Welcome to Week 9!

Last week saw the completion of our swimming and life saving K-6. Students have improved their swimming skills immensely throughout the program and it would be great to see them participate in further lessons to continue that growth. Thank you to Sophie and the instructors at Sport UNE for all you have done for our students, making them safer in and around the water.

On Monday we had a visit from Cricket NSW. All classes enjoyed learning more about cricket and the skills involved in playing this sport.

Celebration of Learning Assembly - 12pm

This Friday 8th December, at 12pm is our Celebration of Learning Assembly. This will be a celebration of all students and the school community. We look forward to seeing all our wonderfully supportive family and community members there.

Kindergarten, Year 1 and Year 2 students will receive a book each, kindly donated by the

P & C.

Three students from each class will receive class awards in the categories of Achievement, Commendation, and You Can Do It. We also have an Ambassador award for one student in Kindergarten, Stage 1, Stage 2 and Stage 3. These Ambassador awards are for students who represent and display the qualities and expectations of our PAX and You Can Do It programs.

Our major school awards are for selected students from Stage 3.

Our school captains and vice captains for 2024 will be announced at the Celebration of Learning assembly as well.

Formal uniform for the assembly this year (due to the expected temperature on Friday) should include: White shirt, tie (available at the office if you don't have one), black shorts, skirts/skorts for girls and black school shoes. Black stockings and black long pants are not required nor are jumpers. The following students should wear formal uniform -

All Year 6 students
Year 5 students who gave a speech for captains 2024
Students in K-6 who are receiving an award and received a letter indicating they were receiving an award.

Students not receiving awards in K-5 do not need to wear formal uniform. They can just wear school normal uniform.

P&C Christmas Donuts

The P&C will be offering Christmas donuts at recess this Friday 8th December. These Christmas themed donuts will be available to purchase. Yummy!

Please place orders via Qkr! Orders close today at 3pm. No refunds are available. As we are having the donuts at recess, we will not be selling icy poles at lunch time.

Pool Day

Next week we hold our Pool Day on Tuesday 12th December. Please complete the online permission form in COMPASS. Students will have access to the canteen but should only bring a SMALL amount of money to spend. Please remember sunscreen, rashies and hats, as well as the usual gear for swimming including a plastic bag for wet gear. Don't forget to get out your sharpie and name everything!

Year 6 Final Assembly

On Friday 15th December we will celebrate and farewell Year 6 at an informal assembly at 2:00pm. Parents and friends are welcome to attend this fun event with lots of memories shared and "special" Year 6 awards handed out.

Student Semester Two Reports

Semester 2 student reports will be available to access on COMPASS on Friday 15th December after lunch.

Time capsule buried

Last Thursday Mr Reeves and our school captains, Evie, Kai, Lincoln and Charlise, buried our centenary time capsule. Our time capsule was created to commemorate our school celebrating 100 years and to capture a moment for the future. I wonder when the time capsule is dug up in the future, what the teacher and kids think about the contents?

A big thank you to our GA Chris Schaeffer for digging up the old capsule and re-burying the new one.

PAX Word of the Fortnight: Hygiene

Weeks 9 & 10

Hygiene is a series of practices performed to preserve health.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), "Hygiene refers to conditions and practices that help to maintain health and prevent the spread of diseases."
Personal hygiene refers to maintaining the body's cleanliness. Hygiene activities can be grouped into the following:
home and everyday hygiene,
personal hygiene,
medical hygiene,
sleep hygiene (getting enough sleep) and
food hygiene.
Hygiene is part of Health, which is a part of our PAX VISION.

Every Day Matters

Good attendance is key to your child being able to fulfil their potential and make good progress in school. #EveryDayMatters

Missing a day here or there may not seem like much, but absences add up and can negatively impact your child’s learning and wellbeing. When your child misses one day a week that’s 40 days of school and 8 weeks of learning in one year. Over an entire school journey this adds up to 2.5 years of lost learning.

 Let's do this together.

WOW! LOOK AT OUR LEARNING!

We do lots of fabulous learning each and every day in our school.

Stage 1

Stage 1 students work together each morning doing the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Program. The program taught explicitly by Mrs McCathie, with support from our Stage 1 teachers, provides students with consistent and repeated instruction in phonemic awareness, and this transfers to developing a student's decoding and encoding skills.

Stage 2

Each day, Stage 2 students work in small reading groups with direct instruction from their teachers. The learning is engaging and collaborative. It is always great to go into Stage 2 and watch these reading groups and listen to our students read.

Kindergarten

During the morning session in Kindergarten, we focus on literacy activities. Students begin the morning with a story, then practice their phonic (sounds) and writing as a class. They then move into reading groups (pictured below) where they may do activities such as reading with the teacher, doing reading eggs, listening to a story, practice writing words and sentences.

Creating Chances Stage 3

Creating Chances is a researched based program MGPS used to equip students in Stage 3 with the skills and strategies needed to prepare for, and overcome, the social and academic challenges they encounter as they move towards their transition from primary to high school.

Creating Chances supported our students to develop their sense of self and taught them ways to form and identify positive relationships. The program also gave our students strategies to deal with conflict and challenges in a constructive way, laying the foundations for a confident transition to high school. The students all enjoyed the sessions that the facilitators from Creating Chances ran in our school.

Peta Deiderick and Felicity Pennington

Relieving Principals

P&C Information

Christmas Donuts