Acting Principal's Message

Last week we celebrated our great school with a morning, where we opened our doors with a whole school presentation followed by classroom visits. It was wonderful to see over 200 parents attend the morning and experience firsthand, the wonderful math work that is being undertaken by our students and staff, led by our learning specialist Luke Fletcher, and Assistant Principal Suada Dzaferovic. The focus of the session was on ‘Daily Reviews’ and ‘fluency’ games in mathematics. 

Daily Reviews are part of our instructional teaching and learning model and are aimed at providing students with regular opportunities to review prior learning. By reviewing prior learning they are far more likely to transfer knowledge and skills into long-term memory and in turn be able to retrieve information when it is required.

Staffing

We welcome to our school Tiina Polvinen and Callum O’Connor. Tiina and Callum form part of our Education Support staff team, due to the school being successful in obtaining funding for several students under Disability Inclusion. The department is committed to embedding inclusive education in all school environments for students with disability and additional needs.  This important area is led by Acting Assistant Principal – Leila Sheehan in her role as Wellbeing and Inclusion. 

Student Reports

Staff are currently in the process of assessing and reporting on midyear student outcomes and spent last Friday moderating on student work samples and preparing reports for parents. Student progress reports for Semester One will be made available online for all families later this term with meetings organised for early in term 3. We look forward to each family booking an appointment on Compass and engaging with staff to discuss your child’s progress. There is an expectation that teachers will contact parents/guardians of each student to keep lines of communication open thereby ensuring the home-school partnership remains strong.

Stay well this Winter

As we head into Winter, I felt it important to reach out to you. Currently, there are a number of students being sent home, each day, from school who have attended school while unwell, and along with multiple COVID absences, these continue to impact student and staff attendance. 

I also want to acknowledge a perfect storm of COVID, flu, other illnesses, and a state-wide shortage of emergency teachers, please be aware that we are taking steps, as necessary, to continue our commitment to do everything to maintain learning at TPS. This may include splitting classes, utilising specialist teachers, and other staff taking classes eg. Tutor staff; these approaches will only be implemented if absolutely necessary.  I thank you in advance for your understanding as the school navigates this challenging period. We ask parents and carers to continue to remain vigilant in preventing the spread of any illness. Any student who is unwell should continue to remain at home. This is about keeping students healthy and well in our school and reducing the spread of both COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases. Parents and carers will be contacted if their child shows symptoms while at school. Staff and students who wish to wear a face mask will be supported to do so. The Department of Health recommends that masks should be worn by a person who is a close contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 when leaving home. Additionally, the Department of Health recommends that masks should be worn by a person who has COVID-19 for 7 days after a positive test when they need to leave home. Many thanks for your continued efforts to keep our school community safe and well.

Every little bit helps-  Parent Contributions

Thank you to all those families who have already made financial contributions in 2023, currently we have received around 38% of our expected parent contributions. These payments allow our school to offer the high-quality educational programs that we have at TPS. Parent Contributions are available for payment via compass course confirmations or by contacting the office. Recurring contributions (payment plans) can be set up when making payment, and the office can assist you in changing the dates/amounts to suit your needs.

The funds parents provide to our School by the Department of Education alone are not enough to support the full costs of running the school as well as providing excellent education opportunities for all students.  

To allow our school to continue to provide the same high level of programs, facilities, and equipment, we ask you to consider both the Curriculum and Other contributions. Without the contribution of funds, there will be limited opportunities for new or replacement of equipment and classroom furniture, and existing resources will need to be stretched even further.

We also welcome your additional voluntary contributions to support specific purposes, such as the building fund and library funds.

There are many things your parent contribution pays for. This includes:

• Classroom and curriculum supplies including pens, pencils, and books
• Literacy and Science Materials
• Educational research projects
• Sports equipment
• Digital learning including apps, devices etc
• Mathletics Subscription
• French supplies
• Performing Arts Supplies such as musical instruments
• Art supplies including coloured paper, paint, pastels, clay, and glue

If you haven't already paid school contributions, please look on Compass to do so. We appreciate your efforts and thank you for your support.

An investment in education is an investment in your child’s future.

Benefits of a strong parent-school relationship

On recent walks around the school, it has been great to see parents helping in the classroom or assisting in other ways around the school.  I recently came across this article about the benefits of a strong parent-school relationship which I encourage you to read. 

Please click here to access the article.

Kind regards

Sharon Wildermuth

Acting Principal