First day class help

By Shaun Inguanzo
IT WAS not only back to school for students across Greater Dandenong this week.
It was also the first day of primary education for the city’s youngest pupils.
At Keysborough’s Maralinga Primary School, prep students could not have been happier on their first day with many able to strike a happy pose for Star photographer Meagan Rogers.
Maralinga Primary School principal Peter Gray said the new year had ushered in a fresh approach to the school year for both staff and students, and the school would be focusing on strengthening its core numeracy, literacy and thinking curriculum.
“We have been working with a consultant who used to be principal at a school in Springvale South and had a stint at the Berwick campus of Haileybury,” Mr Gray said.
“For the last three months of last year, we were working to develop a three year curriculum plan spanning 2008, 2009 and 2010.
“It contains what our focuses should be.”
Mr Gray said the school would later focus on information and communication technology (ICT) to ensure young people had a hand-up in a world where technology now dictates the pace of life.
But perhaps the biggest hand-up for the school’s preps will come from the school’s grade four students who Mr Gray said would buddy-up with the preps and act as mentors and friends to help them settle in to the Keysborough school.