 Champion Boy and Girl respectively.

Sincerest thanks to Miss Williams for her coordination of the event and to all teachers in the 3 – 6 area for ensuring the day ran smoothly.

Mrs Wilson & Miss Williams