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Dear Families,
Thank You
Thank you for your tremendous support, dedication and commitment to staying connected to our school and staff as we begin Term 2 in very unique circumstances. We have been inundated with messages from many of you offering support and suggestions for how we best manage this new way of learning this term. I personally wish to thank you for your phone calls, Canvas and Facebook messages. The staff are listening to your feedback and working on ways to tweak our ‘Learning from Home’ work to better support all families to succeed in this time of new challenge and opportunity. As anticipated, we experienced some bumps as we went live on the Tuesday of Week 1 and we recognise there will be more challenges as we move into the Term. Firstly, thank you for your patience when these bumps occur. We are fortunate that we have Mr Guy providing lots of support regarding Canvas to our staff and families, and he is available most days via phone if you are experiencing a Canvas issue. If you have a device concern, please call our admin team, John and Maree and they can talk you through some possible options to resolve your issue.
The Premiers Message
We continue to follow the directive of the Government and the Department of Education. ‘If our children can learn from home, this is the best place for them to be’ – Peter Gutwein, Premier of Tasmania.
By staying at home, we are helping to limit the amount of people moving in our community, which in turn is keeping our school, and wider community as safe as possible.
Keeping in Touch
Please keep in touch with our school Facebook page wherever possible. Each Friday, Senior Staff will provide a video message and ongoing updates will be added throughout the week. If you are not able to access the school Facebook page please ensure the office is aware. Please do not hesitate to call the school anytime – if you have questions, queries, feedback, or you just want to connect with a particular staff member. Staying connected is a priority for us, so please do not hesitate to do so.
Learning at Home
Our teachers have worked incredibly hard to prepare the ‘Learning at Home’ online learning curriculum. We recommend that students in K-2 spend approximately 2 hours on their learning each day (3 days for Kinder) and a maximum of 3 hours per day for our Grade 3-6 students. Each day teachers upload a daily video and this will help guide your learning day. Our cycles of learning go for three weeks. During this three week cycle we ask families to support their child with accessing the Grid tasks, paying particular attention to the tasks on the Grid with a STAR. These tasks are the ones we ask students to submit when finished for feedback from your teacher. The reading cycles are changed and updated weekly – all other learning Grid tasks are three weekly. Teachers may feedback on other work submitted, but not always and this will be the exception when this occurs.
Don’t forget to check out our Music, PE and Pastoral Care Canvas pages which are addition to our English, Maths and Inquiry Grids. Teachers will also attempt to contact you all by phone regularly to check in and talk with you about you and your childs wellbeing and to answer any learning questions you may have. Thank you to all families that responded to our online survey in Week 1. Your feedback has clearly guided new work and we aim to include more instructional videos in Cycle 2 work to further support learning from home. In future weeks we hope to also introduce some Zoom meetings with students. More information will be available regarding Zoom conferences in coming weeks.
Take Home Packs
If your child has accessed a ‘Take Home Learning Pack,’ the tasks your child will be doing are the same as those of their peers online. We recognise that for Cycle 2, these packs may need to provide some more information outlining the learning expectations and requirements, we will include this information in the Cycle 2 packs. If your child is working from a learning pack, we suggest that the tasks that have a STAR are photographed and sent to longford.primary@education.tas.gov.au or your childs teacher. If you do not have access to the internet, please return your hardcopy of stared tasks in your take home pack envelope when you collect your Cycle 2 learning pack.
Students On Site
Students attending school will continue to be supervised to complete their ‘online learning’ work for 2 -3 hours per day. Students will then be offered ongoing supervision for the remainder of the time. It is important that I reiterate to you, that students working from home are in no way disadvantaged from those that are attending. Students are not having ‘face to face’ lessons delivered to them or provided with extra intervention, and are following the same learning plan as those learning at home. Students on site will continue to be supervised by a range of teachers each day. Students are currently working in combined groupings, K/P, 1/2, 3/4 and 5/6. If numbers in one group are large on any given day, we will ask students to be supervised in a classroom with lesser students – this can vary day to day.
Cycle 2 Packs
We have taken your feedback on board regarding at home learning packs. We have made a decision to now make packs for all families that wish to have them as a support to the work you are doing online. We will have packs available for collection for all families wishing to pick up a pack on Friday the 15th of May.
K-2 packs can be collected from 9:00-11:00am and grades 3-6 packs are available from 11:00am-1:00pm. If you have children across both age groups, please feel free to collect all packs in one visit. If these times are not suitable for you please contact the office for an alternate arrangement. You do not need to call to arrange a pack collection – these are available for any family that wishes to collect a pack.
24 Hours Notice Required for Changes
If your circumstances change and your child will no longer need to be attending site for supervision, or will need to be supervised at school on particular days, please keep the office updated with all changes. We ask that you allow 24 hours notice before implementing changes so that correct organisation and supervision can be prepared.
Drop Off / Pick Up Protocols
Our priority is to keep all people on site as safe as possible. We will continue to ask all families to drop off / pick up from the Catherine Street entrance next to the GP room. Thank you to all families for following our advice regarding not entering school and following the new protocols we have in place regarding arriving or departing school in a safe and timed way.
Wellbeing Messages
- You are not your child’s teacher, you are their parent and as such the wellbeing of your family is your top priority
- Do what learning is manageable for you in your situation
- Maximum learning time is just that, a maximum – each child will be able to learn for different periods of time and at different times of the day
- If something isn’t working or doesn’t make sense to you, ask someone…use the Help Button on the Canvas course front page, phone the school, email your child’s teacher through the inbox feature, ask on the school Facebook page – chances are someone else has had the same issue
- If all else fails, read a book with your child, ask them questions about a game they have played, a movie they have watched, or a person they know, listen to music or do a drawing. Some of the best learning for your child includes purposeful household activities like gardening, cooking, painting, building, cleaning and shopping
- Remember they also need time just to play and have fun
Keeping Our Site Safe
We will continue to ask students to wash hands on entering and exiting the classroom, and after transitioning between spaces and activities. Mr Roberts will continue to disinfect all play spaces each day and all play equipment will be sanitised after playtimes. If your child is experiencing any cold or flu like symptoms, or feeling at all unwell, we ask that you please keep them home until there are asymptomatic.
Absence
Regardless of how your child is learning this term, if they are unwell and unable to attend to their learning, please contact Maree in the office. Staff are monitoring Canvas attendance each day and absence online is recorded. Please keep us up to date if your child is unable to attend to work due to illness.
What Has Been Happening at School
Have you seen the pictures of our Quadrangle? Mr Roberts has worked incredibly hard in the holidays to remove the brick bed in the center of our space as we begin our Quadrangle upgrade project. The space looks incredible and we can’t wait to use the space for daily briefings when we all get together again in the future.
Autumn Colours
Staff Thanks
Finally, a public thank you to the staff of Longford Primary School – I am incredibly proud of the work they have put into making Learning at Home a success for all. Staff have been positive, optimistic and solution focused, and I sincerely thank them for the incredible amount of work and dedicated effort they have put into our new way of teaching and learning over recent weeks. To the Admin Team, TA Team and EFA Team- we couldn’t function without your ongoing help and support and I sincerely appreciate your ongoing efforts to ensure everyone in our school community is supported and safe.
Your health and wellbeing is incredibly important to us – if you need support or to talk with any of us, please reach out, we are here to help any way we can.
Stay healthy and safe and remember to take care of each other.
Carolyn Sutton
Principal
Canvas and COVID-19 Information
Parent access to Canvas coming soon
The ITS division within the Department of Education have been working with the developer of Canvas, to allow parents to access and further support their child's learning at home.
Within the next 3 to 4 weeks the Department of Education will hopefully be able to provide an automated process to enable parents to login as a Parent Observer role in Canvas, based on parent information within Edupoint (School Software). The obvious benefit of this is that parents will then be able to view the work of their child/ren, as well as the feedback that has been provided by teachers.
Further advice will be provided in the coming weeks to keep you informed.
Reminder – the following are on hold until further notice:
- LIL Groups
- Assemblies
- Canteen
- Library
- Banking
- School Association AGM
- Fundraising activities
Breakfast Club
Our Breakfast Club is still operating with Grab and Go packs on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Easter Raffle
Thank you to all that purchased tickets in our Easter raffle. Congratulations to the winners:
Kinder | Georgia and June |
Prep/1 CV | Bibi |
Prep/1 K | Lachlan |
Prep/1 R | Lilly |
1/2 B | Kathy Graham |
2 MD | Matilda |
3 O | Levi |
4/5 FB | Brianna |
5/6 N | Haile |
5/6 S | Dejenn |
Student Leaders - We need you!
Are you a member of the SRC, Daily Fitness, Reading Ambassadors or Environmental Warriors? We need your help…
Think of a way that you can lead from home and send it to jacinta.doran@education.tas.gov.au.
It might be a video of you completing a PE task or reading a book, maybe some tips for how to keep environmentally aware at home or you might want to think of ways to uplift our community.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Miss Doran
A digital catalogue is available to access and purchase from Issue 3. The link to view the catalogue is https://scholastic.com.au/book-club/virtual-catalogue-1/
Orders for this issue close on the 18th May.
The Northern Midlands Council are holding a Mothers Day Gift or Card Competition. Please see the attached flyer.
2020
Term 1 |
Tuesday 4th February Professional Learning/Student Free Day Wednesday 5th February to Thursday 9th April Thursday 9th April Moderation Day/Student Free Day Easter: Friday 10th April to Monday 13th April |
Term 2 |
Monday 27th April to Friday 3rd July |
Term 3 |
Monday 20th July to Friday 25th September Monday 20th July Professional Learning/Student Free Day |
Term 4 |
Monday 12th October to Thursday 17th December Friday 30th October Professional Learning/Student Free Day |
Leadership Staff
Principal | Mrs Carolyn Sutton |
AST | Miss Jacinta Doran |
AST | Mrs Jen Copeland |
AST | Mrs Mel Biffin |
Support Staff
Chaplain | Mrs Bec Cameron | Tuesday, Friday |
Psychologist | Mrs Allison Maloney | Tuesday |
School Nurse | Miss Chanelle McCormack | Alternate Wednesday/Friday |
Social Worker | Mrs Shelley Lawes | Thursday |
Speech Pathologist | Miss Carla Dinale | Monday, Tuesday |