Principal's Message

From the Principal

 Student Voice 

Today at Assembly we presented  our Student Voice Representatives with their badges. Congratulations to these students for being recognised by their peers as the classmate  they believe will best represent their grade throughout the year.  These two representatives from each grade will work with our two Student Voice Captains – Henry Brook and Sophie McAdam to develop ideas to improve our school and plan activities for our students. Over the last five years our school has worked hard to improve Student Voice. It is great to see this effort reflected in the Attitudes to School Survey with positive endorsement showing an upward trajectory from 55% in 2021 to 70% in 2024. A strategy to build on our work in this area this year is for each area team to have a Student Voice Champion (teacher) whose job it is to support the  Student Voice Representatives form their ideas to take to meetings as well as bring information back from meetings.  Our area team Student Voice Champions for each area team are: Foundation team - Mrs Hawthorne, Year 1/2 - Mrs Dickson, Year 3/4 - Mrs Smith and Year 5/6 - Mr Stephens.  I look forward to working with  this group of students and staff throughout the year as their voice and ideas matter and are valued. 

Aths Day  next week 

Communication was sent out to families this week to confirm that next week’s Athletics Days will take place on Monday and Thursday. These change of dates are due to the hot weather scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday. We thank families for their understanding and apologise for any inconvenience to plans that they had made.  A letter with further details was sent out early today on Xuno and the schedule attached to today’s newsletter.

Food Bank 

This year our school has signed up to be part of the Food Bank Program.  This will start with weekly deliveries of fruit that will be distributed to the grades. We do hope that next term we can commence a Breakfast Club one or two mornings a week.  This will tie in beautifully with the Health Focus we have planned for Term 2 which will include St John of God running First Aid workshops with our students, a visit from Smile Squad, Glasses for Kids Program and  the Lions Eye Screening Service. If we want our children to be resilient learners and humans they first need to ensure their health is on track. 

Foundation Rest Days Concluding 

This week we celebrated the conclusion of February Rest days for our foundation classes with a BBQ. It was a perfect evening for a sausage in bread with our families and students. It was also the perfect opportunity for our Prep Team to provide our families with a little more information on how they can further support their child. I am sure that many fridges in our families home now have the golden word list on them. Next week our Foundation Students will commence full weeks of school as they have now built up their endurance for learning and play. I thank the Foundation team and our families for the great work  they have done together for our little  people to be ready for this step. 

School Council Feeback – Fundraising 

This year our School Council have made the decision that all fundraising efforts in Term 1  - 3 will be to subsidise school camps for our families. Our goal is to  raise enough to subsidise the cost of the buses, around $10,000. Our first fundraising event starts today with the Easter Raffle. Books have been sent home to  families today.  We have asked that these books be returned by Friday March 21st which will coincide with a Casual Dress Day where students are asked to donate an Easter Egg for the raffle instead of a gold coin. 

NAPLAN

The month of March brings with it our annual NAPLAN Assessment week, commencing on Wednesday March 12th after the long weekend.  Across this week students in Year 3 and Year 5 will complete a series of assessment tasks in writing, reading, language conventions and numeracy. The NAPLAN assessments provide the school with information on how well our Year 3 students have gathered the foundational skills in Literacy and Numeracy, along with how much growth students have made from Years 3 to Year 5. Whilst the information is valuable it is only a reflection of what a student can do  on that day on that test. It is not a defining assessment tool but rather information the school uses with other data and knowledge  about students.  Information on the schedule will be sent out next week to our families.