Dear Families

As I write this newsletter report it is hard to believe that we are already at the end of week 4 of the term.  It has been extremely pleasing to see the way students have settled into classroom and school routines and the focus they are bringing to their learning.

Department for Education, Children and Young People (DECYP) Values

In 2023, Department for Education, Children and Young People (DECYP) staff, children and young people were asked ‘who do we need to be’ to ensure our children and young people have bright lives and positive futures and what are the values that we need to be guided by.  Through this, the values of Connection, Respect, Growth, Courage and Responsibility were identified and adopted by DECYP. 

These values provide the foundation of the culture in every DECYP school and workplace and all DECYP schools adopted these values during 2024.  We are excited to spend more time this year developing deeper understandings of how these values underpin our school culture and support every student to feel known, safe, well and learning more each day.

Open Classrooms and Meet the Teachers Afternoon

On Wednesday 12 March we are holding an Open Classrooms and Meet the Teachers Afternoon. We are very pleased to be able to invite parents and family members to join us for the afternoon where they will have the opportunity to visit your child’s classroom and meet and chat with our teachers while enjoying afternoon tea.  We encourage you to take this opportunity to come along and see our wonderful learning environments and meet your child or young person’s teachers.

Parents and/or family members will need to RSVP to attend this event and further details will be provided later, through our Schoolzine App and on the St Marys DS Facebook page.

Parent Connect – a new way for parents to connect with school!

Would you like to catch up with school staff and/or other parents over a cuppa? Or perhaps you have a question or two about your child’s learning?  Would you like to hear more about what is happening at school? Do you have great ideas you would like to share with us that could make our school an even better place to be for every student?

We are thrilled to invite parents to attend our first Parent Connect session which is being held next week on March 6, at 2.30pm in the Staffroom.  Parents are asked to sign in at the Admin office and then gather in the staffroom for a cup of tea or coffee, a biscuit and an informal catch up.  During this session we will be brainstorming ideas and topics of interest for our next get together.

Parent connect sessions are scheduled every three weeks and we are really looking forward to building our Parent Connect community with you all.

Lifting Literacy: Reading

All Tasmanian Government schools are taking steps to introduce a new way of teaching literacy.  In 2025 we are implementing a 60 minute structured literacy block into every Prep to Grade 6 classroom.  During this time students will participate in explicit teaching of elements of reading and writing including phonics, spelling, fluency and handwriting.  Teachers are looking forward to sharing elements of our structured literacy approach with you, through this newsletter and also through our Parent Connect sessions.  To start, I have included a fact sheet in the link below about Phonics and the important role it has in learning to read.

Fact sheet What is phonics.docx

You can read more about how Tasmania’s school system is introducing a new way of teaching reading on the DECYP website.

Safeguarding Our School – guidance for parents

To help us manage the school site we would like to share updated guidance for parents.

To reduce the number of entry points to the school, parents who wish to drop off or collect their children from their classrooms, are asked to come into the school grounds and access classrooms by walking up the driveway and entering through the Administration Foyer or via the yellow boom gate. 

Please only use this access method when accompanying your children to and from the classroom.  If you are visiting the school at other times during the day, please come though the Administration Office and sign in.

To help us prevent unauthorised visitors from entering the school grounds, please do not access the classrooms or make your way to the administration office via the gym stairs and between Blocks 2, 3 or 4. 

We appreciate your co-operation and support in following these safety measures. 

Vaping – resources available for families and students

Vaping continues to be a trend amongst children and young people.

Electronic cigarettes, or vapes, are similar to smoking cigarettes, but don’t use tobacco.

Instead, vapes are a battery-operated device which heats a liquid.  This liquid turns into an aerosol and is inhaled.  Like smoking cigarettes, vaping is highly addictive. Research shows that young people are three times as likely to start smoking if they vape.

While Tasmanian law says that a person under 18 can’t use, possess or buy vapes, we know that some young people are doing it because they believe it’s a safer option than smoking cigarettes.

It’s important to work together to educate them about the health impacts of vaping and the harm it can cause on their short- and long-term physical health.

The Department for Education, Children and Young People has a dedicated webpage with information and resources for teachers, parents/carers and young people.  This includes tips for talking to your children about vaping and how you can support them in quitting.  The attached fact sheet also has some useful information to help support you in with these conversations.

At a school level, we are approaching vaping as a health issue.  We use a range of educational resources to help students make healthy choices and informed decisions.

It’s important that we all work together to nurture the wellbeing of students so they can continue to grow, thrive and succeed.

If you have any questions or concerns, please get in touch with either your child’s teacher, sector assistant principal or myself.

Warm regards,

Carolyn Watson

Principal

The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is a literacy and numeracy assessment that students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 sit each year. It is the only national assessment all Australian students have the opportunity to undertake.

Click on the PDF link below to view the Naplan Information Brochure.

St Marys District school Grade 7 students were lucky enough to go on a two night camp experience to South Mount Cameron, on the North East coast, in week two of Term One.  

We farewelled our loved ones, packed up the bus and headed off down the Pass.  Our first stop was in Gladstone for a quick snack and to stretch our legs, then back on the bus for the final leg of the journey.  We arrived at the camp around lunchtime and were greeted by the camp manager - John LeFevre. After an induction from John we set up our beds in our cabins and familiarised ourselves with our home for the next few days.

John then walked us down to some of the ropes/challenge activities that are set-up on the grounds of the camp.  Both students and staff participated in the challenges.  John made mention, a number of times how well our students were working together to achieve the challenges.  It was around 5pm when we finished the last challenge.

We headed inside to have showers and get dinner organised.  We had spaghetti bolognese that had been prepared by Mrs Green and Amanda at school– thank you both.  Mrs Waters had prepared a roster for serving and cleaning up during meal times and our students took it in turn to assist with these jobs throughout the camp.

After dinner we walked down to complete a tight rope crossing– called the Burma bridge.  The students had to wear a harness and cross over the wire above a creek. Some were even brave enough to wear a blindfold on the way back! Mrs Waters had been busy preparing milo’s and desert which everyone enjoyed when we got back.

After this we had some time in the lounge room playing cards, guitar and getting to know each other.  Bed time was soon upon us and students settled into their cabins for the night (after a bit of chatter and giggling).

We woke on day two, to a very warm morning and set about having breakfast and preparing for the walk up Mt Cameron.  The humidity made the climb a bit tricky, but we were patient and encouraging of each other and we soon made it to the maze.

Students were able to explore the rock maze, squeezing in and out of the gaps.  We pushed on, finally able to see the top.  Unfortunately, we did not get full views of Flinders Island due to the smoke from bushfires, but everyone was proud of their efforts.  After having lunch, we made our way down and back to camp.

Because it was such a warm day we decided to load everyone on the bus and head down to Tomahawk for a swim in the river.  Students had a great time playing in the water and on the beach.  After returning to camp, we had a BBQ dinner and students completed another challenge– the spiderweb.  After such a big day, everyone was asleep as soon as their head hit the pillow.

After breakfast on Friday, we had to pack up our personal belongings as well as clean the camp lounge, kitchen, bunk rooms and bathrooms.  John was so impressed with how our students cleaned up that he said it was better than when we arrived! Maybe the students were encouraged to do such a fantastic job because they knew they had the flying fox activity still to come.  John explained the flying fox activity to us and we headed down.  Everyone had two turns.  It sure was a lot of fun!

Thank you to the staff who attended the camp and made these wonderful experiences possible for our students. Mr Innis, Mrs Waters, and Matt. 

A huge THANK YOU to John, who made all the activities so fun and really got to know each and everyone one of our students so well in such a short time.  We were extremely proud of how our Grade 7 students conducted themselves during this camp experience and really enjoyed the time getting to know them better.

Laura Swanson

Connect with us at our new Parent Connect Sessions, held every 3 weeks in the Staff Room, we hope to meet over a cuppa to share programs and initiatives, ways to become involved with the school community and more!  Each session will involve staff from different areas of the school.  

Bring your ideas and share with us what you would like us to include in these sessions, and join us for our first Parent Connect Session on 6 March - 2.30 - 3.00pm.  (Be warned, there may be pirates in attendance, as this is also dress like a pirate day!)

What a night it turned out to be at the St Marys Cricket Club on Thursday 27 February, where St Marys Junior Cricket Tigers, defeated Scamander  by 3 wickets, in by all accounts was a very tight game.   This win makes it the Tigers'  fifth win in a row.   A fantastic effort by all players and the community of coaches, parents, family and friends who support them throughout training and matches during the season.  

St Marys staff challenged all of the students in the school to be the first class to return their ICT forms in Primary and Secondary areas.  The Prize .... a free pick at our stockpile of new lego for each student in the winning class.

Now is a good time for parents to  have a chat about online safety and the safe use of devices with their children.  

To support Australian families and community members of all ages, The Office of The eSafety Commissioner have an entire resource available online.  This includes information sheets, how to start safety conversations with your families, what to do if you or someone you care about is being bullied, scammed, harassed online, and how to report it.

Please take the time to become familiar with the resources and share with the wider community.  

Online safety | eSafety Commissioner

Kinder is now in full swing with the children attending three full days a week.  The children have settled well which has contributed by attending our Lil and Pre-Kinder program.  Children are getting to know our routines and transitions of the room and are proving to be very capable and confident learners.  We have been exploring "families" -  looking at how diverse our families are, creating our own family tree and drawing our family portraits.  We also have been exploring number focusing on 1 – 5 sequence and number recognition and counting one-to-one correspondence and looking closely at our names looking at similarities and sorting in different ways.  Last Friday we enjoyed the hot weather engaging in water play in the water trough and also the water race.  The children enjoyed getting wet and splashing in the puddles.

Over the last couple of weeks in library the Primary classes have spent time getting to know each other and getting to know Mrs Lee.  We have been working hard completing "All About Me” forms so that Mrs Lee can learn all our names and children’s interests and goals, this has been a competition in each class with prizes to be won.  We also have been making book marks to use in our books that we borrow from the library.

The younger classes K – 2 have been focussing on concepts of print learning about different parts of books, words on a page and reading from left to right.  They also engaged in a book title experience where they had to come up with a title of a book and draw and illustration to go with the book.

The older children in Grades 3 – 6 have been engaging in book reports choosing a favourite or familiar book to complete a report.  All work is currently being displayed in the library.  At the beginning and end of our sessions children are supported and encouraged to read a book to their peers, this has been very popular with us now having to write up a timetable.  Children have been reading independently to the group or in a pair.

Notice of AGM

Nomination Form

The School Association Committee has vacancies commencing April 2025.  There are 6 parent/staff/community member vacancies on the Committee.  Positions are for a period of 2 years.

Nominations for these vacancies close on 10 March 2025.  If there are more nominations than vacancies, elections will be held on 17 March 2025.

Further information on the School Association can be found at:  School Association - St Marys District School

• The School Office
• https://decyp.tas.gov.au/about-us/community-and-engagement/school-association-committees/

St Marys District School Association invites you to consider nominating for one of these positions.  To nominate please complete the Nomination Form.

School Association Committeers - Why get involved?

The SMDS School Association Committee is very active and supportive of the school and wider community.   Underpinned by fundraising from the St Marys Op Shop, our Association has supported many projects around the school and the wider community including:

• A major infant playground redevelopment
• A puffer Jacket, sun hat/cap and beanie for every student
• Financial support for catering on school camps
• The "Book Project" Library renewal program
• Primary School half basketball court
• New Library and Commom Room Furniture
• Decodable readers and resources
• Support of the St Marys Table Tennis Club
• Support to With One Voice Choir
• A donation to support the Break O'Day Beach Access Wheelchair

We have so much more we want to contribute to the school community and we can't do it without the support of active members.  Please consider becoming a School Association Committee Member.  For more information, please view the flier linked below, or have a chat with one of our current committee members:

Gary Barnes 

Greg Bean

Lisa Bean

Janet Drummond

Kayla Newton

Louisa Rhodes

Carolyn Watson

Mel Woods

It's almost Photo Day!  The day when we all bring our biggest smiles and wear heaps of hair product!  

2025 Photo day will be on 21/3/2025.  Please ensure your child is in appropriate uniform on the day - We'll do our best to keep them tidy until photo time!

HOW TO ORDER:

A flier has been sent home with students that details how to order individual and family photo packs.   This flier contains an Access Key, which you will need to order photos.   If you have not received the flier or have lost the access key, please contact the School Administration Office.  

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

• Naplan Information for Parents - Grades 3 and 5
• Grade 3 & 4 Shorebird Education Program

SECONDARY

• Naplan Information for Parents - Grades 7 and 9
• Secondary Short Course - Scamander River Mouth Swim - Selected Students
• ArtRage and Glover Art Prize Excursion - Selected Students
• Secondary Swimming in PE Lessons - Term 1  2025

WHOLE SCHOOL

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