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Dear Families,
Last week we welcomed many families into school to enjoy our Year 5-6 Assembly or to watch our Year 3 – 6 Athletics Carnival on Friday. Both these events had high levels of student participation, a sense of fun and pride in achievements, and a real sense of community. Some photos from our carnival have been included in today’s newsletter. Well done to all students who entered events and had a go at doing their best on the day. It was great to see students challenge themselves. Throughout the day it was great to hear our sports house chants sounding out as competitors came around to the finish line and to see such terrific support being provided by our students for their peers. Thank you to Mr Daft for organising this event.
Our Year 5-6 Assembly provided the opportunity to announce and celebrate our House Captains and Vice Captains for 2024 as well as our Student Council Representatives. Congratulations to the following students on being elected to these roles of responsibility. We wish you well as you take on your leadership positions this year.
We had the pleasure last week of welcoming Mrs Megan Bennell to our 5-6 Assembly. Megan will be the first principal of Brighton High School. She shared details with students and families at our assembly about how to express interest in enrolling in Brighton High and when further information about what will be available will be released. To support our Year 6 students to transition to Brighton High in 2025, Megan will be in our school on Thursdays from the beginning of Term 2. She is keen to meet with families on these days to discuss any questions that you have about Brighton High.
NAPLAN Years 3 and 5
Students in Years 3 and 5 this week commenced the National Assessment Program in Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). Students will sit several tests this week and into next to check how well they are learning the essential skills of reading, writing and numeracy. NAPLAN is just one aspect of a school’s assessment and reporting process. It does not replace ongoing assessments made by teachers about student performance, but it can provide teachers with additional information about students’ educational progress.
NAPLAN is not marked at school, and, results will be returned to us as soon as possible. NAPLAN results will provide teachers with information that will support them to plan further learning opportunities in literacy and numeracy for each student. Results will be available to families to show how your child is progressing against national standards.
School Photo Reminder
School photos will be taken next week by a professional photographer. If you would like to order photos, please remember that this needs to be done online. Students will need to be in full school uniform. Please see further details in today’s newsletter or contact our School Office for more information on 62688200.
Bikes and Scooters
The warm weather has seen many students riding their bikes and scooters to and from school. This is a great way to get some extra physical activity in the day, develop some independence and develop an understanding of road safety. While we encourage students to ride to school and be active, we do have some clear expectations about bike and scooter use once through the school gate. For the safety of themselves and others, students must hop off their bike or scooter once they have entered through the school gate and walk it to the parking area provided in the courtyard. At the end of the day, they must walk their bike or scooter to the school gate. This makes sure that at peak time of entry and exit to school that everyone can be safe. If a child does not walk their bike or scooter, they will be given a reminder. On the second occasion, a call will be made home to parents/carers to advise that the bike or scooter was not used appropriately. If a further occasion happens where the bike or scooter is not used properly, it will need to remain at home for a set period of time. Please discuss this with your child if they ride to and from school. It is very much to support safety at the busiest times of our school day. We also ask that you make sure that your child has a helmet for riding to and from school. These can be kept in your child’s classroom during the day.
Use of School Grounds
School encourages the use of our grounds by families who want to come in and use our equipment or play sport together. Unfortunately, we are currently having other after hours visitors who are not using our school space safely or respectfully. This has included motorized bike riders and youths climbing on our school roof. If you are onsite at the end of the day or on the weekend, please support our students by reporting any unsafe use of our school grounds to Tasmania Police on 131444 or by calling 000 in an emergency. Thanks to those families who have checked in with me recently or made reports to police to help keep our grounds safe for our students. Thanks in advance for your ongoing support.
School Business Manager
We welcome Stacey Jenkins to our school as our Acting School Business Manager. Stacey will be in this position while Sharon Sutczak is on leave.
Attendance
Did you know that if your child misses one day a fortnight then your child can miss up to a year and half of their education between Kindergarten and Year 12? Regular attendance at school helps students stay connected with friends, and teachers and supports them to be in class to keep up with new learning and to build on previous learning. Everyday matters when it comes to supporting your child to keep in touch with others and with their learning. The Department of Education, Children and Young People has provided some great ideas for families to assist in helping children to turn up to school. To read about these ideas, please go to:
Information for parents - Anything can happen
Remember that you can discuss your child’s attendance with their class teacher or with their Sector Head. Sector Heads are:
Kinder-Prep | Mrs Alison Norris |
Years 1 – 2 | Mrs Belinda Harback |
Years 3 – 4 | Mrs Dorothy Raymond |
Years 5 -6 | Mr Ben Slade |
School Social Workers
Next Tuesday we recognise World Social Workers Day – and we celebrate 50 years of social workers in schools. This year at Brighton we are fortunate to have two school social workers: Hannah and Jess. Both Hannah and Jess strive to support students to achieve their potential in all aspects of academic and personal learning at school. They are available to support many aspects of student wellbeing and to link to further supports. Families can request social worker support for their child by contacting Mrs Bannerman who co-ordinates our student support. Thank you to Hannah and Jess for all the work you do for our students and their families!
Hannah Holmes & Jess Jackson
Emergency Drills
Over the next two weeks, we will practicing our emergency drills at school. This will include fire and lock down drills. Rehearsing the routines required in an emergency helps staff and students to be familiar with what to do and how to do it in these situations, and, to be more prepared so they can respond quickly. If you have any queries about this, please contact me through the School Office.
Safegarding Training for Volunteers
All schools are responsible to ensure that our students are known, safe, well and learning. To support this, all staff complete training to support safeguarding children. This means training in what to do if they believe a child or young person is being harmed and to support staff to know what to do to prevent this from happening. It also supports staff to know what their reporting requirements are in these instances.
In 2024, all parents/carers coming into school as volunteers for parent help, assisting on excursions, helping out with School Association activities or supporting school events will be required to complete safeguarding training online. This includes watching a 15 minute video and printing a certificate to show your training is done. You then provide this certificate to the School Office before volunteering.
To access training, please use this QR code:
SCHOOL ASSOCIATION NEWS
Annual General Meeting: 4.30pm next Monday in our Admin Block
Our Brighton Primary School Association will hold their Annual General Meeting next Monday at 4.30pm. You are warmly invited to attend this meeting and to find out more about what has happened across the 2023 school year. This meeting will also confirm our 2024 School Association Committee, and, elect Committee office bearers for this year.
A general meeting will follow the Annual General Meeting.
Easter Raffle
Thank you to families for sending along an Easter egg or chocolate as a donation on the free dress day held this week. The donated items will be packaged up for our Easter Raffle. Please know that extra tickets are available from the School Office. All tickets need to be returned by 25th March. Our Easter Raffle will be drawn on the 26th March and prize winners will be notified before we break for Easter.
Election Day BBQ Fundraiser – We need your help
Our School Association need volunteers who can come in and help with selling and serving food at our BBQ Fundraiser on Election Day, Saturday 23 March. The BBQ will be held outside our Out of School Hours Care building. We will offer a sausage sizzle as well as egg and bacon rolls. We would love to hear from you if you can spare half an hour, an hour or longer to come in and help out on the BBQ team. Money raised from the BBQ will go back into supporting our students to have a positive environment at school and we seek your help in raising funds at this event. Please let the School Office know on 62688200 before next Wednesday if you are able to lend a hand at the BBQ and raise funds to support our students.
Sonya Plunkett-Smith
Acting Principal
Preps, year 1s and 2s Celebrated our learning through our first sector assembly this week.
We celebrated learning from 1 Cattarruzza with their dioramas and 2 Stacey with their gratitude trees. Prep Goldsmith sang us two songs if your happy and you know it and open shut them.
We congratulated our values certificate winners and the wonderful work that they are doing in our classrooms.
Preps have written some lovely reflections on their first assembly.
24 Carrot Gardens Carnival – Wednesday 6th March 2024
Last Wednesday all 107 of our Grade 3 and 4 students participated in a smorgasbord of music, dancing, vegetable craft, eating and story-telling. The students who are lucky to be part of the 24 Carrot Kitchen/Garden Program were entertained on the MONA lawns by roving Terrapin Puppets, Jazz Musicians and stilt walkers. The main stage had musicians, singers and dancers who were teaching moves for everyone to join in. Well done to Maddie (4H) and Harper (4H) for volunteering to be Dance Captains for Brighton Primary, joining Dance captains from all the other schools and being incredibly brave to ad lib dance moves in front of an audience of over 1000. Maddie and Harper had to make up moves and everyone else had to copy and dance along with them. They were great! The 24 Carrot Garden Carnivals have been going for 10 years now and the theme for the Carnival this year was ‘Plants are Energy’. A feature of the day was the vegetable necklace making. Our students were astounded to see the hundreds of carrots, snow peas, broccoli, cauliflower, capsicums, mushrooms and many more different vegetables prepared by MONA staff with drilled holes ready to be threaded onto string. The vegetables were set out on long tables, and MONA staff dressed as vegetables, served, explained what the vegetables were and encouraged students to choose some to try. Students then took their bowl of vegetables and threaded them into decorative necklaces. Morning Tea and Lunch prepared by MONA was also a feature with so much to go around some students had two or even three beautiful salad rolls or home baked biscuits. The time and effort put into giving our students such a rich cultural, culinary, artistic and musical experience is amazing. We were lucky to have perfect weather, although a tad hot which caused one of the puppets to appear with a hose at one stage to give the students a cooling off!! The Carnivals are an opportunity for all the 24 Carrot Kitchen Garden Schools (there are 25 across Tasmania now) to come together and inspire our children to keep learning about sustainable living and developing life-long skills and knowledge about growing food from seed and creating delicious and healthy meals. Our school is very lucky to have these opportunities.
Student Reflection by H.H. 4T
We went to 24 Carrots Carnival. We got to listen to music and make food necklaces. We got to listen to a jazz band. There were brass instruments and a drum. When we got there a human dressed up, someone with a bubble gun and a dressed-up mother nature told us about what we would be doing for the day. We had dance captains. The dance captains got to dance on stage and the other people copied the dance moves or watched it. You could listen to music on stage. They gave us a lot of food to eat to give us energy because it is something we were celebrating. We were celebrating 24 Carrots. Overall, I enjoyed it, it was very fun.
Dorothy Raymond
Assistant Principal
Hi everyone, I am Kate Astley, your new School Chaplain for this year. I am so excited to have this opportunity to work at Brighton Primary School; I have heard so many good things about this school. I will work Monday to Wednesday and run breakfast club those mornings. As a chaplain, I am here to support the school community in whatever way is required, and some ways will include class visits and supporting students' well-being by being open to chats.
When I am not at work, I am hopefully studying at UTAS to become a teacher in the future. I also love taking my dog for a walk and reading books in my spare time. I love to have conversations with everyone, so if you want to find me and have a chat, you are very welcome.
I am looking forward to getting to know this wonderful community and am excited to be your chaplain this year!
I would like to congratulate all our staff and students for participating in what I think was our best carnival for many years. The day was full of highlights including, high participation, outstanding sportsmanship, dance offs and of course many fantastic athletic performances. It was great to see our students embracing the team spirit with lots of colour and a ‘have a go’ attitude. After completing the final events during the week I am pleased to announce the final results:
1st Wellington 880
2nd Jordan 779
3rd Dromedary 698
4th Derwent 608
Athletics Champions:
Grade 6: Aidan, Lacy & Indy
Grade 5: Dane & Sky
Grade 4: Dyson & Lillian
Grade 3: Raphael & Evie
Well done and congratulations again to everyone on a wonderful day. A big thank you to Mrs Pape for her hard work all day as our announcer and music guru. Thank you also to all our volunteers who helped with jobs on the day, we simply can not run days like this without your support.
Goodluck to selected students who will be going on to represent our school at upcoming interschool carnivals on the following dates:
- Team Wednesday 3rd April (1st day back from Easter holidays)
- Team Wednesday 27th March
Mr Daft
P.E. Teacher
Reminder: All family photo orders need to be in by Sunday 17th March at 3pm. There no late orders accepted.
Family/Sibling Photos, will be taken from 8:15am on Wednesday and Friday.
Thank you
Monday 18th March | AGM Meeting |
Wednesday 20th March | School Photos |
Thursday 21st March | School Photos |
Wednesday 27th March | B Team Athletics |
Friday 29th March | Good Friday (Public Holiday) |
Monday 1st April | Easter Monday (Public Holiday) |
Tuesday 2nd April | Easter Tuesday (Public Holiday) |
Wednesday 3rd April | A Team Athletics |
Friday 12th April | Students Last Day of Term 1 |