Term 4 – Week 4 – 6th November 2019

Principal’s Message Last Thursday, our school undertook an External Validation of all our teaching, learning and administrative practices at the school. We were required to present a 70 page document outlining our processes at the school, with supporting evidence and annotations. School practices are judged against the School Excellence Framework, which consists of 51 themes that the school must address. The preparation of our submission has taken many, many weeks of work and I would like to congratulate all the staff at the school on a job well done! In fact, so well done that the panel will be offering our submission to the High Performance Sector of the Department of Education to use as an exemplar for other schools on best practice. That is great recognition for our school and our staff. We should all feel very proud. The School Excellence Framework has four levels, which include Working Towards Delivering, Delivering, Sustaining and Growing and Excelling. Our school was judged as Excelling in all areas of Wellbeing, Data Skills and Use, and Learning and Development. In all other areas, we were judged as Sustaining and Growing. These positive results are a reflection of the commitment that all staff have in improving ourselves, our students and our school every year. At the beginning of 2017, we were judged as Working Towards Delivering in all areas, so we have made exceptional progress. What a great school, what a great team!

Uniforms next Year

Last week we held a P & C meeting, so I have attached my report to this newsletter and to the Parent Portal. It has been agreed with the P & C that a second-hand uniform shop will run at the school commencing next year. I would like to thank Jade Gray for volunteering to take on this role. So please consider donating any items of school clothing that you won’t require next year. Please bring washed items of clothes to the office for collection at this stage.

Presentation Day 2019

This year, to reduce the length of our Presentation Day Assembly, we will be holding a separate Sports Presentation Assembly on Thursday 5th December commencing at 2.00pm. We were exploring the availability of a bigger venue to hold our Presentation Day ceremony but none were available. We are hoping that the splitting of the presentation of awards into two different timeslots will prove to be more practical.

Remembrance Day

Next Monday, Hamilton Public School will be supporting the Remembrance Day Ceremony for both the Merewether-Hamilton-Adamstown RSL Sub-Branch and the Lambton - New Lambton RSL Sub-Branch. School Leaders Zoe and Ace will travel to the New Lambton service and the other School Leaders will attend the service in Gregson Park. We will further support the local service with the attendance of the Student Representative Council, and singing by the school choir. The service will be held at 11.00am if you wish to attend.

Interrelate

Every second year, the school hosts sessions run by Interrelate on Personal Development and Health Education. These sessions will be held on Thursday evening 28th November in the Performance Centre. They are designed for students and their parents/carers.

Session 1: Where Did I Come From? Time: 6:00pm Audience: Year 3 and 4 students and their parents/carers Sessions: 1 x 60-minute session Note: Older students are encouraged to attend if they have not previously seen this program. Session 2: Preparing For Puberty Time: 7:15pm Audience: Year 5 and 6 students and their parents/carers Sessions: 1 x 60-minute session

Please read flyers attached for information on session details, costs and how to book.

Years 3 – 6 Aboriginal Cultural Connection Day

Yesterday we held our Cultural Connection Day for all Aboriginal students in Years 3 – 6 in the Newcastle area. It was a great success and students had lots of fun not only with the activities but in connecting with others and forming new friendships. Many phone numbers changed hands and there were lots of conversations and smiles all day. The students participated in the making of emu callers and lessons in didgeridoo and dance as well as softball and touch football games. Students were videoed performing their dance and playing the didgeridoo and a copy of these videos will be forwarded to all participating schools. Thank you to all participating teachers, Jon Morris, David Mathieson, Kellie Smith, Tracy Forrester and Jarryd Handley and thank you Sarah for the exceptional catering. It has been agreed that each of the seven schools in our local area will take turns in hosting Cultural Connection days for Aboriginal students, with Merewether Public School hosting in 2020.

Grill’d The Junction Fundraiser

A big thank you to all families, students and staff who supported Hamilton Public School at Grill’d in the month of October. And a huge thank you to the P & C for making it happen. Our Blue Gate Garden (and Suzy and the Green Team) will greatly appreciate the donation. Great work, Hamilton!

You seem to be the crowd favourite!

We’ve counted up all the tokens for the month of October and our guests decided that they wanted Hamilton Public School to receive the biggest donation of $300. Congratulations!

We hope that the $300 can come in handy for your group and that being a part of the Local Matters program has helped you drum up some extra awareness and support in your local community.

I wish everyone a wonderful week. Warmest Regards Meredith Lindsay

Newcastle Permanent Mathematics Competition News

Congratulations to Charlie (Year 5) and Simon (Year 6) who received High Distinctions in

the 2019 Newcastle Permanent Mathematics Competition. Both students were ranked in the top 1% of state competitors. We also had an overwhelming number of students receive Distinctions – congratulations to the following students:

Eleanor Hayes Chip Valentish Claudia Pepper Caomihe Brollo-McCarthy Harry Novak Vegas Tutty Sasha Wingate-Pearse Lewis Cousin

Diya Nagarsakar Alivia Bozinoski Jade DeCarteret Noah Cousin Ava-Grace Chapman Juliet Armstrong Louis Foster

Evelyn King (Year 4 in the Year 5 category)

What a fantastic result for our school! Congratulations to all the children who showed the courage and tenacity to give this non-compulsory examination a red hot go.

Holly Foot

Children’s University Congratulations to all 19 students who graduated from the Children’s University program last week. All students gained well over 30hrs of new learning and enjoyed many of the new experiences and skills offered to them throughout the year such as orienteering, writing workshop, interviewing staff at HPS and a police officer and the University Discovery Day. Some of the students have expressed an interest in presenting their new learning to the CU students and panel members. The panel presentations will be held on Tuesday 19 November from 1:30-3pm in the Performance Centre. All parents and families of those students presenting are invited to attend. Looking forward to an exciting afternoon.

Remember learning for 2020 has begun. Students currently in the program can continue to add to their passport throughout Term 4 and during the school holidays, as the hours accumulate.

Continue that thirst for learning!

Tracey Cresnar

Our Firetruck Visit On Thursday, we had a visit by the fire fighters from Lambton Station. We learnt to call 000 in an emergency. We know that when there is a fire to crawl to the letter box. We learnt to stop, cover, drop and roll if we are on fire. They let us all have a turn on the hose. We also were able to climb up into the fire truck. We all had a great time.

Library Report We are having a fabulous start to the term in the library! We are busy borrowing, reading and learning all about our Robots; Dash, Blue Bot and Lego Wedo. The children have been working in small groups to complete coding challenges that allow the robots to complete a set task. They have been amazing team players and problem solvers. We continue to add new books to our library collection with some favourites from Anh Do and Andy Griffiths being added this week. We have also received a beautiful book from Primary Ethics called, ‘Lenny and the Ants’. This book uncovers a whole new way to look at food. Thank you Primary Ethics for the donation.

Classes come to the library once a fortnight.

Weeks 1,3,5,7,9 (1M, 2L, KMU, 3K, 4F)

Weeks 2,4,6,8,10 (1/2JS, 2I, 4R, 3H, KMA)

Library borrowing will finish in Week 8 so all books can be returned before the end of the year.

Library notices will be sent home prior to this time so you can start the search for any books that may have been misplaced.

Upcoming Events

Day Date Event

Friday 8th November 9.15am School Assembly

Monday 11th November 11.00am Remembrance Day Ceremony Gregson Park

Friday 15th November 9.15am School Assembly

Wednesday 20th November 9.30-2.00pm Stage 3 Cricket Gala Day

Friday 22nd November 9.15am 11.00am

School Assembly Rainbow Run

Tuesday 26th November 9.15-12.30pm Sports Gala Day Newcastle High School

Thursday 28th November 9.15 – 9.45 Scripture Assembly

Friday 29th November 9.00-3.00pm Surf Survival Day – Stage 3

Tuesday 3rd December 10.00-2.00pm

10.30am

Year 6 Newcastle High School Volunteers Morning Tea

Thursday 5th December 2.00pm Sports Awards 2019 Assembly

Friday 6th December 12.00pm Year 6 Mini Fete

Monday 9th December 9.00-2.30 Whole school swimming carnival Lambton Pool

Thursday 12th December 9.15am Presentation Day

Friday 13th December 12.00pm Silent Disco

Monday 16th December 6.00pm Year 6 Farewell Dinner

Wednesday 18th December 2.45pm Year 6 Clap out Last day of school

Principals P & C Report 30th October 2019

School Organisation

Renovations

• Renovations have begun and they will take place in three stages. The first stage is to build an access toilet in A Block and provide access for wheelchairs and prams from Dixon Street into the School Office. In order to do this, the front office is being moved to the rear of the A Block building. Dixon Street will then be the main entry point into the school and this stage should be completed by December 10th. The second stage will then commence which is the continuation of the access ramp from the office, through the Blue Gate Garden and down to the Performance Centre and up into B Block and the OSHC Hall. This stage of construction will continue into the holidays. The third stage of construction will be an access ramp within B Block. Both staff and students are doing very well coping with the noise and disruptions.

• Our changes to the office area has resulted in the reallocation of the Teaching Resources room. The resources are now located in the room Julie Logan used to hire. This room will also be used as a space to sell second hand uniforms. Jade Grey has very kindly offered to step up and run that for us once it has been set-up. Thank you very much Jade for your very kind offer.

School uniforms

• Our changes to the ordering processes has been working extremely well and has provided parents with a simple system to acquire and pay for new purchases. It has also streamlined the process for our office staff who voluntarily sell uniforms even though it is not their role or responsibility.

• We now have a school skort, which will be available for students to purchase within a couple of weeks. They are plain navy blue and will be on sale for $28.00. Students will be able to choose from the tunic, the skorts or shorts when deciding what to wear. I would like all students

• We are currently working to establish a second-hand uniform shop. If you have any uniform items that are still in good condition and that you won’t require next year, could you please consider donating them. All washed and clean items can be handed in at the school office.

Kinder Orientation and Whole School Transition

• Kinder Orientation commenced last week with 48 beautiful little people joining our school next year. They were supported by their buddies who will be in Year 5 in 2020. Parents attended an Information Session on Tuesday 22nd October and I would like to thanks Danielle King, James Cobb, Merinda Handsaker and Sally-Anne Linde for speaking at the session and familiarising parents with the opportunities at the school.

• All students K – 6 participated in Whole School Transition on Wednesday in-line with the pre-schoolers having a practise morning in the Kindergarten rooms. This is designed to cater for particular programs being offered to students and to strengthen student’s resilience and capabilities around change. By all reports, it was a very successful morning for all. The transition program runs for a total of 6 weeks.

Parent Portal

The Parent Portal is up and running with School Bytes now added. School Bytes is a comprehensive school management platform providing a smooth and efficient system for school accounts and payments. This will be used instead of the Parent Online Payment Portal (POP) on the school website.

• External Validation External Validation is a process run by the Department of Education to assess a school against the School Excellence Framework. Each year, a group of schools are nominated to participate in an external validation process. Our school was nominated earlier this year.There are 51 aspects of school operations that we need to report on with a very extensive evidence set, annotations and analysis required of our whole school performance, practice and operation against these themes. The school staff and executive have been working on our submission for the last 20 weeks with the external judgement and evaluation of our school will take place tomorrow, Thursday 31st October. I will inform the community of the outcomes in the next newsletter.

• Presentation Day We are finding it increasingly more difficult to seat all community members during our annual Presentation Day ceremony. I have made enquiries to other schools; however, their halls are not available during that week. I am currently looking at making a booking at either Merewether High or the Hunter School of Performing Arts for 2020. If you have any other suggestions please let me know.

• Volunteers Morning Tea This year, our thank you morning tea for our volunteers is on Tuesday 3rd December at 10.30 am. Please put that date in your calendar if you have supported our school and students in any capacity during the year as we would love to celebrate this partnership with you.

Curriculum

• Aboriginal Education Next Tuesday (5/11/19) we will be holding our second Aboriginal Cultural Connection Day for all Aboriginal students in Years 3 – 6 from schools across the Newcastle Network. This is a great day for students where they can start to make connections with each other while enjoying and sharing in a variety of cultural activities including art, dance, didgeridoo and sport. The day’s activities will be supported by representatives from the Clontarf Academy which is based at Newcastle High. The Clontarf Foundation exists to improve the education, discipline and life skills of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and uses participation in football as a way of raising self-esteem.

School Finances

• Outstanding school accounts will be emailed to families within the next 10 days using the new School Bytes platform. There is currently $22,000 outstanding.

• The Rainbow Run is being organised for November 22nd. The school is hoping to raise $10,000 • Our school concert was highly successful both in its execution, enjoyment and funds raised. Ticket sales

raised $3200 and the sale of photos raised just over $1000.

Tel: (02) 8882 7875 ● schoolservices@interrelate.org.au ● www.interrelate.org.au

Session 1: Where did I come from? (Years 3 & 4)

Objectives

• To help children aged 8-10 years gain an understanding of the structure and functions of the reproductive system in males and females.

• To provide information on conception (describing sexual intercourse, associated with love in the context of a caring relationship), foetal development and birth of a baby.

• To provide opportunities for parents and children to discuss various aspects of reproduction in an informal way.

• To reinforce the role of parents as a source of information on matters pertaining to sexuality and reproduction.

Tel: (02) 8882 7875 ● schoolservicesnsw@interrelate.org.au ● www.interrelate.org.au Session 1: Where did I come from? (Years 3 & 4) Family Program Bundle 2

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