The Wattle

Principal's Update

At Dundas Public School we do our best always

Staffing News

I know this has been said many, many times but staffing classes continues to be a major challenge with an average of 3 staff off sick most days. We continue to try our best to employ day-to-day casual teachers to cover classes and I thank the flexibility and generosity of our support teaching staff who regularly step in to teach our students when we are unable to book a casual teacher. 

 

I would like to formally congratulate Mrs Benco who has been successful in gaining a transfer to our wonderful school so she will be in the EAL/D role on a permanent basis. Mrs Benco has been a wonderful addition to DPS this year and we are very excited to know that she is staying put at Dundas. 

 

Assistant Principals (AP's) have a teaching load but also lead stage teams of students and teachers. Due to the extra workload, AP's are entitled to additional RFF time (off class) as part of the QTSS program (Quality Teaching Successful Students) which is funded by the Department of Education. This QTSS time is not a new initiative and brings Assistant Principals in line with Head Teacher in high schools. QTSS is used to improve the teaching quality of teachers within their team as well as administration tasks and additional professional learning. 

School Support Staff Recognition Week 

 

 

This week is SASS Appreciation Week. Our SAS staff work tirelessly to maintain the day to day running of the school and support our students. These non-teaching roles are vitally important and combine with teachers’ work to ensure all students are provided with the greatest possible opportunity to reach their full potential. 

 

Our SASS staff are: 

School Administrative Manager: Judy Dinsdale 

School Administrative Officers: Tracey Haddock, Georgia Haddock, Sieun Lee 

School Learning and Support Officers: Sam Besgrove, Sue Choi

General Assistant: Dave Stopps

 

We are very lucky to have such dedicated, caring and efficient staff at our school. 

Demountable classroom upgrade update

2B and 2M have been upgraded with new carpet and fresh painting internally and externally. Feedback from the Year 2 teachers and students has been extremely positive of their new learning spaces. The Year 2 rooms appear to have more light in them, feel fresher and cleaner and the carpet is very bouncy!

 

The Fun Club room has been painted this week. 3W is scheduled to be updated next week so 3W will be in the creative arts room (Devlin building) next week until the works are complete. If we continue to have rain, please be aware that this may extend any planned periods of disruption.

 

 

Last Friday, we posted a comprehensive information note outlining important information about our 'Splash and Dash' event on Thursday, 15th September. Included in the information was:

  • updates on school competitions
  • invitation for parents/carers to come to the event
  • event schedule of the day so you know when your children will be running the course
  • what children need to wear and bring on the day
  • snow cone and fairy floss stalls 
  • and the need for some parent helpers on the day

If you haven't read the information note, we strongly recommend you do so families can plan for our big day.

 

Parent Helpers

 

We are hoping that there will be some parents and carers able to help on the day. We will need help with the following:

  • 2 parents per session at the fairy floss stall
  • 2 parents per session at the snow cone stall
  • we will have 2 water refill stations on the day. This is where the coloured water containers will be located. We will need 4 parent helpers per hour session at each water station to refill the soft drink bottles and water soakers when needed.

Parent helpers can quickly complete a google form to indicate what task they would like to help at as well as what session. The link is below:

 

https://forms.gle/UBDoxJ6YxCHZ2VWE9

 

We are hoping to see lots of our families there on the day which we hope will be a fun community event.

 

Plastic soft drink bottles

 

On the day we will need lots of empty 2L plastic bottles with their lids. We are hoping that our families can save their 2L plastic bottles and pop them into the 2 collection tubs located at the back entrance of the admin block. We estimate that we will need at least 200 2L plastic bottles for our fun run day.

 

 

Back Up Date

 

We have our fingers crossed that the weather will be fine (enough) for our event to take place next week on Thursday, 15th September. We do have a back up date however, if we need to postpone our fun run.

 

Back Up date for ‘Splash and Dash’ – Monday, 19th September.

 

We will endeavour to let our families know as early as we can if we need to postpone.

2022 NAPLAN – Lot’s to celebrate!

In our final newsletter for Term 3, I plan to share some wonderful news about our 2022 NAPLAN results. The hard work that we have invested into how we explicitly teach reading and numeracy is starting to pay dividends.

 

We still have areas we need to further improve, but the data from NAPLAN is very encouraging and validates the changes we have implemented since the beginning of 2021. 

Tell Them From Me - parent/carer survey

All of our parents and carers are invited to complete a voluntary survey. Feedback from parents and caregivers, teachers and students provide an accurate and complete picture of a school climate and culture. The Tell Them From Me® Parent Survey can aid in strengthening parent, teacher and school collaboration by providing schools with a deeper understanding of parents’ perceptions of their child’s experiences at home and school. The survey includes these following topics:

  • Parents feel welcome
  • Parents are informed
  • Parents support learning at home
  • Support for learning
  • Support for positive behaviour
  • Feeling safe at school
  • Inclusion
  • Parent participation at school
  • Bullying and exclusion
  • Time spent doing homework

The link to access the parent/carer online survey is  http://nsw.tellthemfromme.com/dps2022

 

Last year we had 40 parents and carers complete the online survey and we are hoping more of our families will complete it this year. The survey will close for Dundas PS on the last day of Term 3, Friday 23rd September 2022.

Tell Them From Me surveys (Years 4-6 student survey)

Students will be participating in this survey in the last 2 weeks of Term 3. If you do not want your child to participate, please complete the non-consent form that has been shared with families this week.

 

The Tell Them From Me student survey asks students about a range of school experiences, including their engagement and wellbeing at school and beyond. It also asks students about teaching practices and the learning environment.

 

The survey takes about 20 minutes to complete.

Year 5 Camp

Our Year 5 campers had a wonderful time at Point Wolstoncroft this week. I wanted to congratulate everyone on their manners, behaviour and cooperation over the 3 days.

 

A huge thank you to Mr Yee, Mrs Keegan and Mrs Dinsdale for supervising the students on the camp. Supervising students on overnight excursions is a huge responsibility, 

especially when they do not get paid extra for their attendance. They did an amazing job ensuring everyone felt safe and happy as well as taking photos that could be shared on Facebook. 

 

We try hard to share experiences as often as we can with our community and our Facebook page is the perfect platform for us to do that, so everyone is engaged and included. It is good to see that most families understand the purpose of our posts and are appreciative that our staff have taken the time to share as much as they do. 

Class SEESAW 

We love using Seesaw for teachers to communicate quickly with our families. At Dundas PS, we encourage a work-life balance for all our staff. Our staff have family and personal commitments that we highly value. For this reason, teachers will try their best to respond to any messages on Seesaw during the day until approximately 4pm. Any messages sent after this time will be responded to as soon as possible on the following day. Any urgent matters should be directed to the school office. Thank you for your understanding.

Travel During the School Term 

Wherever possible, we encourage travel to be undertaken during school holidays, as we know that when it comes to attendance and learning, every day matters. Where this is not possible, please inform the school as follows: 

 

• 4 days or less: please notify the school through the SkoolBag App via the ‘Absentee Form’ . 

• 5 days or more: please request an ‘Application for Extended Leave - Travel’ form from the office. 

Check In Assessments for Years 3,4,5 and 6 (reminder from previous newsletter)

During Terms 3 and 4, students will participate in the Check-in assessment. The Check-in assessment is a NSW Department of Education online literacy and numeracy assessment available to support schools to assess and monitor student learning. The assessment can supplement existing school practices to identify how students are performing in literacy and numeracy and to help teachers tailor their teaching more specifically to student needs. Students with a disability may receive the same level of support during the assessment they would normally receive in the classroom. 

 

• The assessment will be scheduled for our Year 6 students during Weeks 8 –10, Term 3 

• Students in Years 3, 4, 5 will complete their assessments during weeks 1-4 in Term 4 

• All students complete a reading assessment and a numeracy assessment. Year 6 students will also complete a writing task 

 

Students are asked to bring headphones that plug into a computer to enable them to hear audio during the assessment.

2023 Planning (reminder from previous newsletter)

In order to assist with planning for 2023, this week we sent a form home to each family requesting information on students returning to Dundas Public School next year. This will help us with a great deal, especially when it comes to staffing.

School PSSA cancellations (reminder from previous newsletter)

Unfortunately, PSSA was cancelled again this week. I wanted to ensure that the community understands that the local council makes the decision to close council grounds and notifies the affected PSSA associations once the decision is made.  We hope that in the coming weeks we will be able to resume having our regular PSSA competitions on Friday mornings.

Teaching and Learning (reminder from previous newsletter)

If a student or staff member is unwell and has any symptoms they should always test

for COVID-19, either with a rapid antigen test (RAT) or PCR (nose and throat swab)

test. If the test comes back negative for COVID-19, the student or staff member

 

Teaching and learning is our core business at Dundas Public School. Teachers are currently trialling different ways they can give their students effective feedback.

 

When teachers give effective feedback, students are provided with relevant, explicit, ongoing, constructive and actionable information about their performance against learning outcomes from the syllabus. This effective feedback encourages students to reflect on their work more deeply and empowers them to identify where and how they can improve.

 

There are two elements that are required for a teacher to provide effective feedback. The first is knowing where students need to get to (the learning outcome) and the second is finding evidence of where students are at (through assessment and observation).

 

Practical strategies for teachers to provide effective feedback include:

  • Reflect and communicate about the learning task with students – For example, acknowledge students’ process or effort, either verbally or in the comments made on students’ work. For example, ‘I can see the effort you’ve put in. Your original method didn’t work, but you kept trying different approaches and you were able to solve the problem.’
  • Provide students with detailed and specific feedback about what they need to do to achieve growth as a learner – For example, use a combination of feedback strategies (for example, feedback about the task and feedback about the process of the task) to provide students with information that is timely and directly connected to the learning intentions and success criteria.
  • Encourage students to self-assess, reflect and monitor their work – For example, use rubrics, marking guidelines and work samples to support students with self-assessment. This could include breaking down the rubric or marking guidelines into language that is more appropriate and accessible for students, so that they can self-assess their work.
  • Ensure that students act on feedback that they receive - provide targeted feedback in a timely manner so students have opportunities to action and apply the feedback.

Lost property (reminder from previous newsletter)

There is currently a large amount of lost property, particularly school jackets. If your child has lost an item of their uniform or a lunch box, please remind them to look for it at lost property.

 

Please ensure that all your child’s belongings have been labelled so they can be returned. Also, please check that your child has their own belongings and that they have not taken home another child’s hat or jacket.

 

School Bytes (reminder from previous newsletter)

As you are already aware, we have introduced an online platform that we will be using to share permission notes with our families. The platform is called 'School Bytes' and is a quick and efficient method of receiving and processing permission notes. 

 

Families will receive an email with the online permission note. Parents and carers will be able to easily open the email, read the information in the note, give permission and sign the document straight away on any device. Permission notes that require payment will have a link straight to our payment tab on the school website. 

 

As stated previously, our intention is to not send home paper information/permission notes starting this term. Please contact the school is you have recently changed your email address so your contact information can be updated. 

 

** We currently have outstanding permission notes for upcoming school events. It would be appreciated if parents and carers could please complete the approval process on School Bytes as soon as possible.

 

2023 Kindergarten enrolments (reminder from previous newsletter)

We are currently accepting enrolments for 2023. Families need to complete an online enrolment form for DPS. General enrolment information can be found on the NSW Department of Education website.

 

Enrol in a NSW public primary school | Service NSW

 

Online Enrolment is a web-based system which will allow parents to submit an application to enrol a child in a local intake area in a NSW Government School. The online form can be accessed from the enrolment page on the school's website. 

 

Online Enrolment (nsw.gov.au)

 

The information once completed by the parent, will be submitted to the school through the Online Enrolment School Interface. Our School Administrative Support Staff are then able to review and edit the enrolment application submitted by the parent/carer and send to the Enrolment and Registration Number (ERN) system.

 

The NSW Education Department Enrolment Policy has been revised to support schools to manage all enrolment applications, encourage greater consistency in decision-making and make sure the enrolment choices are clear for parents.

 

The enrolment cap is the number of students that can be enrolled at a school based on the school’s permanent accommodation. The enrolment cap tells us whether the school will be able to accept non-local enrolments. Schools with a local intake area have a cap set by the department.

 

Within the enrolment cap, a number of enrolment places (the buffer) must be kept aside for the likely number of local students who will need to enrol during the year. For this reason, a school will not take non-local students once they reach their buffer, unless there are exceptional circumstances.

 

We invite families to visit the school website and select ‘Enrolment’ to start the Kindergarten enrolment process. 

 

A link to the 2023 DPS Kindergarten Transition website is below. It contains lots of information that will be very useful to new DPS families. 

 

2023 DPS Kindergarten Transition website

 

We will be offering Orientation visits for new Kindy students and their parents/carers in Term 4 which will include classroom visits, school information/tour and the Dundas Expo!

 

We are excited to announce that we will also be offering Big School Visits on selected Friday afternoons from 2-3pm which will focus on school readiness and include a school tour for new families. 

 

We have organised a Kindergarten 2023 postcard that will be dropped off at neighbouring preschools over the coming weeks. There is a handy QR code on the postcard to meet it easy for families to book a big school visit.

 

 

Communication platforms (reminder from previous newsletter)

 

 

Kind regards,

Lee Shipley

Principal