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- ACTING PRINCIPAL'S REPORT
- BOOK WEEK
- NETBALL CUP - GIRLS
- WINTER SPORTS - HOME ROUND
- KINDERGARTEN
- LAUNCHING INTO LEARNING
- GRADE 9 CHEMISTRY FUN - THE FLAME TEST
- HANDS ON LEARNING
- NETBALL CUP - BOYS
- PREP - GRADE 2 WALKING EXCURSION
- VISUAL ART with Mrs Howard
- SAVE THE DATE - STUDENT ART EXHIBITION
- SCHOOL ANNOUNCEMENTS
- COMMUNITY ANNOUNCEMENTS
Dear Parents and Carers
Our DECYP Value in focus this week is Respect:
Respect – Caring for ourselves, each other, and our environment.
The Value of Respect plays a vital role in shaping our St Marys District School community. Respect is essential to all aspects of school life and incorporates caring for ourselves, each other, and our environment, and supporting all students to authentically engage in learning opportunities.
At St Marys District School, self-respect is supported by encouraging students to take pride in their learning and strive for improvement in their learning outcomes. Programs promoting mental health awareness (The Resilience Project, Live4Life, Youth Mental Health Training, StayChatTY, Headspace), physical wellbeing (PE, Winter Sports, ENE, sporting activities), and personal goal setting help students to develop a sense of self-worth and resilience.
Respect for others is cultivated through a culture of inclusivity and kindness. St Marys District School actively promotes gratitude, empathy and mindfulness through The Resilience Project, peer support systems, and collaborative learning. These initiatives foster mutual respect among students, enabling learning from diverse perspectives. Working in these ways supports more active participation in learning and students feeling respected and supported by their peers and teachers.
Staff at St Marys District School model and reinforce the value of Respect through respectful interactions with students and by creating respectful classroom environments that support students to feel safe, valued and encouraged to express themselves and take academic risks.
The value of Respect is integral to maximising students' learning opportunities at St Marys District School. By promoting Respect for oneself, others, and the environment, our school provides a pathway to academic engagement, personal growth and social responsibility while ensuring that students are well-prepared to thrive both within and beyond the school community.
Book Week
How wonderful it was to see students and staff arrive to school on Friday 23 August dressed as a character from their favourite book. As our parade made its way into the community and back again, it was exciting to see the number of parents, grandparents, extended family and community members come out to cheer or take photographs. The two pink unicorns made their way to bystanders and into local businesses to spread the love of reading and the joy of children’s excitement throughout the parade. As part of Book Week, St Marys District School held the Scholastic Book Fair. This has, once again, proven to be a huge success with a percentage of the proceeds from all sales going towards our school library in the form of books. Students demonstrated high levels of respect towards each other while in costume and on the parade, where they had buddy students and made sure everyone was having a great time.
Evidences of Learning and Farm Celebration
Our school will be hosting a farm open afternoon and to share with parents any Evidences of Learning. You will receive an information notice and an invitation to book a meeting with teachers. Come and join us for a chat, a look at our farm and enjoy the BBQ. If you wish to have a conversation with the teacher of your child, book a time – details on the invitation. If you cannot attend, Evidences of Learning will be posted home.
Student Wellbeing and Engagement Survey
Our annual Student Wellbeing and Engagement Survey (SWES) has commenced with the secondary students. Primary students from Grade 4 will commence soon.
The SWES gives us important information about student’s wellbeing that helps us make our school a safer place for students to attend. All responses are anonymous. When the survey has been completed, staff will look at the data and use it to develop new ideas and strengthen current supports for all students. Students are invited and encouraged to participate in this survey. If you or your child are not comfortable with completing this survey, please contact the Administration Office and let them know. They will pass this information on. No reason needs to be provided for your child’s withdrawal from this survey.
Wear it Purple Day
The SLG ran a successful day where students were invited to come to school in bright colours and enjoy a BBQ lunch and cupcakes made by our hospitality students. Wear It Purple Day is an international day of expressions, celebration and support for students and young people who are part of the LGBTQIA+ group, and for families of these people.
Finally…
Commencing August 29 and continuing to the end of Term 3, Carolyn Watson will be commencing her much-deserved Long Service Leave. We look forward to seeing Carolyn resume her Principalship beginning Term 4.
Sandra Cook
Acting Principal
This year’s Book Week theme of ‘Reading is Magic’ was embraced by one and all at St Marys District School. Thank you to our students, staff and families, who supported our Book Fair. It was exciting to see so many students enthusiastically buying a book over the week.
The atmosphere of our school was transformed by our Door Competition with creativity and love of written words being replicated in designs to make our doorways into classrooms truly magical. Congratulations to the following groups for winning prizes through their efforts:
- Kinder with their rendition of The Magic Hat
- Grades 5/6 with their illustration of Shrek
- Grade 8’s Enchanted Forest
Throughout the week our secondary students buddied with primary classes to share reading and to perform Readers Theatre. The Grade 9 class performed ‘Betty’s Adventure’ to the Prep/Grade 1 class, transporting imaginations to the land of fairies, giants, elves and witches. Thank you to all our students for your enthusiastic involvement in these activities.
On Friday Janet Drummond, dressed as Frieda Kahlo from one of her favourite books, visited our school as a guest reader. Many thanks to Janet for supporting our younger readers with enthusiasm and sharing her love of books, words and stories.
Book Week concluded with a huge finale with so many of our staff, students and community members dressing up. We had a pair of unicorns dancing and welcoming our students to their day. Further, Friar Tuck from Robin Hood manned the office, Little Red Riding Hood oversaw the day, making sure we were all safe from wolves. Congratulations to our Costume Prize Winners:
- Grade 10 - Cooper J
- Grade 9 - Max G
- Grade 8 - Group prize for rollercoaster Ryan G, Lachlan M, Harley H, Bailey F, Rob W, Ping L and Oscar R
- Grade 7 - Nina S
- Grade 6 - Bentley C
- Grade 5 - Ellie H
- Grade 4 - Bella P
- Grade 3 - Sadie P
- Grade 2 - Harry C
- Grade 1 - Makenzie B
- Prep - Noah W
- Kinder - Daxon B
Many staff and students claimed that this day was ‘one of the best of the year’, while others were in awe of how the St Marys community does Book Week. Others commented that they went home tired from dancing in their costume all day. Thank you to everyone for your commitment to reading, creating rich environments for embracing books and celebrating Book Week with us this year.
NETBALL TASMANIA
HIGH SCHOOL NETBALL CHAMPIONSHIPS 2024
On Thursday 29 August, St Marys District School sent a team to compete in the High School Netball Championships for girls at the Silverdome in Launceston. There were twelve teams competing in the tournament, from schools in the North of the State- both Independent and State Government schools.
Our first game was against Prospect, who had a very strong team. We managed to match them goal for goal in the first half and the game was played with excellent sportsmanship. Turnovers were crucial (due to the short halves) and we went down by 2 points 6-8.
Our next game was against Winnaleah, who got the jump on us in the first half. We were seven goals down at half time and managed to come back and win by one point 10-9!!
Our third game was against Deloraine, who had a couple of state players in their team and were a very strong team. Deloraine won 18-7.
In the fourth game we came up against Riverside. The final score was 13-7.
Our last pool game was against Queechy. This game was neck and neck the whole way, with Queechy clinching it 12-11 in the dying seconds.
In our semi-final game we played Brooks. A win would see us finishing 9th and we did win convincingly 13-3.
It was a massive day for our team, playing lots of closely contested games and representing our school amazingly against teams from much larger schools.
The students who represented St Marys District School in this tournament were: Ava, Helayna, Cortney, Mikayla, Isla, Mieka, Ellie, Sienna, Jessie, Reagan, Layla and Lily.
Congratulations to our student representatives for having the courage to step up and give the tournament a go. We were up against teams consisting predominantly of Grade 10 students, so our effort was outstanding. There was some amazing teamwork, sportsmanship, resilience, encouragement and leadership on display throughout the day and most importantly, we all had heaps of fun.
Thank you to Sommer for supporting this event, scoring each game and offering advice and encouragement to our team. Thanks to all the parents and friends who came along to support our team. Your encouragement was amazing. We always seem to have the largest and loudest cheer squad.
Thank you to Netball Tasmania for organising this event and offering this opportunity to our students.
Please enjoy some photos from the day.
Laura Swanson
On Wednesday 21 August 2024, St Marys District School welcomed Prospect High School sporting teams to our home round of Winter Sports. All sports were played outside this year, including both netball games on the newly resurfaced courts. The weather was beautiful, and the sun shone for the duration of the games. The level of play, skill and sportsmanship was fantastic across all sports, and by students from both schools. It was lovely to be able to welcome so many spectators from our community in to watch the matches and cheer on our teams. The Primary students also created an excellent atmosphere with their amazing cheering!! Thank you if you were able to make it to offer your support. The day was a great success, and we are looking forward to hosting another home round when the opportunity arises- hopefully next year. Thank you to Sam Smithurst and Sienna who umpired the games. Your support is greatly appreciated. Thanks also to Dave for his amazing efforts to get the grounds up to scratch for playing on.
The results from the day are below:
FOOTBALL:
PROSPECT defeated SMDS
SOCCER:
PROSPECT defeated SMDS 10-2
NETBALL
DIV 2:
SMDS 40 defeated PROSPECT 4
DIV 3A:
SMDS 23 defeated PROSPECT 3
Congratulations to all for a wonderfully successful day.
Laura Swanson
Kinder have had a very busy and exciting first half of Term 3. We began the term enjoying the book “ The Magic Hat” written by Mem Fox, exploring the sequence of the story, the magic, words and rhyming words, writing our own story, as well as engaging in art experiences decorating a magic hat and wizard collage picture. We were able to use these pictures for the book week door competition, which we were very excited to win.
We have been further enhancing and developing our fine motor skills through goop, play dough, slime and using scissors, cutting along different lines (straight, zig zagged and curved).
We have been further investigating number sequences and have just started using 10 frames, learning numeracy concepts to be able to gain a greater understanding of number relationships and counting. We use these each morning to count the number of children.
We have continued with learning to recognise letters and their sounds, rhyming words, rhymes and songs. This week we will be starting letters and sounds learning the letter ’s’. We will also be commencing Heggarty.
The children have been very excited to start writing in their writing books and beginning to write more words. Each day upon arrival we are practising writing our names. It has been fantastic to see the improvement each week.
What a wonderful busy week we had last week, engaging in many activities mostly promoting Book Week. This was a really great way to meet more students and teachers from St.Marys District School. We enjoyed reading with the Grade 10’s and 5/6’s. We were all very excited on Friday to come to school dressed up and walk in the parade.
Last Tuesday we spend the afternoon in the cooking room making pizza with our Hands on Learning groups. The children were very excited to make their own dough and add toppings of choice. They were then able to take these home to share with their families.
We attended our first of many assemblies with each of us receiving an award.
We look forward to the rest of the term and a busy Term 4 transitioning to Prep.
NETBALL TASMANIA
HIGH SCHOOL NETBALL CUP -BOYS 2024
On Friday 23 August, St Marys District School sent a team of boys to compete in the Netball Cup Championships at the Silverdome in Launceston. There were twelve teams competing in the tournament, from approximately ten schools in the North of the State- both Independent and State Government schools.
Our first game was against Brooks High School, who had a skilled team and started well. We only managed one goal, but the boys were clearly enjoying the experience, and the game was played with excellent sportsmanship. The final score was 10-1.
Our next game was against Deloraine High School. Again, strong opponents. Our boys started to implement tactics and improve their passing and ball movement down the court. The final score was 19-3.
Game three was played against Winnaleah. This was an extremely close game, and the boys really started to work together to get our first win on the board 12-11! A real nail biter!!
Game four, the final pool game we came up against St Patricks College. Again, a very tough opponent and the final score was 14-5.
Our final game was the playoff for 9th place, and we came up against Riverside High School. By this stage of the tournament, we had started to get some excellent combinations together and our shots were going in more consistently. Again, this was a close game on the scoreboard, with both teams’ goal for goal the entire game. Unfortunately, they were able to pull away in the last few minutes of the game to get the win 8-5.
The students who represented St Marys District School in this tournament were:
Daniel C, Lachie W, Senh O, Matthew E, Rio K, Byron W, Wally F, Connor F and Lachy B
Congratulations to our student representatives for having the courage to try something new. There was some amazing teamwork, sportsmanship, resilience, encouragement, and leadership on display throughout the day and most importantly, we all had heaps of fun.
Thank you to our students who came along to help officiate at the tournament. These students took on the roles of umpires- Sienna and Helayna, Scorers- Cortney and Mikayla and coaches- Ava, Mieka and Ellie. What amazing leadership you all showed and excellent encouragement for our team of boys.
Thank you also to Michelle Bennett for supporting this event and offering advice and encouragement to our team.
Thank you to Netball Tasmania for organising this event and offering this opportunity to our students.
We again had the largest cheer squad of parents/supporters from our community. Thank you, supporters. We were all extremely entertained throughout the day but also extremely proud of our students, their conduct, the way they represented our school, their sportsmanship, teamwork and encouragement of each other.
Already looking forward to next year.
Laura Swanson
On Thursday 29 September Prep/1A and 1/2A went on a local walking excursion around our community. This linked with our HASS unit of ‘Local Place’. We would like to thank our wonderful tour guide Mrs Bennett who shared lots of local historical knowledge with us.
Grade 4/5 students have been diving into the world of composition and depth of field. They've also explored the rich history of still life art, culminating in the creation of their own vibrant masterpieces!
Grade 8 Visual Art students have been honing their hand-building techniques with clay. Some crafted unique mugs, while others chose to sculpt intricate animal figures.
Year 9/10 Visual Art students have been delving into animal anatomy through detailed research in their journals. Using their knowledge, sketches, and planning, they will soon bring their ideas to life by creating sculptures with terracotta clay, employing advanced hand-building techniques.
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
- School Social - Kinder - Grade 2 - Tuesday 17 September 2024 Theme: Pyjama Party.
- School Social - Grade 3-6 - Wednesday 18 September 2024 - Theme: Superheroes
- School Social - Grade 7 10 - Wednesday 18 September 2024 - Theme: Back to the 80's
SECONDARY
- Get Home Safe Program - Year 10 students - Monday 9 September - Campbell Town
- Careers Fair - Tuesday 10 September - St.Helens District School
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NOTICEBOARD