Weeden Heights Primary School this year celebrates its twenty five years of education. In that time it has developed into a school which is regarded widely as one, which places the individual learning needs and development of each child at the top of its priorities.

Weeden Heights Primary School this year celebrates its twenty five years of education. In that time it has developed into a school which is regarded widely as one, which places the individual learning needs and development of each child at the top of its priorities. The school has long been acclaimed for its outstanding performance in Literacy and Numeracy and has trained personnel across the school to ensure that the current priorities of the school, including Continuous Improvement in English and Mathematics and Student Engagement through Thinking Curriculum can be addressed by all staff and achieved.

In the recent University Of New South Wales Competitions in English, Writing, Mathematics and Computers, a very significant number of the participating students (close to 75%) achieved Credits, Distinctions or High Distinctions in each of these areas. This ranks the school as achieving within the top 15% of the state.

Other significant Extra Curricula opportunities which the school has provided for students in different levels of the school include:

  • Re@ct Film Project, where students in Year 6 learned about the art of film making and undertook the total production from script to presentation (and everything in between!) of a short film.
  • Mathematics Olympiads
  • Student Leadership Development through attendance at Dr Edward de Bono Presentation,
  • Caulfield Grammar School Challenge
  • Nestlé and Australia Post Writing Competition
  • Victorian Primary Schools’ Chess Championships
  • Day of the Notables
  • Tournament of Minds
  • Vertical and Horizontal extension in English, Mathematics, Science and ICT

The school offers specialist programs in Physical Education, The Arts (Performing and Visual) Indonesian and Library. This year the school was accepted into the Australian Sports Commission’s Active After Schools’ Activities Program and has a strong focus on encouraging Healthy Eating and Healthy Lifestyles with its varied P.E. program and the extra curricula activities such as Jump Rope For Heart. The school also facilitates private tennis coaching sessions for the Prep to Year 3 students.

This year our students have been represented in Zone and State Finals in Athletics, Swimming, Netball and Basketball and one of our Year 5 students will be competing in Swimming in the Pan Pacific Games later in the year.

Weeden Heights this year also began the implementation of Program Achieve – You Can Do It!, a program centred on the five Foundations of Learning – Confidence, Persistence, Organisation, Getting Along and Emotional Resilience. This program reflects the schools values and its commitment to the holistic development of each child. We also have two trained Reading Recovery teachers on our staff.

Each year the school has a concert which showcases the considerable talent of students from Prep to Year 6 and every second year there is a School Production involving students from Year 3 to Year 6. These two events are the culmination of the school’s wonderful Performing Arts Program. The end product of each of these comes about through involvement and commitment by our staff, students and parent community.

Teachers at Weeden Heights have taken up the challenge of incorporating Information Communication Technologies into their planning and teaching. Having undertaken the INTEL – Teach to the Future Training, the team is strongly committed to continually improve pedagogical practices across the school. This will happen when that team train others in their Professional Learning Teams and use the INTEL approach in the revising and improvement of the Integrated Unit Plans across all levels of the school.

A further opportunity for our senior students presents itself in the form of our International School to School Exchange Program. Last year our school hosted students from Japan and this year a team of students and staff had the return exchange to Japan. This year students from Peru joined us for three weeks and next year, as well as hosting another Peruvian school, we will be sending students and staff to Peru for the return exchange.

On reflection, schools have certainly undergone significant change for the better over past years and at Weeden Heights we thrive on our roles as educators of today’s young people. We strive to ensure that they are well equipped academically, physically, socially and emotionally to move to the next phase in their lives. We have laid the foundations for our students to become successful and productive members of communities and society. Come and visit us and see for yourselves!