School News

Miss Marks' Message

Hello everyone, 

Student Leadership

Last week I had the pleasure of listening to the leadership speeches from our Year 6 students who are interested in being a School Leader in 2025. Students shared with the Middle School and Senior School audience their leadership capabilities, connections with our school values and ideas to improve our school! It was wonderful to hear their speeches, and I was also impressed with the support shown by students in the audience. 

Following the speeches, students submitted a vote for their preferred leader. We are looking forward to announcing our 2025 School Leaders at our final assembly. 

Orientation Morning

This morning, students time with their 2025 class groups. Extensive work goes into creating a structure for learning, staffing profile and subsequent class groups for a school year. For 2025 we have settled at the following class structure.

There will be two straight Foundation Classes. Mrs Kelley, Mrs Wells and Miss Whyte will be the Foundation Teachers.  

There will be three composite Junior Classes of year one and two students. Mr Maskell, Miss Musselwhite and Miss Walker will be the Junior School Teachers.

There will be three composite middle school classes of year three and four students. Mrs Knight, Mrs Moloney, Mr Smith and Miss Armstrong will be the Middle School teachers. 

Finally, there will be three composite senior school classes of year five and six students. Mrs Fletcher, Ms Cramer and Mr Stoop will be our Senior School teachers. We welcome Ms Cramer and Mr Stoop to our staff in 2025.

Our specialist program will contine to comprise Visual Art, Kitchen Garden, Physical Education and Science. Mrs Biscan, Ms Brown, Mr Arnold, Mrs Moloney and Mrs Teague are the teachers responsible for these specialist subjects. At the end of this year we farewell Mr Wade as he begins 2025 at another school. We also wish Mr King and Miss Jefferies well as they embark on new adventures in 2025. We hope to see them soon!

We send our best wishes to Ms Kearney as she awaits the arrival of her new family member!

We are excited to welcome Ms Brown (Kitchen Garden teacher) and Mr Arnold (Physical Education teacher) as part of our specialist teaching team. 

Indigenous Studies, Performing Arts and Digital and Design Tech will continue as our discovery subjects in each sub school, and each class will also have a weekly Personal Learning and House Sports session too. All in all this means each week is a busy one at Teesdale Primary school!

Please be aware in sharing our class and teacher structure that we don’t take requests for specific classroom teachers. The window for considerations for 2025 was provided earlier in the term and the deadline is now closed.

More Construction!

There has been additional temporary fencing placed in two areas of our school. The space behind the Mudbrick building is being prepared for the placement of new modular classrooms. These classrooms will be very similar to those currently used by the Senior School students at the front corner of the school. 

We are looking forward to the opportunity to have all of our Senior School classes located together in 2025 and an additional space for our Science program. Unfortunately the new classrooms were not ready for our Orientation session, however we are very hopeful to have the classrooms set up ready for the 2025 school year. 

The second space with temporary fencing is between the bike shelter and the castle. This space will very shortly have a new toilet block for our students.

Teesdale Twilight Market

The Teesdale Twilight Market is scheduled for this Thursday December 12, at Turtle Bend. Our students will be on stage from 4:20pm.

I have placed a copy of our Teesdale Wonderland lyrics for families interested in rehearsing this at home ahead of our performances at the Teesdale Twilight Market. 

Students created this version of Winter Wonderland in 2022 and have begun practicing this along with a few other songs in their Performing Arts discoveries. 

Parent Payments

We have shared information about the 2025 Parent Payment Policy and Book Packs via Sentral with all families. This included the book pack lists for each year level in 2025 and our Parent Payment Policy. If you do not wish a book pack to be ordered for your child please advise the office as soon as possible. The window for payments commences on the 1st of January. We are extremely grateful and value each contribution we get from our families as it does support not only the provision of classroom equipment for students on book lists but allows us to allocate funds to other areas too. Please review the book pack lists and pop a reminder in your phone for a January payment!

Policy Update

At our recent School Council meeting, our updated policy for Access to School Grounds was approved. Please consider this policy throughout the school holidays to ensure our facilities are cared for. 

Final Day of 2024

Our final day of 2024 will be Friday December 20. All families are invited to attend our final assembly on December 20, from 12:30pm. Students will be dismissed from school at 1:30pm on this day. Community OSH will be available from 1:30pm. 

I hope that all families and our TPS staff enjoy a wonderful holiday break. Thank you for your contributions to our school community throughout 2024 and I look forward to seeing all students returning for the 2025 school year from Thursday January 30.

Enjoy your week, 

Chelsey

Healthy Eating at TPS