Kindergarten

Dear Families, Students and Friends,

We are so grateful for the community support at our recent Welcome BBQ.  It was an overwhelming experience to welcome so many familiar and new people to our beautiful school space.  Thank you for joining us for an afternoon of celebration and connectedness.  For those that were unable to join us, we took a moment to acknowledge the incredible team of people that continue to ensure our school has a strong sense of community and togetherness.  As we launched our School Vision in our beautiful quad space, we paused to acknowledge what a truly special place we have to learn, work and play within. 

We took a moment to recognise the outstanding growth and achievement we are making academically – recently being noted in the top 4 performing schools in the state for our NAPLAN results; an acknowledgement of a lot of hard work from our students, staff and families over a sustained amount of time.  We have so much to be proud of and we are well placed to launch into 2023 ready to embrace all opportunities that are afforded to us.  

Thank you to our families that made it to our open classroom afternoon and for taking the time to unpack the hopes and dreams you have for the learning year ahead.  As always, we appreciate working in partnership with you.

Tomorrow, we present our elected Student Councillors and House Captains for 2023 to our community. 

Congratulations to my extended leadership team: Aimee and Finn (Norfolk House Captains), Lily and Lailah (Latour House Captains) and Councillors; Chase, Lillian, Ethan and Ruby.  I sincerely look forward to working with you all and achieving many great things together. 

I warmly invite and welcome our community to our first assembly for 2023 on Thursday the 2nd of March; please be seated in the GP room for a 2:10pm start.  3/4C, 5/6A and 5/6B look forward to sharing their learning with you.

Next week we look forward to hosting our whole school Athletics Carnival (please see more information from Mr Ellis later in the newsletter).  Families and community are very welcome to come and watch this event.  We hope to have a coffee van available for you to enjoy.

Please take a moment to look at our draft School Vision document; we look forward to working together to achieve our vision:  ‘We are connected to Place, People, Purpose and Possibility'.  We will focus our four years of intentionally developing the student attributes of ‘Creativity, Integrity, Health and Grit'.

Congratulations to our students presented with Respect awards over the past few weeks. Well done!

As a parent of a child attending our school, you automatically become a member of our School Association. We have some parent and staff vacancies for our School Association Committee. If you are intesterested in nominating yourself or a friend, please collect a nomination form from the school office prior to Friday 17th March.

Every school day matters
Welcome back for another school year – we’re excited for what’s ahead! Start the year right by making every school day count. Check out this new video.

There are lots of things you can do to set your child up for success:

Make sure your child goes to school, every day
Going to school every day gives your child every chance to learn and grow, and connect with their mates and teachers. It’s where bright futures start and where they’ll benefit the most.

Get them excited for school
If you show a positive attitude and excitement towards school, your child will pick up on that.
The most common thing we hear from students, of all ages, is that school is where they can:
» spend time with their friends and teachers
» create new and fun experiences
» find their interests
» learn new things
» open up their options – for whatever future they want (whether that’s their dream job or to travel around the world).
Share these positives with your child

Talk to your child about school
Open up a conversation with your child about what’s happening at school. It will help you to better support their interests and confidence in learning. If you show an interest in school, they’ll know that getting an education is important and valued.

Celebrate the milestones
Big and small! Celebrate milestones such as making it through the first day or week of school. And remember: all milestones look different. If it’s a big achievement for your child, it’s important to recognise it.

Set up a time to talk to your child’s teacher or principal
If you’re struggling to get your child to school, help is available. Please talk to us at school about your situation. We’ll support you, in whatever way we can.

Know when to seek help
There is no weakness in admitting you need help. If your child has completely disengaged with school, and not attending at all, there is support to help you. In the first instance, talk to us at school.

For more helpful tips, please check out the Anything can happen - Department of Education, Tasmania.

Last Thursday we had the Questacon Science Circus visit our school. Grade 5/6 Oates have shared from key points from the circus.

• Interesting to watch
• Bubbles: Jaci showed us how to make long lasting bubbles. Students were picked from the crowd to try and catch a giant bubble and someone was even put inside a bubble!
• We learned about the science behind how things fly. From birds and planes to rockets and hot air balloons! Leonard showed us a how a hot air balloon works (using a hair dryer as the hot air source… not fire!)
• We were given the chance to ask questions

Last week in STEM, we had three challenges to complete in teams.

• Create a bridge using large pop-sticks and bulldog clips that could hold at least one book.
• Create 2D shapes out of straws and pipe-cleaners, and extend these to make 3D objects.
• Create the tallest free-standing tower out standard wooden pegs.

We discussed the Design Process: Ask, imagine, plan, create, improve, back to Ask.

Students showed creativity and ingenious testing during their construction process, and worked well together to achieve their results.

This week in STEM, we have started working on laptops to improve our IT skills and learn some applications or coding.

Our younger grades enjoyed exploring the Paint application, using virtual tools such as paint brushes, pens and erasers, as well as the ‘Shapes’ tool.

We learnt how to change the colours, and also how to start a new blank canvas. Luckily, a lot of our laptop devices are touch-screen enabled, which made it a lot easier for students to create their art work.

Our older grades started working with the ‘Scratch’ drag-and-drop programming tool, with a challenge to spell out the letters of their name, and have each letter animate and/or make a sound when clicked.

There were some very creative approaches to this challenge, and students will be able to continue working on these projects in future weeks.

Scratch is a free website provided by MIT. Students are able to create their own account to save their work if they wish, or they can use the shared school account.

Rich Talbot
STEM/ICT Teacher

This year we will be having a joint Early Childhood and Primary athletics carnival. Next Wednesday the 8th March our carnival will be held at the Longford football ground and the Little Athletics area. Students will need to wear their PE uniform, ensure they have a hat and arrive with sunscreen on if possible. A coat in students bags may be handy in case of inclement weather. It is a good idea to pack extra food and drink on this day.

Early Childhood (K-2) Athletics will commence at 10:00am and conclude by lunch time. Students will return to school for lunch.

Primary (3-6) Athletics will commence at 9:30am and conclude at 2:30pm. Primary students can wear a Latour (yellow) or Norfolk (green) coloured t-shirt if they choose.

If your child is unable to participate, please provide a note or explanation.

SPECTATORS ARE ASKED TO STAY OUTSIDE THE PERIMETER OF THE FOOTBALL GROUND OVAL AND THE LITTLE ATHLETICS GROUND.
PLEASE DO NOT ENTER EITHER OF THESE AREAS.

We have introduced parent access to Canvas – our school’s Learning Management System as a replacement for Class Dojo.

To take advantage of the platform’s capacity to also share information between home and school, we will be using Canvas Parent to enhance the way our school communicates with families about the learning progress of their children. Canvas Parent will enable families to contact their child’s teacher/s, keep up to date with the learning occurring in classrooms and receive announcements and reminders.

Supporting information on how to access and log in to Canvas Parent can be accessed below.

• Access Canvas Parent at:  https://canvasobserver.education.tas.gov.au/
• How to log in to Canvas as a parent
• Other support documentation can be found here: https://www.education.tas.gov.au/canvas-parent/

It is important to note that accounts are created using the email we have listed with parent information in our student enrolment system. If you are unable to log-in to Canvas please refer to the Canvas Parent FAQ. We will work with families over the next few weeks to review and update parent/carer email information where required.

We look forward to starting this journey and strengthening our connection with our parent community.

Leadership Staff

Support Staff