Hello families,

I hope you and your family have had a terrific September school holiday break and are keen for the return of school. I wanted to preview some of the goings-on across term 4 in preparation for a busy 11 weeks. Our continued focus across the year has been on orderly and rigorous classrooms with high quality teaching and learning. This remains a constant until our last assembly of term, and in the meantime there is lots of other exciting events occurring.

Senior School

Its set to be a particularly busy term In the Senior School. Both the ¾ and ⅚ cohorts have there school camp. 3/4s are heading this week to Camp Wyuna in Queenscliff. Our 4/5/6 cohort attend Camp Kangaroobie later in the term.

Our year 6 students start to cast their mind to secondary school. They’ll be busy with a transition day, writing graduation speeches and collating their yearbook. Whilst it’s an exciting time for them to look forward it's also a special time for them to ‘soak up’ the last term of their primary school days.

For our year 5’s they’ll have the opportunity to begin work designing their year 6 top for 2023 and apply for leadership positions.

Wheels Wednesday will be back for interested Senior School students. It is such a fun way to spend a lunchtime each week riding down at the bike track. Hopefully the wet weather eases off and we can head down there each and every week!

Transition

Across the school we’ll conduct a transition program for 2023. This will involve a ‘step up’ day for all students, as well as a series of transition sessions for our incoming Foundation students. Late in the term there will be other transition activities that occur such as transition lunches to help prepare students for 2023.

Calm and Orderly Classrooms

As we return to school teachers will start off the term re-stablishing the routines and expectations in class that make classrooms inclusive, predictable and conducive to learning. This includes our daily morning messages as well as other habits like our end of the day RESET time. A mantra we established throughout Term 3 was the notion of ‘Just Do It’, which despite not being a paid endorsement, sums up nicely what we expect from students with regard to behavioural expectations at school. 'If you know a routine or behaviour is expected, or, you are asked to do something…. Just do it!’ We put a lot of time in teaching behaviour and expectations to support this but learners with the ‘just do it’ mindset are able to attend to their learning in a productive manner.

Hats

With the commencement of Term 4 comes the requirement for students to wear broad brimmed hats. At the end of last term all students were reminded of this, and, reminded that hats must be of good condition. An important aspect of our uniform policy is that uniform is to be of good quality and worn with pride. Hats that have drawing or writing on them, or have been torn or cut with scissors aren’t acceptable uniform and will need to be replaced. If any families need help with providing a hat for their child they can make contact with me for assistance. We don’t want any students missing out on outdoor play and learning but we do want our uniform worn with pride.

Teesdale PS Hybrid Hat | Teesdale Primary School | Noone

Community Events

There are two major community events that run this term that the school has strong involvement in. The first is the Lantern Parade on Saturday November 12th. This is a wonderful event students have the opportunity to carry a lantern in as part of the parade from school to Turtle Bend.

The second is the Twilight Market on December 16th. Mrs Clarke will work with students in Performing Arts to practice some Christmas Carols that students will perform on the night. This coincides with the last night of school term for 2022 and is a fantastic community event to finish the year on!

Student Achievements

To finish off the newsletter I wanted to highlight two sporting successes of students. Congratulations to Lachie Flett who has been competing in the National Inline Hockey Championships for Victoria and Ryder Plumb who competed in the National Motocross Championships in Rockhampton. Well done boys on your achievements!

Have a great rest of the holidays everyone, and bye for now!

The Teesdale Times

Issue 15 · 30 Sep 2022

In this issue