Welcome back to the new school year. A special welcome to our new students and families who have joined us this year, it had been lovely meeting so many families at enrolment interviews or through transition meetings.  

We also welcome the following new staff to our school: 

We also welcome back Scott Brown (Grade 5/6, Intervention) and Katie Polmear (Social Worker) after having some leave last year.

 It has been lovely to get to know our new staff members over the last two weeks and our students and school community are fortunate to welcome such a talented, experienced and enthuastic group of teachers to the school. Please keep an eye out further through this newsletter and in future additions for individual staff profiles.

First days of the school year are always exciting, and although there can be nervous moments for students and staff alike, the start to the 2024 school year has been smooth, positive and settled, with students being organised and prepared for learning with all their books and stationery ready and looking amazing in their uniforms. Thank you to all our families for their support with these things and well done to all the students for showing such a commitment to learning.  We have started this year with a whole school focus on wellbeing, resilience, and high expectations and through this newsletter and our SMDS Facebook page we will provide regular updates on this work. In this edition, we introduce families to The Resilience Project, an inspiring, engaging and practical wellbeing program that informs our student wellbeing focus from Kindergarten to Year 12. I encourage parents and families to join us in this work by exploring the information we provide through our newsletters and upcoming parent information workshops and by continuing these conversations with your child at home. 

We have such a beautiful environment at St Marys District School, in which to work and learn and I would like to acknowledge the fantastic work of the team of EFAs (Education Facility Attendants) and our Administration Staff who have ensured that our school is looking its best for the start of the year. Thank you also to our staff for the extra hours you have already put in ensuring timetables are ready, units and lessons are planned and classrooms and learning spaces are prepared. This work has really supported our students' successful return to school and engagement in learning.

Each class teacher K-12 will be sending home a welcome letter and in most cases, you should have already received this.  These letters provide you with information about the school year as well as contact details for any questions you may have.  Please contact your child’s class teacher or the school office at any time if you would like to talk more about your child, their learning or if you have a question or concern and I’d particularly encourage you to do this if you have a positive to share.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind families at this time of the year of a few things that will assist your child at school and assist us to ensure we are providing the best education and care whilst they are with us.

Attendance

Welcome back! Let’s make every day count. 

By showing up to school every day, your child will have the best opportunity at a bright future. It gives them every chance to be around friends, learn new things, and find interests.  

Good attendance habits can sometimes be hard to stick. But creating a solid routine, from the start of Term 1, can set your child up for success for the year ahead. 

If you’re looking for tips on how to create better attendance habits, visit the Anything can happen website

Please always talk to us if you’re having trouble getting your child to school. We’re here to help. 

Drop off and Pick up

The school car parks are very congested places both in the morning and after school especially with spaces being limited. We have many school buses entering and leaving the grounds both of a morning and afternoon and they need to be able to safely navigate in and out of the school. Families are reminded to use the turning circle to drop of children in the morning and if parking to drop off or collect, to use the school driveway or the carpark in front of the pool. 

Do you want to drop your child off at the classroom?

A reminder that all access for parents and families to and from classrooms is through the yellow boom gate at the end of block 1, or through the administration foyer. Once you have parked in the school driveway or pool carpark, please enter the building area by walking up the main driveway  toward the administration office. If you are doing a quick drop off or pick up, there is no requirement to sign in or out but if you are wanting to stay a little longer, please enter through the administration foyer and use the screens to sign in and out.

Healthy Habits

School logo branded hats are an important part of our school uniform and the SMDS School Association generously provide either a cap or a bucket hat to every student. A reminder to all students and families that we encourage the wearing of hats (approved school cap or bucket hat only)  in our playground at breaks and in outside HPE lessons to be sun smart.  Primary children are expected to wear a school hat when in the playground in Terms 1 and 4 and will be asked to play in shady areas if they have left their school hat at home.

We have water hydration stations in the school for students to either drink hygienically from and/or fill up their drink bottles. Keeping hydrated in hot weather is very important.

Sleep is vital for healthy brain development and activity and at this time of the year, when school resumes, it is important to get a good night’s rest. Please support and encourage your child to turn off devices and retire at a reasonable hour as they start the new school year.

If you wish to discuss any aspect of your child’s education, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Kind regards,

Carolyn Watson

Principal

Welcome back to school for 2024! Before I delve into what 2024 holds for Primary students and staff, I’d like to begin by reflecting on some work completed by a small group of students during Term 3 last year……

In August 2023, three students from Grade 3 approached me to discuss a problem that they had been discussing between themselves and their families. Luka, Declan and Will noticed that many of the primary students were disappointed that there was a lack of basketball hoops for them to play with during recess and lunch. Basketball is a popular sport amongst the younger and older students and at this time, there was only one hoop for use by the primary students.

Together we began to brainstorm the problems associated with this such as younger students using a rubbish bin for a basketball hoop, basketballs ending up on rooves, creating more work for the EFA team and an empty space where old playground equipment had been removed. Working together, the group of boys created a persuasive text to share with Mrs Watson about the problem and their ideas. Mrs Watson was so impressed with the hard work and initiative that these boys had shown, she took the persuasive text to the next School Association Meeting.

At this meeting, association members were also impressed with the creativity the boys had shown in their work and the depth of their argument. At this meeting, support was given by the School Association to pour a new concrete slab and install basketball hoops for the Primary students.

When I was visiting the school throughout the holidays giving a tour to a new family, to my great delight as I entered the Primary playground, I was thrilled to see that stage one of this development had taken place during the Summer holidays. When the students returned to school on 8 February, they were greatly surprised to see this development beginning to take place in the Primary playground. I’d like to congratulate Luka, Declan and Will on the initiative they showed to solve a problem. Their ideas and hard work led to change within our school which will not only benefit the boys themselves but also the wider school community. Please take the time to watch the video of the boys’ persuasive text. We are looking forward to stage 2 of the development being complete sometime in 2024.  

BEFORE	AFTER

Grades 3, 5, 7 and 9 St Marys District School students will be sitting NAPLAN assessments between 13 -  25^th  March 2024. This National Assessment Program-Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) assesses literacy and numeracy skills that students are already learning at school. Students will participate in tests in writing, reading, conventions of language and numeracy assessments.  On its own, NAPLAN is not a test that can be studied for, and students are not expected to do so. 

Please find attached further information for parents and carers on NAPLAN.

Michele Bennett, our Support and Wellbeing AST will be contacting parents of some students on Learning Plans to discuss adjustments that can be made to better support accessing the NAPLAN assessments. Parents and carers wishing to request an adjustment for their child from NAPLAN should do so by Wednesday 21^st February 2024.

If parents and carers have any questions about the NAPLAN assessments please contact our school on 63 723900.

During the first two days of 2024 for young people returning to school, students in secondary classes were able to participate in class challenges and getting to know their peers and adults around them. On Friday 9, all students participated in activities where they were able to choose the activity of interest. With such wonderful weather, who could blame some students for electing to play some ‘backyard’ cricket.

We would like to acknowledge and congratulate the following students for being awarded the Young Citizen of the Year award for 2024 in the Break O’Day Municipality. Helayna McGiveron (Year 10), Sienna McGiveron (Year 7) and Etta Cornelius (Year 7) are the founders of a club named: Beach Clean-up Kids (BCK). This club promotes and actively engages in cleaning up areas of our community, in particular beaches and coastal areas. The students volunteer their time and energy into making our community a cleaner and tidier space and they encourage others to do the same. Not only do they invest their time into cleaning up the community but each of these students also contribute actively to events, by giving their time to help. Whether at a local dance lesson, the Christmas Carols event or the St Marys Barn Dance, you are likely to see one of these smiling faces volunteering their time in support. We are extremely proud of these students and their achievements.

A fantastic start to the year with students making a wonderful 3D version of themselves. They carefully followed instructions and created the self-images that you can see from the photos.

Well done 3-4 Kirk!

STEM challenge- rollercoasters.

On our very first day we went straight into our first collaborative working experience. All students rose to the challenge and worked in small groups to create a roller-coaster using only a small number of resources. They learned to share resources and ideas and I really enjoyed observing the different strategies used to strengthen their designs.

Great job 3-4 Kirk!

Our Prep – 2 students have enjoyed a fun filled start to the 2024 school year! It has been wonderful to see so many smiling faces enjoying being back at school. Miss Rossi, Miss Welsh, and Mrs Gray are extremely proud of the way students have settled into learning with ease and we are excited for our year ahead!

St Marys District School is excited to bring The Resilience Project (TRP) into our school community!

Our Class Teachers across P-10 will be embedding TRP lessons and we will be adopting the key principles of gratitude, empathy, mindfulness (GEM) and emotional literacy to build resilience.

Check out the attached information about the program.

If you have any questions or would like to find out more please contact your child’s Class Teacher or myself via stephen.smith1@decyp.tas.gov.au or by contacting the school via (03) 6372 3900.

Stephen Smith
The Resilience Project Ambassador – SMDS

Student Leaders 2024

A focus at St Marys District School is to foster our student leadership. This enables students to develop skills in leading teams of students, planning and organising student-led events and activities, and developing confidence and public speaking.

We have many formal and informal opportunities for students to put their hand up and take on a leadership role.

We are very excited to introduce our student leaders for 2024:

Student Leadership Board

President – Helayna McGiveron

Vice President – Lachlan Woods

Secretary – Arielle da Graca

Treasurer – Daniel Cook

Gipsy Worrall

Byron Woods

Ava Howorka

House Captains

Blackwood

Captain – Cortney Smith

Vice Captain – Daniel Cook

Junior Captains – Hamish Davenport & Billy Thorpe

Dalmain

Captain – Ava Howorka

Vice Captain – Byron Woods

Junior Captains – Bentley Coker-Williams & Levi Woods

Duncan

Captain – Senh O’Dowd

Vice Captain – Mikayla Quilliam

Junior Captains – Rayne Keenan and Shiloh Faulkner

We congratulate our student leaders and wish them success as they take up their roles!

Meg Burbury & Stephen Smith
Student Leadership Coordinators

The school holiday period saw lots of minor works projects take place around the school, to an approximate amount of $120,000.  The works included:

Commencement of the half basketball court in the Primary playground. 
If you have not viewed the fantastic persuasive argument prepared by Luka, Decan and Will in Mrs Burbury’s Primary report, make sure you do!  Through the support of the St Marys District School Association, using funds raised from the volunteer run St Marys Op Shop, work began on this $15,000 project in early January.   Basketball and netball goals have been ordered, and line marking will complete this much anticipated project. Thanks to East Coast Concreting and Mr Paul Aulich for managing this project.

Internal and external painting of the Early Childhood Classroom.
This has really freshened up this learning area for the new school year.  Painter Mr Marcus Woodberry loves visiting our school, and by the end of this year, should have painted his way around the majority of the external buildings that have not been part of recent redevelopments. 

Artificual turf installation.
Luke Tumney and the team from Synthetic Grass Solutions spent several days enjoying the St Marys lifestyle, with a few golf games thrown in of an evening, while working on the installation of synthetic turf around the redeveloped Design Hub.  This has finished off the landscaping aspect of the redevelopment and provided another lovely outdoor area for secondary students to enjoy.   Final painting of the remainder of this building will take place in the coming months.

At last! The resurfacing of our basketball, netball and tennis courts have been completed, with Grant Chugg and the BlackTack team also enjoying St Marys community life for several days while they completed this project.  Final markings for a netball court, and installation of netball goal and tennis infrastructure will take place soon.

A lot of mostly unseen but necessary work has also taken place over the holidays.  The team from Island Vegetation spent several days on site undertaking tree works, informed by our annual tree safety audit, conducted by Tom from Main Tree Care.   This report and the associated tree work, ensure the safety and health of the substantial number of beautiful trees around our school.   The maintenance work is supported by a substantial mulching program and advice is being provided on plantings to replace those trees with substantial damage or nearing the end of their life cycle.

Dave Casey and his team from FRW Industrial, transported some substantial machinery to the school in order to undertake high pressure cleaning and treatment of our roof surface upon which lichen quickly grows.  They stayed in St Marys over the Australia Day long weekend to complete this project which, from the photos below show some excellent results.

We would like to thank all of the contractors for professional way they undertook their individual projects and for supporting the local businesses durng their stays.

Behind the scenes, our EFA and Admin and TA teams have been working tirelessly to have the classrooms and grounds looking their best for the return to school, moving furniture, setting up and running book and uniform days and welcoming new students and staff to our school community.  And lastly our teachers who have been eager to access and set up their classrooms and resources to welcome our students to learning for 2024.

It takes an entire community effort to get our school ready for the school year, and this year we were lucky to be able to grow our SMDS family through connections with old and new contractors over the summer period.

Lisa Bean

SCHOOL BUSINESS MANAGER

Students received a number of forms on book and uniform days and at the beginning of the term.  These include:

• Information Validation Forms
• Aquatics Form
  
• Medical Management Plans
• Administration of Medication (for those students requiring medication at school)
• ICT User agreement forms

Thank you to those parents who have returned their forms.   Students who have not returned their forms will be issued with a new ones over the coming week.  Please keep an eye out for them and complete, sign and return as soon as possible.  Students will not be able to participate in excursions, swimming activities or access computers until these forms are returned. 

Our School will be switching over to a new messaging platform for communicating with you.  This will replace our current SMS system from 8 April 2024.

The new platform, called EdSmart is an Australian platform which is designed to improve communication in school communities by allowing electronic messaging i.e. SMS and emails. For now, it will be used to manage absences messages i.e. you will receive a SMS or email alert if your child is absent from school requesting a response.  It will also allow us to send a communication message to all parent/guardians.

The platform will, over time, be rolled out across all Tasmanian Government Schools and new features will be added. 

You will receive a text message and/or an email with further details.  Note, the text message sender will be a shortened version of our school’s name - Please keep an eye out for it!

Further information is available on the Department’s website

Communicating with your child's school - Department for Education, Children and Young People (decyp.tas.gov.au)

Presented by: Jan Matthews

Jan Matthews has worked in the areas of child and family for over 40 years. She’s a registered psychologist and also a researcher who has spent many years researching child incontinence. Jan is currently Associate Principal Research Fellow at the Parenting Research Centre, where she contributes to research aimed at helping children thrive through supporting parenting.

When: Tuesday 20 February 2024, 7 pm AEDT

Duration: 40 minutes, followed by a 20-minute question and answer session.

• tell when your child is ready for toilet training
• get organised for toilet training
• prepare your child for toilet training
• start toilet training
• deal with toileting accidents

Toilet training: getting started webinar | Raising Children Network

If you register for the webinar, we’ll send you a link to the recording, even if you can’t make it on the night.

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

• Welcome letters P-6