Principal's Report

To our Clyde Primary School community,

We would like to take this opportunity to express our solidarity with and care for, our students and families of Afghan background and to their loved ones still in Afghanistan. We want you all to know that we are here, we see what you are going through. We are so glad that you are here in our community and we want to offer our support to you and your families. We will be reaching out to families and please contact us if we can help.

On behalf of Clyde Primary School.

This issue of the newsletter focuses heavily on updates to a number of our school events. As you can understand, we are trying our best to provide our students with as many opportunities of the "normal" school year as possible. Unfortunately, this is difficult with regularly changing restrictions and limited dates available in Term 4. Some events have had to be modified, rescheduled or cancelled. Some of these are outlined below.

Remote Learning Update

Following the recent success of the Virtual Whole School Sports Day on Wednesday, we would like to introduce a change to our current remote program to enhance the wellbeing of our families. Each Wednesday we will have a Wellbeing Day. Students will have the opportunity to take a break from core curriculum subjects and instead participate in Specialist WebEx live lessons throughout the day. All Specialist acitivites will be schedulled on Seesaw on Tuesday evening and students can choose to complete them on the Wednesday or any time over the week. Families will then be able to choose which Specialsit WebEx lessons to attend or can choose to have time away from devices. 

In order to ensure that students meet the requirements for remote learning attendance, students will either need to attend a morning WebEx live meeting with their class teacher, submit at least 1 activity or upload a picture of an activity. This could be a Specialist activity on Seesaw or by participating in Mathletics or Reading Eggs. 

Production Update

We were looking for an inspirational quote that would lift our acting spirits and keep them high. Until all of a sudden, we found inspiration in ourselves, in our own famous “Clyde Zoo” zookeeper.  

“I don’t know actually. But we’ve done it! I mean it wasn’t me. But there has always been something special at this place, I’ve never been quite able to put my finger on it, but gosh we are lucky to all be here together.” – The Zookeeper. 

How lucky we are to have all built this story together, our students, the teachers and their parents. Like all great productions, the show must go on! So, with this we inform you, our brilliant actors that due to the current Covid restrictions we will reschedule our production film. 

Our filming dates will now take place on Tuesday 19th (Cast A) and Wednesday 20th (Cast B) of October in week three of term four. 

Have a great week, where we will again venture to the Clyde Hall to create our masterpiece. If by chance our third time lucky plan cannot be completed, we will move to another platform to ensure that our students get the opportunity to bring their characters to life.  

What do we need now?  

• Keep on building your characters and rehearsing your lines (hopefully you don’t even need the script anymore!)
• Use your dance video that was posted onto Seesaw to practise and refine your dance moves.
• Have your costume ready and labelled with your name, ready for the start of Term 4 (this has been extended due to restrictions in shopping accessibility).

We look forward to seeing the menagerie of animals and characters that we have developed back at school soon. 

-The Clyde Production Team.  

Book Week Parade

We are pleased to announce that Book Week will be rescheduled to the week commencing 6th September with the Book Parade being held on Wednesday 8th

September. We look forward to seeing our students in their costumes and hearing about their favourite book characters. We are also excited to immerse our students in the shortlisted books with lots of interesting and fun activities scheduled throughout the week. 

Due to restrictions, it is likely that our Book Parade will be held in classrooms and a link will be sent home so that families can enjoy all of the class parades. 

Father’s Day Events

At this stage, with school expected to return on Friday 3rd September, leaves us with little opportunity to run or Father’s Day planned activities. If we are able to return on the Friday, we will run a Father’s Day Stall, to provide an opportunity for all students to purchase a gift. We will not be able to go ahead with our scheduled picnic, as we will be unable to have parents attend school events. More details about the Father’s Day Stall will be sent closer to the date.

Camp Update

Over the latest restrictions our Year 3/4 and Year 5/6 camps were cancelled. We have been very fortunate to rebook both camps for Term 4 dates. Unfortunately, if these were not to go ahead, we would be unable to reschedule and all monies will be refunded to families.

Year 3 & 4 Camp: Grantville Lodge: Monday 11th – Wednesday 13th October

Year 5 & 6 Camp: Waratah Bay: Wednesday 6th-Friday 8th October

Swimming Update

Swimming lessons for our Year 1, 2, 5 & 6 students were cancelled earlier this term. We are currently working on re-booking dates for early Term 4, these will be provided to families as soon as possible.

Premier's Reading Challenge

The Victorian Premiers’ Reading Challenge is coming to a close and we encourage you to log in to the portal and finalise your books read. We would love to hand out as many

participation certificates as possible to reward all our student’s hard work. The Challenge ends on the 17th of September. There is still time left to get reading! 

To read the Premier’s letter to parents, view the booklist and for more information about the Victorian Premiers’ Reading Challenge, visit: www.education.vic.gov.au/prc 

Curriculum Day

Our final Curriculum Day for 2021 is Monday 18th October. No students can attend school on this day. Teachers will be moderating student assessment, undertaking professional learning and preparing for report writing.

Building Update

The rain has held off this week so that the crane could start erecting the steel frame work of our new gymnasium. This gives us a good perspective of the actual size of this building. 

I continue to attend site meetings with construction and planning teams, and in recent discussions we have had to unfortunately make some decision that a few of our larger trees have had to be/will be removed. While this is unavoidable, the budget and planning ensures that replacement tress will be planted later on in the landscaping phase.

Spelling at Clyde Primary School

This year at Clyde Primary School we have introduced 2 new approaches to spelling. In Foundation to Year 2, students have been learning about letters, sounds and digraphs through a program called Little Learners Love Literacy. During Year 2 students then move to a second program called Smart Spelling which is continued until the end of Year 6. Last year we trialled both programs in a number of classes and found that the students were very engaged in the programs. 

To support the introduction of the programs all classroom teachers, tutors and education support staff have undertaken professional learning on the programs. This professional development will continue for the rest of the year. 

Staff in Professional Learning Teams (PLTs) have been collecting data on student progress in spelling and have found that both programs are making a positive impact on student spelling accuracy and development. We are looking forward to seeing how our new approaches to spelling will continue to impact the learning of our students as they progress at Clyde.

Positive Coping

During Term 3, staff at Clyde Primary School will move onto Topic 3 “Positive Coping“ of the Respectful Relationships Curriculum. All classes will be introducing the concept of self-talk and exploring what this is and the impact it can have on us as individuals. We will explore concepts such as positive and negative self-talk and engage in role plays where skills will be explicitly modelled for students. Towards the end of topic 3 staff will teach our students about  ‘Personal coping profiles’ exploring what this means, learning about our own coping profiles and explicitly teaching new strategies and tools to add to our personal coping profiles. We are looking forward to teaching this topic and seeing our students at Clyde Primary School continue to grow as individuals within the Personal and Social curriculum area.