As I’m sure you are all aware by now, I have been given the opportunity to continue in the role of Acting Principal at this wonderful school for term two. I am beyond excited and really looking forward to continuing to work with the students, staff, families and community.

Over the past few weeks our grade 3 and 5 students have completed 60 NAPLAN tests between them! They must be commended on their exceptional behaviour, dedication, and efforts in each session. We had one day with internet issues which threw us a real curve ball, but the students smashed that for six! We had one day that required rescheduling at the last minute due to outages nationwide resulting in structure changes across the school, which everyone dealt with sensationally. I take my hat off to our students for the amazing attitudes they have.

On Friday last week, it was a sea of green at Swansea as we supported the Jack Jumpers with their finals campaign. It was lovely to see so many students and staff in green and playing basketball together throughout the day. Congratulations to our best dressed prize winners: Wyatt, Amelia, Max, Piper, Emmett, Evie, Archie and Emily!

Every Wednesday and Friday morning during our Brekky and a Book program, students are encouraged to engage with each other to read together or have some quiet time to read their personal books. They have the option to grab some hot toast, fresh fruit, or yoghurt to ensure they have full tummies ready for learning. Students are more than welcome to bring books from home if they choose. It has been wonderful to see groups of different grades sitting and reading together, with our older students leading the way. Our grade 6s have also been helping to serve the breakfast each morning. Reading is a valuable skill that is taught in our classrooms through targeted Literacy every morning with our teachers completing further training recently to ensure we are providing optimal learning programs and environments.

On Wednesday April 10^th, we will hold our end of term assembly. We would like to invite families to share in our whole school learning from 8:50am – 9:10am by joining us for our morning fitness/games. At the conclusion of this, our assembly will take place in the hall where everyone is welcome. We hope to have as many families present as possible as our Sports Captains are planning the morning session to be a special one.

Finally, I would like to wish our community a safe and happy Easter. Enjoy the extra time together, make new memories and stay safe. I look forward to seeing everyone back on Wednesday April 3^rd.

Thanks for your continued support,

Kendal King

Principal

What a great time we had this week creating our own Easter baskets and going on an Easter Egg hunt. Out littlest people practiced writing their names, colouring inside the lines, using scissors and building their baskets. We had bright eyes and wide smiles as we found many, many eggs in the playground!

SCIENCE

Life and Living

In Kinder and Prep we have been observing fruits and vegetables and identifying them as parts of plants such as roots, flowers, fruits or leaves.  We investigated beans and found seeds inside! We were surprised that strawberries had so many seeds on the outside of the fruit. We also popped corn seeds and made popcorn which we used for counting to numbers greater than 10.

As part of the new whole school spelling programme, 1-2 students are given a weekly list of words and short passage with the same spelling focus. We are sending the passage home, to practise reading and writing - to build familiarity and confidence when reading and using the passage at school. There is a new spelling rule each week.

In class students write the list daily, separating each word into its separate phonemes. (A 'phoneme' is the smallest unit of spoken language - e.g. 'm' and 'o' and 'th'. Together these three phonemes make up the word 'moth'.) Also, each day they do a different activity to support their spelling focus:

• Mon: draw something from the list,
• Tues: 'rainbow write' the whole list,
• Wed: write a sentence using some of the words, and
• Thurs: word hunt - find words with the weekly spelling rule in a story book.

We may also use the passage for reading, copying and dictation and/or we may play games and read books with our weekly spelling focus.

Here are some photos showing 1-2 carrying out some of these activities.

Pssssttttt... the Easter Bunny is coming!

Soooo... to add a bit of Easter cheer to our class, we decided to create Easter baskets.  This year, the baskets were created with a bit of a twist, as a rather delightful STEAM lesson!

Can you create, using a variety of random materials, an Easter basket that can hold one large egg, three small eggs and a chicken? YES WE CAN!

Phase 1 - Creation

Phase 2 - Testing

Here's what Grade 3/4/5 came up with!  

Happy Easter to all our families.  May you have a safe and restful Easter break.

Visiting the Historical Museum

Written by Chelea, Sophie, Roland, Xavier & Jack

On Friday the 15th of March, the sports captains walked to the Historical Museum in Swansea with Steve and Mr. Smith. As we were walking, Steve was talking about being respectful and listening. 

Our tour guide was Noel. First, he showed us an item and told us to try and guess what it was. It turns out it was a 100 year old (or even older) cockroach catcher. One of our favourite things was in the old classroom where the original school house teacher used to get his Whacking stick and hit the kids that were naughty. 

There were lots of cool things in the museum like a model map of Swansea with things like the old jetty and the Morris Store. There were amazing art collections and traditional Tasmanian First Nation art and items. We learnt a lot about our ancestors and it was very interesting to learn about World War 1 and World War 2.  

We said thank you to Noel for having us and walked back to school for lunch.  

AIS - The Good Village -Problem Solvers Program

On Wednesday students in Grade 3-6 were fortunate to have Zana Evans an Australian Cross Country skier present to them.

The first part of the presentation was about Zana's journey into professional sport, with a focus on solving problems in high-performance sport for Australian athletes. Students learnt about the importance of an athlete’s environment, technology in high-performance sport and the importance of having a supportive community around you to reach your goals. 

The second part of the presentation introduced students to The Good Village AIS Problem Solvers Program. Zana introduced students to the key elements of the program - CHAMPS.  Being a CHAMP is integral to The Good Village Problem Solvers Program, as it lays out exactly what students will have to consider, if they are to solve their problems to the expected high standard:

C - COMMUNITY: High performance athletes need a supportive

community to reach their goals.

H - HEALTH: Top notch health and nutrition is important for high

performance athletes.

A - ATHLETES: High performance athletes are central to this project, so

students will need a deep understanding of them and their

lifestyle and values.

M - MAKERS: This program will need creative thinking and creative design

as students make their solutions.

P - PEOPLE: High performance athletes need the right team of people

around them to help them perform at their best.

S - SUSTAINABILITY: A new athletic environment needs to consider its

impact on the future of the Earth and its people.

Zana then presented a problem to the students, a stimulus for them to plan, design and create a solution for. These problems sit within the wider context of professional sport in Australia, from local community sport right up to global sport competitions.

The problem students will be working on is: 

Over the past few years more than 16,000 Australian sports clubs have had to close down, or are at risk of closing due to reduced participation. The AIS needs your help to design a new high performance sports environment in your community to attract young people to represent Australia in the future.

We look forward to welcoming Zana back in Term 2 for students to present their ideas.

30 Entries from Kinder to Grade 6 

Winners are in

Kinder-Prep Wyatt Hugo 

Grade 1-2 Piper Nichols

Grade 3-4-5 Lachlan Jones

Grade 5-6 Ruby Darke 

OVERALL WINNER LACHLAN JONES 

The School Association had our AGM this week and we were delighted to welcome Josie Dunbabin onto the role of Vice Chair. This means that we now have two Parent Rep positions available on the School Association Committee so please get in touch if you would be interested. It is not onerous – we have one committee meeting a term (you can even Zoom in if needs be) and it is fantastic to be involved in driving the school forward and making sure that our children have the best opportunities to learn and grow.

It was great to catch up with everyone again and we got straight down to business, discussing the plans for the new Community Art Space that we will be creating from the proceeds of last years Art Auction. With such incredible support from the community we raised over $30,000 for the space, so it is exciting to see the plans for it coming together and we hope to be able to share these with you very soon. Mrs King shared with us the School Improvement Plan for 2024 so that we all understand the key areas of focus for the school this year – Reading, Wellbeing and Safeguarding – and Melissa also provided an update on the Queens Jubilee grant and the final stages of the Nature Play space, which are progressing on despite a few plumbing issues causing some delays.

Our next meeting will take place early next term and we will share the date shortly as we would love to have parent involvement in these meetings, whether it’s as a Committee member or simply a member of the School Association – which every parent automatically is!

Many thanks

Alice Laing

Chairperson

On the last day of Term, Friday the 12^th of April all students in Kinder to Grade 6 will be participating in a Swan vs Oyster Sports Day. The carnival will be held at the school oval and commence at 10:00am and conclude at 2:45pm. This day will have a combination of events from athletics carnival and also some fun tabloid activities. The activities will be age appropriate and are designed to challenge students to develop problem solving, decision making, collaboration and communication skills.

Students are asked to please wear their full school sports uniform with their house top (blue or yellow) and suitable shoes for running.

They will also be required to bring with them:

• Hat
• Sunscreen – Please ensure your child applies sunscreen in the morning before coming to school.
• Warm clothes
• Plenty of food and water.

This day coincides with our canteen lunch day with students needing to return their orders and money to the office by Friday 5^th April.

If you have any questions or concerns about the carnival, please don’t hesitate to contact the school office.

Open - Wednesday to Sunday 10.30 – 3pm (including Public Holidays)
Venue - Community Hall (former Council Chambers Building) Vicary St. Triabunna. All proceeds
are donated to community organisations and activities.
Enquiries: Chris 0458560753; Beth 0407571181; Margaret 0438606446; Caroline
0411895067
www.facebook.com/PopUpBookStall; email popupbookstall@hotmail.com

Training in the form of an animated video is available for our volunteers and service providers. They must complete this before working with any children or young people this year.

The training for volunteers and service providers can be found at Safeguarding Training on the DECYP website.