I am really looking forward to the Colour Explosion community night tomorrow! All money raised will be going towards our new specialist Media equipment. Please see the Colour Explosion page down further in this newsletter for all the details. There are lots of teachers who have put their hand up to be slimed (including me) so if your child has raised $50 they will go in the draw to have the honor of sliming us!

Save the Date - Education Week Open Night!

2023 Education Week is celebrated between 15th and 19th May with the theme Move, Make, Motivate! We will be hosting an Open Night for all of the Karoo community and prospective families on Wednesday May 17th. The night will showcase the specialist areas as well as highlighting our Teaching and Learning programs and the Wellbeing initiatives across the school. Everyone is welcome so please pop the date in your calendar now and feel free to invite family along!

Staff Spotlight

As part of our continual upgrades to our school website, we are creating a staff profile page with a little blurb about each staff member. This is to build connections for our community with our staff and to get to know a little more about them, I will let you know when the page is live to see all the profiles but in the meantime we will feature a few each week. Please see the Staff Spotlight page to learn more about our Foundation teachers.

Year 5 Camp next week

We are really looking forward to our first camp for 2023. The Year 5 students , staff and parents are heading off to the city for a 3 day stay and will be exploring the city during the day. Thankyou to our staff (teachers and educational support) who are taking time away from their own families to ensure the students have a wonderful time. Another HUGE thank you to the number of parent helpers who are either staying or coming in each day. We certainly couldn't hold this traditional Karoo camp without so much support!

Karoo Parents Association (KPA)

KPA held their first meeting for the year a few weeks ago and it was great to see record numbers of parents attending. We successfully elected the following office bearers:

President: Sarah Elliott

Secretary: Alison Thomason and Amanda Keel.

Thanks to Sarah for taking on another term as President, and Alison and Amanda we really appreciate your commitment to the Secretary role. A HUGE thankyou to Kristy Khouri who has held the role of secretary for the past few years. All of your continued support and work are certainly appreciated! KPA will be seeking support for all parents to ensure they are able to continue to hold the activities and events they have planned. The focus of KPA is to work in cooperation with the Principal and School Council, the association’s aims and objectives are to:

contribute and promote the wellbeing of the school community
encourage the participation of all parents in the life of the school and the education of their children
provide opportunities for parents to build relationships across the school
support the School Council subcommittees (eg. Fundraising, Building and Grounds)

NAPLAN

Congratulations to our Year 3 and 5 students who completed their Writing and Reading NAPLAN tests last week (Maths this week). NAPLAN is a point-in-time assessment that allows parents to see how their child is progressing against national standards in literacy and numeracy. We gently remind parents that NAPLAN tests are one aspect of our assessment and reporting process. They do not replace the extensive, ongoing assessments made by teachers about each student’s performance. Your child’s teacher will have the best insight into your child's educational progress.

Bikes

It is wonderful to see students riding to school; it is almost a rite of passage for local children. It is a fantastic opportunity to increase exercise each day however it is vital that they have safe riding behaviours and always wear a helmet. At times students have been known to ride in the school grounds or around the fence line which causes unnecessary dangers for both the rider as well as the families walking around and getting out of cars. All bikes need to walked out of the school grounds until it is a safe and clear path way without families walking around. This includes no riding along Murrindal drive and Karoo road along the school fence line. Please talk to your children to reinforce the safety aspects of riding.

2024 Foundation enrolments

We are incredibly keen to share our wonderful school with prospective families. We have begun school tours and were thrilled to hold our first Saturday tour for 2023 last week. Our amazing school captains Chelsea, Jack and Josie donned on their uniform on a Saturday and came along to represent our school. We were incredibly proud of how well they represented the student body, talking about the Instructional model, the whole school wellbeing initiatives as well as the specialist programs. If you have a child starting school next year, please come and collect an enrolment form and if you know any families who have kindergarten aged children, please encourage them to book in for a tour at Karoo. It would be wonderful to see our Foundation building filled with 4 classes in 2023!

Begrudgingly, I need to have another surgery on my foot this coming Friday and will be on leave until the end of term. Ms Ashley Kuusela will be Acting Principal in my absence.

I hope you all have a wonderful week and I can't wait to see you all at the Colour Explosion tomorrow night! I have no doubt that I will be getting slimed by some students!

Danielle Heatley

Principal

LOTE (Mandarin)

Year 5 and 6 Celebrating Chinese New Year