New building a hit at Tooby PS

STAFF and students at Tooborac Primary School are now enjoying their new learning spaces.

Builders were still putting the finishing touches in place over the summer, but everything was ready for the first day of term.

The original school building has been extended and transformed into two interconnecting classrooms, along with a number of additional facilities such as a breakout room and dedicated space for a server.

Classroom teacher Cheryl Ward said it was great to see the old building revamped to provide a modern learning environment.

“The open plan space has been great for the school as we’re now able to separate easily into small groups for learning,” she said.

There are a total of 11 students at the school this year and they have a state-of-the-art classroom.

“We’ve been able to purchase new resources,” Ms Ward said. “We’ve got interactive whiteboards in each classroom and lots of hands-on equipment for maths learning which is a big focus of ours.

“We’re working on the library and we’ve still got funds available that we’re going to be using for purchasing new books and library equipment.”

Ms Ward said teaching in the original building had been difficult.

“It was cluttered and fairly dirty, and there was no continuity between the classrooms.”

Grade 6 student William echoed his teacher’s sentiments.

“I think the best thing about the new building is that the rooms are bigger,” he said. “The teachers don’t have to jump between classrooms and they can just teach all of us at once.”

Newly appointed principal Nick Williamson said students loved the new rooms.

“They were also impressed with the size of the whiteboards, the TVs and all of the interactive equipment,” he said.

“The parents had a walk-through and they were blown away with the space we have, they loved it, and they’re all really happy with it.”

He said he couldn’t make a comparison as he hadn’t seen the old building, but he was very happy with what the school was now able to offer the community.