From the Principal,
Diana Ellis

Invite to our school picnic and open classrooms

During the last week of term, we will be hosting our Open classrooms and Family Picnic. This is a great opportunity to visit your child’s classroom during learning time and to celebrate their learning.

If you wish to discuss a particular issue with your child’s teacher, please make an alternative time to do so.

The classrooms will be open Wednesday April 5th from 3.00 pm until 4.30 pm followed by a family picnic on the oval. We encourage families to bring along your picnic blanket and food and enjoy networking with other parents from our school community.

Members from School Council and Parent and Friends will also be available to discuss their role in our school and upcoming events.

NAPLAN

This week our Year 3 and Year 5 students participated in NAPLAN. The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is an annual national assessment for all students in Years 3, 5, 7, and 9, and is the only nationwide assessment that all Australian children undertake. It’s a measure to see whether or not young Australians are developing the literacy and numeracy skills that provide the critical foundation for other learning.

Whilst NAPLAN can escalate anxiety for some children, we encourage all children to do NAPLAN as this provides another set of data for us about student achievement. Now more than ever our students are quite accustomed to online testing as they regularly do online pre and post assessments when a new concept is introduced and at the completion of the topic. I congratulate our students on doing their absolute best in a test environment. The stamina and resilience our students demonstrated is to be commended.

Cross Country

Last week we had our whole school Cross Country. A big congratulations to all students who participated and the great effort and sportsmanship that was demonstrated by our students.

Thankyou to Mrs. Connell for all of the preparation resulting in a highly successful day and to all staff and parents for supporting the event and our students.

Placings	1st	2nd	3rd	4th
Foundation Boys	Sonny	Henry	Henry	George
Foundation Girls	Layla	Kyla	Clara	Violet
Year 1 Boys	Charlie	Xabier	Freddie	Charles
Year 1 Girls	Madeleine	Maggie	Anouk	Matilda
Year 2 Boys	Vaughn	Jaxon	Dash	Edmund
Year 2 Girls	Zoe	Heidi	Niamh	Daisy
9 Yrs Boys	Hamish	Finn	Arlo	Archie
9 Yrs Girls	Alana	Daisy	Erin	Hannah
10 Yrs Boys	Sam	Austin	Angus	Bernard
10 Yrs Girls	Holly	Maggie	Lisa	Ally
11 Yrs Boys	Flynn	Lachlan	Odin	Hayden
11 Yrs Girls	Pippa	Charlie	Bonnie	Lacey
12 Yrs Boys	Alex	Curtis	Riley	Will
12 Yrs Girls	Bridie	Tahli	Martha	Zaidee

Facilities

Shade sails

Each week we are continuing to make improvements to our facilities. Last week our new purple shade sails were installed over the playground. As part of the shade sails grants we are still waiting for our shade sails to be installed over the amphitheatre and out at our Carlsruhe Campus.

Fences

Our old picket fence has finally been removed and the new fence has been installed. Our next project is to develop a native/sensory garden bed with plants that also meet the bushfire rating regulations.

Professional Learning

Over the last two weeks staff have engaged in a professional learning session on Maths. This session was run by our Numeracy Learning Specialist Mr. Condon.

Staff also participated in an online learning module about Cystic Fibrosis. Mr. Spilsted, our Occupational, Health and Safety Co-ordinator completed his refresher training on Workplace Safety Regulations.

We also have 5 staff participating in the Berry Street Training Course that focus on trauma in children and the causes and ways to manage to trauma impacted students. We also have another 5 staff participating in the training course for School Wide Positive Behaviour. School Wide Positive Behaviour focuses on our school philosophy, values and behaviour expectations and provides processes and systems for school wide behaviour management and clear behaviour expectations. We have been a School Wide Positive Behaviour school for around 3 years and our school values, philosophy and behaviour expectations and behaviour management flowchart are clearly displayed in all rooms around the school.

Around the classrooms

This week some of our students were learning about rubbish and how to sort it, re-use it and recycle. Other students were learning about patterns, what makes a pattern and students in Art were using water colours to do landscape pictures.