16 August 2018
Newsletter Articles
- PRINCIPALS REPORT
- WINTER FEAST 2018
- VALUE CARD WINNER FOR 6TH JULY 2018
- MERIT CERTIFICATE WINNERS
- 2019 Student Guide Years 11/12
- Child and Student Wellbeing Strategy Launched
- The New Child Care Subsidy
- Safe Gaming - 5 Tips
- SCHOOL HEALTH NURSE
- SCHOOL CHAPLAIN
- BOOK WEEK IS COMING
- GETTING TO KNOW CHARACTERS
- PEER SUPPORT
- LEARNING TOGETHER - PREP/1 AND GRADE 1/2
- LIFT K-2
- THANK YOU MR CAMPBELL
- GRADE 7/8C CELEBRATE
- SECONDARY ALL SCHOOLS CROSS COUNTRY 2018
- BUSH FOODS FOREST PROJECT
- CHESS
- BICHENO GENERAL PRACTICE
- HEALTHY BONES ACTION WEEK
PRINCIPALS REPORT
I would like to continue to express my appreciation of the support from our community concerning the challenges we face regarding the current building works. In the coming weeks we will be moving into the new Administration area with the Performing Arts being completed a few weeks later. The excitement is rising as we come to the completion of Stage 1 and are looking forward to utilising the space, especially for our Arts on Tour performances and end of year assembly. In addition, we are planning a big opening either at the end of this year or in Term 1 2019.
The 2016 Education Act continues to roll out policy documents and we are currently working with the St Marys District School, School Association who are providing feedback on some of these policy documents.
As the warmer weather approaches, we are gearing up to open the swimming pool. As a community service, we have provided opportunities to access CPR training, an OH&S requirement. This year we have hit a snag, as only a small number of people need CPR. This has resulted some challenges, in making training financially viable and accessing trainers to take the training. We are working hard behind the scenes to seek a resolution, meantime we appreciate your patience in this matter.
As a school, we are continuing to build relationships with our colleagues at St Helens District School and Bicheno Primary. Last week as a group of schools, we were successful in attaining a grant that will be spread over two years, and that will enable the three schools to focus on the middle years of schooling. Middle Years of Schooling is generally accepted as covering Years 5 to 8 in schools though this can vary slightly. These are the last years of Primary and the first years of Secondary education. It is also a period when student’s lives undergo significant physical, emotional and even mental changes. We strongly believe that developing and implementing specific programs and/or settings addressing these issues will benefit students and their achievement.
Reminders;
- Students are not to be on school site before 8:30am.
- Students are constantly reminded not to ride their bike or scooter down the school driveway. A kindly reminder by parents will add further support of the dangers, especially with buses and other vehicles using the driveway.
Finally, this week is Support staff week where we recognise the tireless work our support staff do in keeping the cogs moving here at St Marys. We will be hosting a Morning Tea as a way of recognising and showing our appreciation and our support of these hardworking staff members. Support staff this year have been outstanding on so many levels.
School Calendar
WINTER FEAST 2018
A most successful evening was had by all at the St Marys District School Farm Winter Feast on 28th June 2018.
Produce from the school farm was showcased in soups, curries, potato bakes, jacket potatoes, finger food, as well as a smoked wee pig and lamb shanks and desserts. School vegetables, fruits and meats (chicken, pork and lamb) were utilised in the dishes.
Great music by Lochie Aulich, Georgia Buckingham and Erinn Spilsbury added to the evening’s ambiance. Thank you, fine musicians.
We would also like to thank the following people:
- Bruce Cornelius for using the smoker to cook the meat. Some other 9/10 students assisted with the building of the smoker.
- Hannah Papworth for making the mulled wine and her duties as RSA.
- Ian Coatsworth for providing oysters.
- Hayley Gilbert for her awesome cooking.
- Rachel Hodge and her Hospitality Enterprise students for assisting by cooking some of the food.
- Dilys Fyle for her donation of wine for the mulled wine.
- St Marys Golf Club for the loan of the bain marie.
- Geoff Springer from St Marys Fire Brigade.
We would like to also thank everyone who attended to support the school farm. It was a fantastic, fun night and we look forward to seeing everyone for the event in 2019.
VALUE CARD WINNER FOR 6TH JULY 2018
Claire Ward - Prep-1 Wills |
Connor McPhee - Grade 1-2 Bennett |
Ella Gillies - Grade Prep - 1 Wills |
George Austin - Grade 1-2 Bennett |
Lochie Miller - Grade 1-2 Bennett |
Oskar Wilson - Grade 3-4 Hodge/Cook |
Oskar Wilson - Grade 3-4 Hodge/Cook |
Tia Nicol - Grade Prep-1 Wills |
Zoey Jones - Grade 5-6 Williams
MERIT CERTIFICATE WINNERS
GRADE PREP – 1 WILLS





GRADE 1-2 BENNETT




Grade 2-3 Gray/Stanford





GRADE 3-4 HODGE/COOK



GRADE 5-6 WILLIAMS





GRADE 5-6 PAPWORTH




Classy Koala Award
2019 Student Guide Years 11/12
Information on 2019 TASC courses and VET programs available for students planning a course of study in Years 11 and 12.
https://documentcentre.education.tas.gov.au/_layouts/15/DocIdRedir.aspx?ID=TASED-1797567314-9313
Child and Student Wellbeing Strategy Launched
The Department of Education understands that wellbeing is vital in supporting Tasmanian children to reach their potential.
The recent release of the Department first Wellbeing Strategy places young Tasmanians at the forefront of our efforts to improve wellbeing and deliver better outcomes for students.
We know that many of our students face significant challenges and barriers to learning and the Wellbeing Strategy will go a long way in helping remove these hurdles.
That is why the Government has invested $17.8 million over four years to address student wellbeing within our public education system.
Improving mental health will be the first focus area under the Strategy, with an Action Plan to be released at the start of 2019.
The Action Plan will address some key issues experienced by our children and students, such as resilience, depression and anxiety, and cyber safety.
Action Plans will also be released in 2020 and 2021 addressing physical health and the environment, and focusing on wellbeing in the eyes of the young person.
The Strategy dovetails with the Tasmanian Child and Youth Wellbeing Framework released earlier this year.
More information on the Wellbeing Strategy can be found here.
The New Child Care Subsidy
On 2nd July 2018 the Child Care Subsidy replaced the Child Care Benefit and Child Care Rebate . The Child Care Subsidy is paid directly to services to be passed onto families.
There are also changes to the annual cap which will make child care more affordable for most families.
Three things determine a family’s level of Child Care Subsidy:
- A family’s annual adjusted taxable income determines the percentage of subsidy they are eligible for
- An activity test determines how many hours of subsidised care families can access, up to a maximum of 100 per fortnight, and
- The type of child care service determines the hourly rate cap.
More information about individual subsidy rates and annual cap changes is available in the New Child Care Package brochure.
Some basic requirements must be satisfied for an individual to be eligible to receive Child Care Subsidy for a child. These include:
- the age of the child (must be 13 or under and not attending secondary school)
- the child meeting immunisation requirements
- the individual, or their partner, meeting the residency requirements.
For more information, please visit this website
https://www.education.gov.au/ChildCarePackage
Safe Gaming - 5 Tips
5 tips to create a safe gaming environment for your child
Research
- Many games may contain themes, language and images that are unsuitable for your child and vary in their levels of violent or sexual content. You can check the age guidelines and classification of individual games through information available on its website or product box or at the Australian Classification Board.
- Useful information about games ratings can also be obtained from the Pan European Game Information (PEGI) and the US Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB).
- Review sites can also be a good source of information about age appropriate content – check out the Australian Council on Children and the Media , Kiwi Families (NZ), Common Sense Media (US), Parents’ Choice (US) and Ask About Games (UK).
- See our Parental controls, Movies and games and Games, apps and social networking pages for more information.
Get involved
- Talk regularly with your child about their gaming interests and who they play with online. Help them understand the risks of excessive gaming.
- Play alongside your child to get a better sense of how they are handling their personal information and who they are communicating with.
Prepare
- Use available parental controls and establish rules well in advance about gaming use, including time limits, personal information they should not share and designate where they can play. Get your child to use a screen name that doesn’t reveal their real name and locate the computer or games console in an open area of your home (or if they are playing on their hand held device get them to do it in the family room).
- Agree on strategies for them to switch off, like a timer that signals that game time is nearly over, and the consequences for not switching off.
- Install current security software on all devices to protect against viruses, malware and other online threats, and teach your kids not to click on links provided by strangers, like cheat programs to help with game play.
- Activate parental controls and settings to restrict access to certain sites and content and to help prevent any excessive spending on in-game and in-app purchases.
Monitor
- Monitor the time your child spends online and keep a look out for any changes in your child’s activity, school or social behaviours.
- Encourage your child to tell you if they are being cyberbullied or if another user is making them uncomfortable – they can ‘block’ players or report any threatening or suspicious behaviour to the game’s administrators. If you suspect your child is being groomed online by a stranger, you can report this to the Australian Federal Police on the Child exploitation form.
Empower
- Provide your child with strategies to deal with negative online experiences. Our Young & eSafe site is a good starting point as it helps empower young people to take control of their online experiences. It includes real life stories from young people and expert advice and tips on how to make a positive impact in their online world.
For more information and resources about cyber safety, visit the Office of the e Safety Commissioner
https://www.esafety.gov.au/
SCHOOL HEALTH NURSE
Some things that will be happening with the School Health Nurse, Esther in Term 3.
Activities with the School Health Nurse will be on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 1.00pm to 1.25pm (during lunch break). This will include craft, health and wellbeing activities with any students who wish to attend. Some activities I will be running are card making and a talk about letting people know that we appreciate them; and hygiene activity work book and a talk about the importance of personal hygiene and good sleep patterns.
Hearing and vision assessments are available to any students that have concerns about their hearing or vision, I just need verbal consent for student’s parent or guardian. Please contact me or let their teacher know if you would like an assessment done.
I can also provide one on one support/education to students as needed with health and wellbeing issues.
I will be providing education session to some classes during this term.
Esther Beveridge
School Health Nurse
SCHOOL CHAPLAIN
It is wonderful to be back working at the school after having taken time off for the birth of my adorable daughter, Victoria. For the remainder of the year, I will be running lunchtime mindfulness/relaxation programs on Tuesdays and Wednesdays - open to all students (and staff too). Last week, it was a windy day, so we did a mindfulness activity of ‘blowing your worries away’ – in which you think about placing your worries in an imaginary bubble and letting them float away and disappear – we then headed outdoors and had some fun blowing some real bubbles and watching them disappear. Mindfulness is a great way to connect the mind, body, breath and emotions, and to build resilience. Along with gardening, singing, and walking, I enjoy doing mindfulness activities to relax and take time out in a busy day. Do you?
Hannah Rubenach- Quinn
Chaplain
Tuesdays and Wednesdays
BOOK WEEK IS COMING
BOOK WEEK 2018
St Marys District School
Dates: Monday 20th August – Friday 24th August
Theme: …find your TREASURE…
Bringing Book Week to Our Community
Costume Day:
Wednesday 22nd August
Students to dress-up as their favourite book character or something related to this year’s theme.
Children’s Book Council Australia (CBCA) 2018 theme –
‘…find your TREASURE.’
Book Week Parade – All Welcome
SMDS students - in costume, will parade through the St Mary’s township.
Please refer to Book Week parent letter for parade route.
Date: Wednesday 22nd
August,
Time: Leave school front entrance at
11:20am
Classroom supporting activities
Throughout the week, students will be involved in a myriad of Book Week activities. See your child’s classroom teacher and find out how you might assist with…
- designing and decorating a themed classroom door
- being a surprise classroom guest reader
- assisting with the bookmark activity
- ideas welcomed
find
your
TREASURE
What will your treasure be?
GETTING TO KNOW CHARACTERS
Readers have big jobs to do – especially when it involves getting to know characters!
In Term 2, our Early Childhood students learned how to be more thoughtful fiction readers by paying attention to characters before, during and after reading. They noticed that characters have feelings which can change throughout a story - yet, character traits often stay fixed. Traits help form the personality of a character. Authors call readers to ‘step into the shoes of characters’ so that they can learn important lessons through the character’s journey. Our readers asked themselves questions for example: How do characters change and grow? What lessons can I learn through these characters? How can I connect these lessons to my own life? Often this is rigorous work, calls on young readers to ‘roll up their sleeves’ and think hard about the text, seeking the author’s intention within the text as well as going beyond the text by making connections to our world.
By the end of the reading unit, students discovered that characters can become our friends who help us learn about our lives as well as helping us to think differently or gain a better understanding about the people who are in our own lives.
To acknowledge the strong work our readers accomplished, a fun filled ‘Character Day’ celebration was held to applaud and mark the end of the reading unit.
Thank you to all who participated and assisted. Please enjoy these pictures from the Early Childhood Character Day celebration.
Lynette Yodgee
Literacy Coach





PEER SUPPORT
On Friday afternoons the students in 5/6 Williams have been working with the Prep/1 and 1/2 classes. They are starting to develop their own lessons and activities to run with the younger children.





LEARNING TOGETHER - PREP/1 AND GRADE 1/2
Over the past few weeks, Prep/1 Wills and Grade 1/2 Bennett have enjoyed collaborating together in a range of fun activities. Prep/1 Wills have been investigating spiders and insects during their information texts unit, while Grade 1/2 Bennett have been learning about push and pull forces in Science. Last week they demonstrated their learning during a fun craft afternoon. They made some fantastic spiders and vehicles together.





On Friday, 3rd August, Grade 1/2 Bennett harvested their first plants from their new garden beds. Students harvested some bok choy which was used to make a delicious noodle soup in the kitchen under the guidance of Bree Piscitelli. Grade Prep/1 Wills joined us for the afternoon and students made some focaccia bread to accompany their soup. Students had a fabulous afternoon enjoying the fruits of their labours together. Many thanks to Bree Piscitelli, Amanda Walker and Colin Williams for their wonderful assistance in the kitchen. We are hoping, the weather warms up and we have more produce from the garden, that these fun cooking experiences will happen more frequently.





LIFT K-2
FRUIT DONATIONS
A big thank you to Dennis and Anne Calder from Eureka Farm in Upper Scamander, who have been donating fruit for any students in need of an apple or pear during daily “Fruit Break”. The students tell me that the apples are delicious, and I can vouch for the pears! Yum!
Please continue to pack fruit or vegetables in your child’s lunch box for “Fruit Break” as our donations are only intended to fill the gaps. Students particularly like carrot sticks if your fruit bowl is running low. Students are generally not permitted to eat other food items during this dedicated fruit/vegetable time.
FEED MY FAMILY PROGRAM
LIFT has teamed up with Building Blocks and local chef Bree Piscitelli, successfully securing a Community Grant to run a new program we are calling “Feed My Family”. This program will be offered to students K-2 and their parents over the next 12 months. The program looks at healthy food choices, offers food tasting and cooking, information on food labelling and parents attain a Food Handling Certificate. We will also host some twilight sessions in the garden, with seasonal planting and cooking from garden to plate. See our photo gallery!
If anyone has any old display folders with the plastic pockets, please donate them to LIFT so we can make recipe books.





SPORTING SCHOOLS
LIFT has teamed up with our Sporting Schools program to offer soccer skills in our K-2 area, during school hours in Terms 3 and 4. Local Sporting Schools Soccer Coach, Bronwyn (St Helens Soccer Club), will be working with our students in the upcoming months. Notices will be sent out closer to the dates, inviting parents to join in with their child and have some active fun!
LIBRARY GAMES
With the library currently out of action, students will temporarily swap games from a box in their classroom. Please encourage your child to return and swap games on their usual library day. If there are any difficulties, please send a note and I will endeavour to assist.
THANK YOU MR CAMPBELL
The football goals are very good. They make it much easier to tell if it is a goal or a point. We all think it is a much easier way to learn new skills and improve our accuracy. They are a good size for the little kids and for us big kids also.
Thank you very much.
Cheers
Ashton Gilles – Grade 5 Papworth
Thank You Mr Campbell For Our Footy Success
What the football goals mean to us:
- They have allowed us to improve our goal kicking
- Now we can tell if it is a post or a goal
- We now know where the goal posts are
- People won’t have to take their jumpers and hats off to use as goal posts
- Now we can’t run through the goals and point posts
In conclusion, we are very thankful of the football goals.
From all of the footy players at St Marys Primary we thank you for your support and the fun times.
Jimmy Freiboth
Grade 6 Student Leader Vice President





GRADE 7/8C CELEBRATE
A huuuuge thank you to my lovely 7-8 C class for organising a baby shower for me. You are all greatly appreciated!
xx
Miss Coates





SECONDARY ALL SCHOOLS CROSS COUNTRY 2018
This year St Marys sent a small team of representatives to the Secondary All-Schools Cross Country event at Symmons Plains Raceway. Students were selected to run in this event if they placed at the Inter-High event. Students who participated were: Elijah Harvey, Darcey Scott, Louis and Xavier Langulant and Sofia Agostonelli. All students ran extremely well in very challenging weather conditions. Darcey Scott was our best placed runner, finishing just outside the top 10. Congratulations to all runners who represented our school with dedication and the utmost sportsmanship, as always.
Laura Swanson
BUSH FOODS FOREST PROJECT
The Bush Foods Forest Project had a working bee on Saturday 4th of August. We worked hard spreading mulch and removing fencing, ready for planting in September. This is the first phase of the Bush Foods Forest. The section will blend into the traditional vegetable patch and offer a variety of bush foods and fibres to use and learn about. The project is a community project, all are welcome to come along and learn about our native plants and their traditional uses. Our next session will be on Thursday 23rd August from 3:30pm. All are welcome to join us in finalising the beds for planting, followed by some soup and a planning session. Children must be supervised by parents. Thank you to all who came along and worked so hard on Saturday! It was certainly satisfying to see the enormous mulch pile diminish.



CHESS
The East Coast Chess Tournament was held at St Marys District School on Monday. Students from Bicheno and St Helens travelled up the hill to take part along with Primary and Secondary students from St Marys.
The Grade 3 were a little nervous but soon realised how the day would progress and relaxed to concentrate on their games. After a major technical problem following Round 1 things went well. Happy faces delivered their results to the coordinator and tables were set up for the next round.
It was great to see our senior team give advice to the younger players in a mentoring way.
With sickness keeping some of our Primary A team away we did well to gain some good results.
Primary B finished in 2nd place behind St Helens Primary 2 team.
Primary A finished in 3rd place with St Helens Primary 1 team.
Secondary 7/8 team finished 3rd in the Senior competition which was won in fine style by our Number 1 team of David Escobar, Ryan Madden, Matt Grayson, Leo Taylor, Monique Dufty and Fraser Russell.





BICHENO GENERAL PRACTICE
Please be advised the Bicheno General Practice is able to provide free meningococcal vaccine to all student. Parents are able to contact the surgery on 6375 1455 to book an appointment.
All parents would have received a letter from the government informing them of this disease/vaccination programme which is free to all children aged 6 weeks to 21 years.
HEALTHY BONES ACTION WEEK
Celebrate Healthy Bones Action Week from August 20-26!
Established in 1994, Healthy Bones Action Week is a national health education week designed to encourage all Aussies to take three simple actions to build strong and healthy bones and to help prevent Osteoporosis later in life;
- Have calcium-rich dairy foods e.g. milk, cheese and yoghurt,
- Do weight bearing exercise and
- Spending time outdoors for Vitamin D
Building and growing healthy bones is important for all ages. We want to help spread the word and educate Australian families on the importance of having enough nutrients, Vitamin D and exercise needed for building and maintaining healthy bones.
To find out more about Healthy Bones Action Week, keep an eye out for posters around the school, chat to your teacher or find out more at this website;
http://www.dairy.edu.au/DiscoverDairy
NOTICEBOARD
Table Tennis - Community Group - St Marys School Gym
Read More