TEAM 

Welcome Back

Welcome back to Term 3! It is hard to believe that we are now over halfway through the school year and already well into another busy term of learning at Cowwarr PS.

Our students have started the term strongly and should be incredibly proud of the way they are applying themselves to their learning. This also extends to our teachers, who continue to be learners themselves. This term, our staff have been undertaking professional learning, observing each other’s practice in the classroom, sharing feedback and reflecting on our teaching. We are being deliberate about the changes we make and continually asking ourselves what we can do better to ensure our classrooms are happy, engaging and successful places to learn.

A New Look for Our Newsletter

You may notice a few changes to our newsletter this term. In an effort to make it more meaningful and relevant for our families and community, we will now publish our newsletter twice each term.

We would also love to include more student and parent voice. As a school, we will make time to read and celebrate our newsletter together so that our students can see their learning, achievements and contributions reflected in its pages.

As always, we welcome feedback and ideas from our families about what you would like to see included.

Targeted Learning – Giving Students What They Need

Last term, we saw some wonderful success from our targeted small-group literacy learning. These groups allowed us to focus closely on the specific skills students needed to continue developing as successful and confident readers.

This term, we are beginning to extend this approach into Room 1, with targeted learning opportunities across literacy and mathematics.

At the heart of this work is something very simple, learning what our students need and teaching them what they need, when they need it.

Parent–Student–Teacher Interviews

Thank you to all of our families who attended our recent Parent–Student–Teacher Interviews.

These conversations are an important opportunity for teachers, students and families to come together and talk about learning, progress and next steps. Parent voice matters. We need to hear how you feel your young person is going, what you are seeing at home and what is important to you.

Education really is a team effort, and we can have a much greater impact for our students when school and home work together.

Listening to Our Students and Families

Over the past few weeks, we have been creating more opportunities for our students and families to have a voice in what happens at Cowwarr PS, what you love about our school, what you might change and what you would like to see happen in the future.

One of my personal goals for the remainder of this year is to be deliberate about listening and ensuring the decisions we make are focused on what is best for everyone in our school community.

Thank you to those families who have taken the time to attend a session with Miss Marg, send an email or speak with her directly. An especially BIG thank you must also go to our students for their honesty and wonderful ideas in their ‘Letter to the Principal’. Hearing directly from our kids about what matters to them has been incredibly valuable.

We are also preparing an anonymous family survey for those who would like another opportunity to share their thoughts. Thank you for helping us continue to reflect, learn and improve together.

Swimming – So Much to Celebrate! 🏊

Our first swimming session was a wonderful success!

Every student who participated gave their best. For some, success meant developing their swimming skills, while for others it meant overcoming a big fear, putting their head underwater for the first time or having the confidence to venture into the deeper end. There were so many individual moments to celebrate and be proud of.

We have also been spending time at school learning about the importance of kind words, encouragement and celebrating the success of others. It was therefore especially lovely to receive feedback from our swimming instructors about how wonderful our students were and how impressed they were by the encouragement they were giving each other in the water.

These are the moments that make us proud, not just what our students can achieve, but how they support each other along the way.

Go TEAM Cowwarr!