Welcome to the Week 5 Newsletter!

It is hard to believe we are already at the end of Week 5 and nearly at the halfway point of Term 1! It has been a busy but calm start to the new school year. We are seeing settled classrooms and engaged learners who are now well underway with the learning programs for the year. It has been wonderful getting into classrooms and seeing our students in their new rooms over the initial weeks of the year and seeing them settling into new routines and structures. It has been a smooth and successful start to the year which paves the road for a great year ahead!

Beginning of year reading assessments are now complete

Over the past couple of weeks, our teachers have been working hard to complete the beginning of year DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) reading assessments with all students across the school. This diagnostic assessment provides us with powerful information that helps inform our teaching and learning and better understand the needs for each and every student at our school. The initial testing data has indicated solid results and performance of our students as we now enter into the second year of this improvement journey. This is exciting work for us and we are looking forward to the year ahead. Parents are strongly encouraged to come to our Literacy Reading Open Morning next Wednesday (see flier in this edition of the newsletter) where you will be able to learn more about this work and how you can also support your child/ren with their reading and literacy development at home. We have a strong attendance already signed up and it would be great to see a few more as well!

NAPLAN 2024

On Tuesday, our Year 3 and 5 students participated in the National Coordinated Practice Test (NCPT) in readiness for NAPLAN. This gave our students some time to practice and an opportunity to become a little more familiar with the online platform and the type of questions they will encounter during the NAPLAN testing in a couple of weeks' time. More information for families with students participating in NAPLAN will be coming out soon.

Sports Day - Save the date!

Sickness update - Gastro, Flu, Covid

There has been quite a bit of sickness in the community and at school lately. We have members of our school community who are immuno-compromised, and we need to all do our part to keep everyone safe!

The simple message is stay home if you are unwell and please remain home until you are symptom-free!

The link above has all of the latest information from the Department for families regarding COVID regulations.

Healthy Fruit Snack

At our school, all students and classes have a scheduled healthy fruit snack during the morning session. We require all students to come with a piece of fruit to eat during this time. Please ensure this is something that is inside every lunchbox, every day!

Research tells us the importance of a healthy fruit snack during the learning program to stimulate and energise the brain! This is very important for our young learners to help them focus and achieve.

Have a wonderful weekend ahead!

Regards,

Guy Walmsley

Principal

Literacy Open Morning - Wednesday 6th March