Dear Families,

Mid-year parent/teacher//child learning conversations will take place next week.  These are a great opportunity to find out more about your child’s learning goals, progress and next steps for their learning.  If you haven’t yet booked a conversation time with your child’s teacher, please contact our school office who can make a time for you.  Please know that entry to school will be through the School Office foyer.  Kinder families will have a waiting area at the Launching into Learning Room.  Prep to Year Six families will wait for their conversation in the School Hall where mid-year reports will be collected.  We look forward to seeing you at school next week!

Staffing

School wishes Miss Griffiths-Lee all the best while she is on leave for the last three weeks of this term.   During this time 6GL will be taught by Ms Belderson Monday to Wednesday and Ms Parker on Thursdays and Fridays. 

School welcomed back Mr Slade on Tuesday after he spent several weeks in an Acting Principal role at another school. Thank you to Mrs Harback who took on Mr Slade’s role during this time and to Mrs Chynoweth and Ms Hedington who backfilled Mrs Harback’s role. 

Think U Know sessions

These days students access digital technology as part of their everyday life whether it be for gaming, communicating with friends, finding information or online activity on their phone.  To support students to make safe online choices, each class from Years 3 – 6 will have one session across this week or next presented by Think U Know. 

Think U Know is supported by the Australian Federal Police and presentations are made regularly in schools to raise awareness about online safety.  Our school sessions will be delivered by members of Tas Police.  The aim of the sessions is to guide students to understand and manage online safety challenges, to identify safe or unsafe situations and know when and how to seek help.  

Students who completed sessions this week have been involved in age-appropriate conversations about password safety, posting photos online and tips to help them to not reveal their identity online.   

Did you know the average age of people online is 34 years.  This really surprised our students this week.  Sessions encourage students to really think about what they know about people online and how to keep themselves safe by making choices to engage with friends that they know in person.

Did you know that just over half of parents and carers talk to their children regularly about online safety (Source: Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation).  Think U Know sessions this week have guided students to talk to a trusted adult such as their parent, family member, teacher or police about any online issue that they are worried about and to actively seek help. 

Winter illness

Colder weather has meant that more families, and staff, are experiencing viral illness.  School is working hard to cover classes when teachers are away unwell and has been using relief teachers, other teaching staff and cut and shut of classes when other cover is unavailable.  We are encouraging everyone at school to wash or sanitise hands regularly and cover any coughs or sneezes.  Please support us to protect our school community by keeping students at home if they are showing symptoms of being unwell and seeking regular supports through your GP or call Healthdirect on 1800 022 222 for 24/7 advice. Please notify our school office if your child will be absent from school due to illness.  

Year 6 Leavers

There was great excitement on Wednesday as Year 6 students received their leavers’ tops for 2025.  Students were eager to put their new tops on and have been wearing them with great pride.  The tops have been designed in our school colours and are a special way for students to celebrate their final year of primary school.

Sonya Plunkett-Smith

Principal

Please be advised that the school gates are locked at 9am each day, if you need to leave the school grounds after that time you will need to exit through the school office. If your child is late to school on any day they will need to sign in at the office.  It is the same for early departures the students will need to sign out at the office, the office staff will collect the students for you.

Thank you

On the 27^th and 28^th of May, our Grade 6 students visited the Grote Reber Museum as part of our learning about space.

Grote Reber was a pioneer for space exploration and did a lot of his fieldwork in Bothwell. We got to see the giant radio telescope and data room, explore the museum artefacts and watched some 3D videos all about space. We even tried to contact the aliens but haven’t heard back yet.

What an exciting term it’s been in Grade 1! Our curious learners have been diving into new letter-sound patterns and are becoming more confident readers and writers. It’s been amazing to watch them spot these sounds in books and begin to use them in their own writing!

Over the past fortnight, we’ve been exploring how to retell stories in our own words. Using sequencing prompts,  pictures, and lots of partner talk, students have been learning how to share what happened at the beginning, middle, and end of a story.

A big highlight was our participation in the National Simultaneous Storytime! We listened to Mrs Harback read the delightful book The Truck Cat by Deborah Frenkel. The students loved hearing about Tinka the adventurous cat and enjoyed retelling his journey.

We are very proud of the effort our Grade 1s bring to their learning every day!

Last week, both our division A and B teams travelled to Bayview High School to compete in the Inter-School Cross Country. Both teams ran extremely well displaying some outstanding endurance running. We had many individual and team highlights but the major highlight across both days was the school spirit our competitors showed, the way they never gave up and strived to do their very best for their team in what was an absolutely gruelling event. Congratulations to all students for being selected. 

Results:

• Team 6^th overall out of 20 schools
• Team 7^th overall out of 21 schools

Mr Daft

P.E. Teacher

To start off this Assembly we were treated to the first performance of the school choir for 2025. It was such a beautiful performance of a newly learnt song called ‘Welcome to All People’.

Mr Hasty led the choir on guitar and every student watched closely and sang out enthusiastically, demonstrating how well they had learnt their notes and words.

Three classes shared some excellent work which was enjoyed by the many family members who were able to attend and by the other classes. Congratulations to all students for the high standard of work you shared. 3/4 Brimblecombe showed us all what a great piece of Fluency Reading looks like and encouraged everyone else to join in including the parents which was a lot of fun, thank you Mr B.  Mr Chapman’s 3/4 read their well-written ANZAC Day Poems and Mrs Iyers 3/4 demonstrated skilfully how to improve sentences by adding interesting words to stop them being “Boring!”

Congratulations to all the students who received a Values Certificate from their class teacher. You should be very proud of the way you are approaching your class tasks with a Growth mindset and your interactions with others with Respect.

Congratulations to Hayley and Matai 3/4 B; Aiden and Chelsea 3/4 C; Hamish and Saxon 3/4 H ; Lily and Josh 3/4 I; Max and Ethan 3/4 M.

Finally, the 3 three excited winners of the Golden Tickets for this Assembly were Bella 3/4 C and Blake and Cody 3/4 I.

Thank you to all the parents, carers and grandparents who were able to join us in celebrating our students’ achievements.

This term we have warmly welcomed Ms Patterson to our class. We have enjoyed sharing with her what we have learnt about what makes a good friend. She read us some stories about friends and what activities friends like to do together. Then we drew some pictures about what we like to do with our friends.