Dear Parents, Guardians and Community Members,

I would like to thanks all parents who attended our recent Parent-Teacher meetings. Teachers were really pleased by the high number of appointments and the quality of the conversations about student learning progress and future goals. We value your support in helping your child/ren achieve their learning goals. Parent Teacher conversations are a great opportunity to provide families and students with feedback and to celebrate growth. If you are yet to speak with your child’s teacher, please contact the school early next term to make an appointment.

Premier’s Reading Challenge

Reading is one of our school priorities and many students have elected to participate in this year’s Premier’s Reading Challenge.  The Challenge is not a competition but a way to encourage children to develop a love of reading for life.  No matter what children and young people aspire to do or be, reading and literacy skills will help them get there. Students are encouraged to read as often as possible over the 10 weeks of the challenge. Families can get involved by reading with your child/ren, talking to them about what they are reading and providing lots of encouragement. There are so many benefits for children who read on a regular basis including developing stronger literacy skills, vocabulary and communication.

Students Undertaking Employment During School Hours

From time to time, we become aware of students who may be undertaking employment during school hours.  All Tasmanian students must participate in education and training until they complete Year 12, attain a Certificate 3 or they turn 18 years of age (whichever occurs first). Students should not be undertaking employment and leaving school for this pursuit (even part days) unless this situation has been approved. Whilst students can undertake paid employment outside of school hours, a child Year 10 or younger is not able to work for an employee during school hours, unless an Application for Part-time Attendance or Application for Exemption from Attending School is completed and approved in advance.  If you require further information, please see the link below.

Education and Training Requirements for Year 10 Students

Staffing Update

As is often the case at the end of term, there are some staff changes for Term 3. Our best wishes to Andrew Kelly and Frank Piscitelli who have made the decision to retire are also to Laura Jenkins with her family’s move to the Huon Valley area.  Will Innis will be taking some leave and will be spending the second half of the year in Western Australia with his extended family.  Lisa Bean returns to her SBM role in Term 3 and we welcome Matt Moon and Jenny Hickman to our teaching team and our school community. I know students, staff and families will ensure they feel welcomed, valued, supported and connected.

Safeguarding

Earlier this year, the Department for Education, Children and Young People (DECYP) rolled out Safeguarding Training for staff, volunteers and service providers. This training was compulsory for everyone as part of our ongoing commitment to safeguarding Tasmanian children and young people and prevent them from harm.

The Department has recently released additional advanced Safeguarding Training modules. These are optional and are aimed at anyone who volunteers at a DECYP site, external providers and anyone in the community who wants to learn more about how to keep children and young people safe. If you’d like to build your knowledge in this space, the modules are available on the Department’s Safeguarding page. If you require additional assistance to access the modules, please take a look at the FAQs about technical support and additional assistance, which are also on the Department’s Safeguarding page.

Thank you to students, staff, parents/carers and to the broader community, who have contributed positively to our school community during this term. Many of us would know the phrase, ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ and therefore everyone who contributes something to our school helps in the education of our young people.

I wish all students and staff a restful, enjoyable and safe holiday.  I look forward to the return to school on Monday, 22 July for both students and teaching staff.

Regards

Carolyn Watson

Principal

The Big Freeze comes to St Marys District School!

On Tuesday 25 June, students from Grades 5 to 10, accompanied by several staff members, courageously faced the cold weather and icy buckets of water! The event sparked shrieks of excitement from participants and laughter from our audience. All of this enthusiasm was for a noble cause - raising funds for MND research.

We are immensely proud of our participants and our SLB for organizing this successful event, raising over $250 for MND research!

As part of the DECYP Reading Priority 2024, St Marys District School is working systematically and with continued focus to ensure that over time, ‘Every young Tasmanian should have the reading skills they need for life when they leave our school system’.

As part of this initiative, we are committed to giving children the best foundation for reading throughout our English programs, implementing both a structured and evidence-based approach to teaching reading, supporting those who need extra help. Fluency is an important element in reading as it acts as a bridge between automatic word reading and comprehension, providing an important link between reading words quickly and effortlessly, supporting both understanding and comprehension.

In Term 3 2024 all Grade 2-10 students will take part in an Oral Reading Fluency Test (ORF).  This standardised test is individually administered, measuring a student’s ability to read words in a text, with accuracy and fluency.  Following on from our testing, teachers and teaching assistants will look forward to analysing the data so as to best support all readers at St Marys District School to be accurate, fluent and confident readers.

I took the opportunity at our recent assembly to celebrate the incredible achievements of our secondary students this term and their determination and resilience.

Over the past few weeks, we have settled into our new classes – while initially apprehensive about this change these classes have settled into their new routines. The feedback from many students and teachers is about how well students have settled into these new groups. I commend the way that our students have adapted to this change.

I also spoke to students about the way that they go about supporting each other. It is wonderful to see the kindness and understanding that our students consistently display – whether here at school, Winter Sports or when they are representing our school on excursions.

Year 10 Transition

Our Year 10's have started planning for their transition to college. We recently visited both Newstead College and Launceston College to get a taste of what subjects are offered and what life at college looks like.

There is a real buzz amongst students as they plan for next year. It has been good for students to see what they are aiming for and seeking additional feedback from their teachers on how to achieve the prerequisite scores for the subjects they plan to do. Next term we will continue to work with Newstead College, Launceston College, as well as with AMC and UTAS to plan for our transition.

If you would like to discuss your child’s progress in the lead up to Year 11, please contact the school.

Short Courses

Our Student Leaders have taken on the responsibility for planning and leading our Short Courses this term. This has been received well by our students who have thoroughly enjoyed what the Student Leaders have put together. Our last round of courses included: Fishing at Scamander, Beach Walking at Scamander, Lego Mastermind Challenge, Netball, and Gaming. We look forward to seeing what they plan for next term!

Year 9 Camp

We are busily preparing for our Year 9 Camp to Hobart which will run at the start of Term 4. This will be a wonderful opportunity for our Year 9s to participate in some team building and work around civics and citizenship, art and culture and outdoor education.

Permission forms will go home early next term.

Stephen Smith
Assistant Principal

A very busy term in Kinder with the term just flying by, its hard to believe we are nearly halfway through the school year. In the last half of the term we have been exploring the popular children’s book “Wombat Stew” written by Marcia Vaughan. The story shows the value of true friendship, courage and intelligence, the story encourages the children to join in with the common rhyming verses, with some of the children knowing the words from memory. We have been engaging in many learning experiences,

• As a class looking through the book finding all the words beginning with w, b and s
• Exploring all the rhyming words in the book
• Discussing what we would put in a stew if we were to make one, with the children coming up with some very interesting ingredients, writing these in our writing books
• We then came up with a recipe of what we would put in a stew if we were going to eat it.   We then made this one Friday and ate with mashed potatoes for lunch
• Painted our favourite animal from the story
• Engaged in play with the learning tray acting out the story
• Watching the story on the interactive screen
• Looking at the print on the food cans, asking the children “How do we know what is in the cans?

 We have also been discussing ‘Community Helpers – people who help us”, learning that they are not just Police, Doctors, Nurses, and Fire Officers but in fact so many more for example farmers, people working in shops, hairdressers just to name a few. The children then realised that a lot of our parents are community helpers. We have been reading lots of books about community helpers. We had the Flying Doctors in for a visit and Aria’s Mum talked to us at pick up one afternoon about being a Nurse, we are hoping to get a couple more visitors into visit us. Experiences included.

• “When I grow up I want to be?”
• Painting community vehicles
• Box work construction of community vehicles
• Matching games and worksheets
• Socio-dramatic play area – Kinder Medical Centre”

 Literacy experiences we have been exploring at group times,

• Letters and sounds
• Nonsense words
• Differentiating numbers and letters
• Environmental print
• Tracing and writing our names and concentrating on the letter formations
• Stories on the interactive screen
• Fortnightly nursery rhymes and puppets
• Letter formations

Fine Motor skills

• Playdough
• Goop
• String painting
• Balloon painting
• Ball painting
• Rip and tear collage
• Puzzles
• Tracing over the letters of our names

We have been investigating the mathematical concepts of smallest to biggest, measuring ourselves to see who the smallest to tallest and measurement weighing natural objects.

We have been visiting the farm weekly and have been helping Craig feed the calves, chooks and feeding juicy apples to the big cows. At our last visit we planted sun flowers and we are very excited to be able to watch these grow. We love our visits to the farm and thank Craig for allowing this to happen.

Bitlink is a technology education company based in Launceston, Tasmania. For the last decade, the Bitlink team have been dedicated to helping young people learn more about technology. St Marys District School hosted a half day session with all our Year 7 students exploring STEM concepts with a focus on the design process and computer technology sensors and micro bits. The day exposed all students to how and why the technology component within STEM is an important  aspect now and  to our future world. 

We celebrated our fantastic achievements for Term 2 at our recent secondary assembly on Tuesday 25 June, where we proudly introduced the new DECYP values!  

It was a momentous occasion as we recognised and awarded values certificates to deserving individuals, honouring their embodiment of our core principles. The atmosphere was electric with enthusiasm and pride as students from Grades 7 to 10 gathered to commemorate their achievements and commitment to these values.  

 Values Certificate Recipients: 

Responsibility: Sienna M, Georgia, Rob, Isla, Cortney and Helayna. 

Courage: Nina, Sophie, Mieka, Maddison, Lachie W, Ava H, Daniel and Senh.  

Growth: Nina, Charli, Indi, Sahara, Maddison, Georgia, Sarah and Mathew.  

Respect: Lily, Ellie W, Kaden, Wally, Harriet and Mikayla.  

Connection: Claire, Reagan, Ping, Lachlan B, Bailey, Rowan, Byron W, Lachie W and Helayna.  

This term we have ventured out to try and catch some of the famous East Coast fish as part of our Short Course program.

Scamander River Mouth was our location. All students were very keen to try their luck and on our first trip 2 fish were landed.  Second trip we had 4 fish landed with Reuben W  landing a good size Bream. All fish were “catch and release” . Connor F was very enthusiastic about giving a fish a kiss before releasing it back to the river.

 Dave Scolyer

Over the course of eight weeks a group of Grade 7-10 student were involved in a mountain biking course.  Every Monday the students, supported by our Youth Worker, Peter, Caitlin from YCNECT and Simon and Lync from Shredlys, participated in on-site training at the St Helens mountain bike facility.

During the eight weeks the student progressed through a series of different tracks, steadily building their skills, confidence and ability to master the mountainous terrain on their bikes. All the students thoroughly enjoyed this opportunity, each exploring new opportunities and accepting challenges as they arose, taking on the courage needed to master some large mountains traverses both uphill and down.

Many thanks to the providers for offering this program to St Marys District School students, it was enjoyable and loads of fun.

Susan Scolyer

QTC

NAIDOC Week is held annually in the first week of July (Sunday to Sunday). It’s a week dedicated to celebrating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people – the richness of our cultures, the depth of our stories, and the strength of our spirit.

NAIDOC Week is also an opportunity for the wider community to centre and learn from First Nations people and the oldest, continuing cultures in the world. The 2024 NAIDOC theme is: Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud.

Students in Prep/1 read the story ‘Somebody's Land’ By Adam Goodes, Ellie Laing and David Hardy. We learnt about story telling through Aboriginal symbols. Students created their own stories through symbols.

These notices have been sent home to parents in the last fortnight.  If you did not receive one and would like to receive a copy of the notice, please contact the school office on 63 723 900.

PRIMARY