Little Long Walk Next Thursday at 12pm

As you may know, National Reconciliation Week commences on Monday next week and provides an opportunity for ‘all Australians to learn about our shared histories, cultures, and achievements, and to explore how each of us can contribute to achieving reconciliation in Australia’ (go to the Reconciliation Australia website to learn more: https://www.reconciliation.org.au/our-work/national-reconciliation-week/).

As part of Reconciliation Week, on Thursday 30th May we are holding a Little Long Walk around Edinburgh Gardens, beginning straight after recess at 12pm (meeting on the Basketball Court). Our Little Long Walk is inspired by Michael Long’s Long Walk in 2004 (http://www.walkthetalk.org.au/about/) and is an opportunity for our community to show our commitment to reconciliation.

All members of the community are invited to join us for this important event; it will conclude with a performance from our Grade 3/4 choir. On the day, we are raising funds for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation; students are invited to make a gold coin donation or families are welcome to make a donation online (https://fundraising.ilf.org.au/fitzroynorthprimaryschoollittlelongwalk). Thanks to those who have already donated.

Thank you to Zoe, one of our Grade 1/2 teachers, for her organisation of Thursday’s event and to our music teacher, Tanya D, for her work supporting the choir.

Here is the route we are taking on our walk:

Information about Student Reports

At Fitzroy North Primary School we value the partnership with our parent community, we believe in the power of having families involved in their child/ren’s learning journey and endeavour to foster the connection between our student’s experiences, understanding and success.

As you would have seen on Compass last week, all students completed a continuous reporting learning task. This continuous reporting is aimed at providing more regular feedback to families and facilitating ongoing dialogue between the school, children and their families around their learning. If you haven’t seen your child’s task yet,it can be accessed through their Compass profile under the ‘learning tasks’ tab, and they are best viewed in a browser window of your computer. Once you select the learning task, you can view teacher comments and your child’s work using the feedback tab. Based on our evaluation of the continuous reporting process this semester, we will determine the regularity and focus of continuous reporting in Semester Two.

We would greatly appreciate your feedback on the continuous reporting learning tasks, you can fill in a quick survey here: https://forms.gle/fopbLMs9K6mCqshW7

If you have any questions about continuous reporting, including any challenges accessing the task, please don’t hesitate to send me an email.

Progress Reports are also being published today. This is a very brief check-in about how your child is going at school based on their effort, engagement and wellbeing.

Finally, our Semester Reports will be published in the last week of Term Two. These reports will be unchanged from the report structure in 2023, and will provide you with information about your child’s progress compared with year level standards.

Our First Trip to Camp Jungai

This week the Grade 5s and Grade 6s ventured to Camp Jungai - the first time FNPS has ever visited this camp. I braved the early morning frost to join the campers on Tuesday for the day and had the chance to join in with some of the activities, including the Indigenous cultural session, boomerang throwing (I had to ‘hug the tree’ I hit with a boomerang!) and watched (from a safe distance!) the students go up on the ‘possum pull’.

I spoke with Cate and Florence from 5EF about their camp experience:

Cate: When we got there we did a lot of activities and it was really fun. My favourite activity was the possum pull because you got to help other people when they went up.

Florence: I liked the possum pull as well because it was really fun. I liked the indigenous session, which included painting boomerangs and making a story out of pictures. My story was about a campfire. Then we got to throw boomerangs. If you hit a tree with a boomerang you had to go and hug a tree to apologise to it! Although I didn’t like the bus trip, because when we got to the curvy bit some of us got car sick.

Cate: Yep, I threw up! I liked learning about Aboriginal culture because we are learning about it at school this term and it was good to learn about it from the perspective of Aunty, as an Aboriginal person herself. She taught us a lot of dreamtime stories and she also taught us lots of Indigenous games, which were really fun to play. She said we should introduce them at school.

Florence: Aunty taught us about Boomerangs and Snake Sticks. We also went canoeing, but it was really cold. I had to get out of the water because I couldn’t feel my fingers!

Cate: I really enjoyed canoeing. Although something that happened to me and Eva P, who was in the canoe with me, we kept on getting stuck in the reeds and we couldn’t get out. The camp coordinator had to grab the back of our canoe and pull us out!

The Build Progresses - welcome to our new office!

If you’ve been in at school this week, you would have noticed a lot of change. Nicole and Emily have been super busy moving from the old office space to the new reception area further south on Fergie Street. Drop in, say hi and check out the new front office when you get a chance. Tania and I also have new offices just past the reception area, and we’re very excited to have a new, spacious staffroom which is once again big enough for all the staff to gather.

Our Grade 5s have finally moved into their new classrooms. Their new spacious rooms on the first floor are overlooking the junior building and have a view of the gardens. I asked a couple of students from 5EP about their new classrooms:

Lewis: The classrooms are good.

Henry: It’s really good! It’s better than our old classrooms.

Lewis: We have so much more space, just to walk around. It looks more modern and neat. I like the view; when our friends go outside we can see them through the window! The whiteboard is really cool, it’s see-through. It’s really satisfying to draw on.

Henry: Yeah, we don’t miss the old classroom!

Lewis: We were meant to move in on Monday but we had to wait and we got to move in the first day after camp!

The move has been a collective effort and thank you to everyone involved, all our staff members, students and families, for their support - and patience!

Have a great weekend.

Toby

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