Dear Families,

It has been a very busy week at Echuca Twin Rivers School. The school leadership spent a day planning for 2021 and staff have been busy finalising reports. This week, our Grade 5/6 students were lucky enough to have an online Q&A session with Rob Buyrea, the author of their class novel, the Mr Terupt series of books. I was interested in his response to the question around how do you become a good writer. He said "To be a good writer, you must read", highlighting the key link between the 2 skills. With the summer holidays approaching, it is really important that students keep up their reading over the break.

Graduation

After a fair bit of work and organisation, and difficulty planning graduation, we have finally booked our Grade 6 Graduation for Tuesday, December 15th. Unfortunately this is a change of date from what was originally shared, but this needed to occur in order to secure a big enough venue for the night.

The Grade 6 Graduation will be at the Mercure Function Room in High Street (next to McDonalds). Unfortunately, we are still restricted by numbers attending, therefore this event will be for students and staff only. Upon arrival between 5:45pm and 6pm, families may have a photo taken together followed by finger food available for the students inside. The ceremony will take place from 6:15pm and will be broadcast live via Webex so families may watch from home. The ceremony will be completed by 7:15pm, allowing families who may like to go out for dinner afterwards to do so.

We understand this is not a perfect Graduation for our Grade 6 students, and lots of schools are doing different things to celebrate, but our hope is to make this as special for the students as possible, and allow them to leave school with a memorable evening. We appreciate everyone's understanding. Thank you to our Grade 5/6 team for the great work they have done to organise this event.

Emergency Management

On Monday, our school will be having a practice Lockdown drill, as part of the school's emergency management requirements. This will take place at 2:20pm.

Reports

Reports will go home on Wednesday 16th of December. If you require a hard copy (paper copy) of your child's report, please notify the office for this to be arranged. Interviews are not scheduled, however if you'd like to discuss your child's report with their teacher, please contact the school to make an appointment.

State Wide Transition Day

On Tuesday, December 8th is the State Wide Transition Day. We will welcome our 2021 Prep students on this day, as well as farewell our Grade 6 students who will go and spend time at their new secondary school.

Students attending Echuca College will attend for a half day transition experience. Students will be required to attend their chosen secondary school in the morning. They do not need to come to our school first. Perspective Echuca College students will then return to our school at 12:00.

We will also welcome a number of new enrolments for 2021 throughout the school from right across the state, who will be visiting our school, as well as a couple of new teachers who are starting with us at Echuca Twin Rivers School in 2021.

End of Year Parent Survey

It is that time of the year again. This survey is our own school survey seeking individual feedback on how we are tracking as a school, what we have achieved, areas to improve and suggestions for future planning.

Last year we had 33 responses, this year we are striving for 50 responses. We can do it!

The survey is open until the 18th of December and we want to hear from you. It is a 30 question survey which also includes questions about your experience of remote learning and will take about 10 mins to complete. Below is the survey link, just click on it and it will take you to the survey. We appreciate and value your time and opinions. A text message will be also be sent out to families with the link.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/T97FLL5

2021 Start Dates

2021 start for all students from Grades 1-6 on Friday, January 29th. Our 2021 Foundation students begin on Monday February 1st.

Toy Drive

We are very excited to announce both Echuca Twin Rivers Specialist and Primary school have joined the Echuca Moama Community Projects along with the Echuca Moama Uniting Church and will become a drop off point and key contributor for the 2020 Christmas Toy Appeal. It is exciting to be involved in a project in our Community that our students will benefit from. There are a lot of presents coming in and being placed under the beautifully constructed wooden Christmas tree and we are grateful for your contributions.

What does it look like for us?

From Monday 30th of November we will be inviting donations of new, unwrapped toys from staff, families and members of the local community. If you feel that you could make a donation, we invite you to bring an unwrapped toy or toys to the school foyer and place it under the Christmas tree.

Julie Langdon Sands will be the co-ordinator of this project. The toys at our school will be delivered to the Echuca Moama Uniting Church on both the 9th and the 16th of December. Our Student Leaders will travel to the church to help sort the toys with the volunteers.

Last year the project provided gifts for 216 children. This is a great way that we as a Community can give back to the wider local community of Echuca Moama. The toys will be sorted into major and minor toys - families that access this program are able to get one major toy per child and several minors depending on availability. Members of the community will be able to drop the toys off at our school between 10am and 12pm each day from Monday 30th of November until Thursday 17th of December.

This will be promoted through both Facebook pages, newsletters and the Riverine Herald. This is strictly voluntary; we are aware that Christmas can be a difficult time for many.

Class Parties

Class Parties are taking place in the final week of school. Our Foundation students are having their party on Monday, with all other grades having their parties on the Tuesday. The school is subsidising part of the cost for these parties, so we can assist students to attend. Notes have been sent home and permission is needed to attend the excursion.

Class Kris Kringle

Each class will be having a Kris Kringle gift exchange to celebrate the end of the year. It would be wonderful if your child participated in this voluntary process of giving and receiving a gift. If you would like your child to participate, please send along a small, wrapped, unisex gift up to the value of $5.00. Each class will be exchanging gifts in the last week of school.

Please contact your class teacher if you need support in organising a gift.

School Uniform

Just a reminder that students are expected to wear full school uniform when attending school. Students are not permitted to wear black variations of the uniform. We are seeing an increased number of students choosing to wear black pants, jumpers and shorts. Black or white socks are the only coloured socks permitted at school.

School Wide Positive Behaviour

This week's focus area is learning and revising the behaviour expectations of the classroom.

This looks like:

-Letting others learn

-Waiting my turn to speak

-Seeking permission to leave the classroom

-Supporting others with kind words

-Focusing on my learning

-Attempting challenging tasks

-Repairing relationships through respectful conversations

-Arriving on time in the morning and after each break.

Wishing you all a great weekend.

Kind regards,

Rob and Anthea

Happy Birthday