Our Japanese Visitors

Last week we had the absolute pleasure of welcoming our Japanese guests to our school community. What a wonderful experience it was for everyone involved. We extend a heartfelt thank you to our generous host families for opening your homes and ensuring our visitors felt so welcome. 

Thank you to the Boehm, Leske, Evans, Brimblecombe, Murchie, Waters, Mackenzie, and Gascoigne families.  

Our students thoroughly enjoyed participating in student-led activities including origami, pattern making and music appreciation, proudly sharing aspects of our learning and culture. A particular highlight was the special “good luck” performance from our lion dancers, followed by an interactive Indigenous music performance by Majeda Beatty, which provided a meaningful Australian cultural connection for all involved.

We are delighted to confirm that our guests will return to visit classrooms in 2027, and we look forward to the opportunity to host again in 2028.

Thank you also to those who joined us for the Welcome BBQ — it was a lovely way to connect. Big thanks again to Kyle and the Dreamers for providing our BBQ. 

Tomorrow marks the debut of our brand new Little Listeners program — a 0–5 year old library time held on the first Friday of each month during school terms at 9:30am. Families are warmly invited to come along and enjoy a story read by one of our wonderful teachers in the Library. We look forward to welcoming many of our youngest community members into the school for this special time together.

We wish our Grade 3 and Grade 5 students all the very best as they begin NAPLAN testing. Across the next two weeks, students will complete assessments in Reading, Writing, Conventions of Language (spelling, grammar and punctuation) and Numeracy. We always remind our students that NAPLAN is one test, on one day, and it captures just a snapshot of their learning. At our school, we value growth, effort and persistence, and we encourage every child to simply do their best.

Next Tuesday we undertake our School Review process. Every four years, schools engage in a review to reflect, celebrate achievements and plan strategically for the future. Our review panel will focus on two key areas of our work: building consistency of practice across classrooms (a focus of the past four years), and future planning to meet the varied needs of our students, particularly in the area of extension (to frame our next four years). We thank our review panel, including our critical friends, principals from Sandringham Primary School and Beaumaris Secondary College, along with representatives from School Council and our parent community who will contribute to various parts of the day. Students will also be selected at random and engage in focus group sessions with a panel member as part of the process.

The District Swimming Carnival was a fantastic event, and we thank Josh Ancrum for his extensive behind-the-scenes work in preparing our school team and coordinating the Beachside PE Network. We are incredibly proud of our district team, who placed 3rd overall — an outstanding achievement.

A reminder that several key school policies are available via our school website. We encourage families to take the time to familiarise themselves with these documents:

Attendance Policy: Going to school every day is an important part of your child's education. Attending and participating in school will help your child develop important skills and knowledge to help them learn; develop social and emotional skills such as good communication, resilience and teamwork; And establish friendships with peers which helps with self-esteem and a sense of belonging. There is no good number of days for missing school. Being away from school for one day a fortnight adds up to four whole weeks of school. We of course understand (and appreciate) the impact of illness. Where possible, try to avoid your child missing school for other reasons, e.g. make appointments outside of school time and try to keep family holidays within the school holiday time frame. Please see our policy for processes to record school absence and early arrival/departure.

Mobile Phone Policy: Students in Grade 5 and 6 with a phone are required to keep these in their school bags during the school day; Students in Grade 4 or lower must have their phone collected by the teacher to be stored somewhere safe and secure. Students wearing smartwatches should disable messenger during school hours (or give the watch to the class teacher for safe keeping). The class teacher will request collection of a smartwatch if it is distracting a student from their learning. Should you need to get a message to your child during school hours, please contact the Administration Office in support of this Departmental policy. 

Stay tuned to future newsletters, where you will have the opportunity to get to know our wonderful staff further.

As always, thank you for your ongoing partnership and support.

Have a wonderful long weekend.