St Marys District School
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13 Gray Road
St Marys TAS 7215
Subscribe: https://stmarysdistricts.schoolzineplus.com/subscribe

st.marys.district.school@education.tas.gov.au
Phone: 03 6372 3900

9 April 2020

Newsletter Articles

#SMDS@home Term 2 Learning Packs

Our staff have had a busy week planning and collating work to get everyone off to a great start in Term Two, which commences Tuesday 28 April, 2020.

Learning packs will be distributed during the second week of the holidays via the following methods:

FINGAL COMMUNITY

Learning packs for families living in the Fingal can be collected from Fingal Campus on Thursday 23 April 9.00am – 11.00pm.

MATHINNA COMMUNITY

Learning packs for families living in the Mathinna Community can be collected from the Mathinna Sports Ground on Thursday 23 April 12.00-1.00pm.

ST MARYS COMMUNITY

Learning packs for families living in the St Marys Community can be collected from St Marys Campus

Thursday 23 April 1.00pm – 3.00pm OR
Friday 24 April 9.00am-12.00pm

SCAMANDER/FOURMILE/FALMOUTH

Old Bridge turning circle Friday 24 April 9.00am – 10.00am
Bottom of St Marys Pass Friday 24 April 10.30am – 11.00am
Bicheno – outside Bicheno Penguin Tours Friday 24 April 12.00pm – 1.00PM

Please help us by:

Emailing st.marys.district.school@education.tas.gov.au, or messaging us on Facebook with the following information: Student first and family name, class and your preferred book pack pick up location.

Example: billy blogs 7/8 – Collect Bicheno

We really appreciate your help in getting term 2 off to a smooth start.

Principal’s Report

Firstly I wanted to thank the school community - parents/carers, students and extended family for your understanding, co-operation and support with the unique set of circumstances that we have experienced so far this year. It is truly appreciated. We all hope that families are feeling and doing okay, staying home and staying safe and well in these unprecedented times.

Our staff have been working collaboratively to plan and develop learning packages for students for Term 2. Staff are also furthering their own professional development through regular online workshops to ensure that they can continue to provide quality education programs for your children. This has been a massive undertaking and I want to public recognise their professionalism, dedication and commitment to the students of St Marys District School.

As we move into Term 2, we must remember that learning may be potentially very different to what previous experiences have been. Learning may not be 9-3. You may decide three breaks are better than 2. We will need to be flexible and patient as we all develop ways of working while learning from home. This is true for everyone – there will be new learning for everyone involved. We need to be prepared to start small and build up to “full time” to develop good habits and ways of working that meet the needs of everyone involved, including parents.

As a school there will be challenges about how much work to set, in what format, and what balance of online and offline activities are appropriate for those students undertaking combined learning formats. Please know that we are doing our best to ensure that the learning offered meets the needs and circumstances of your child. For learners developing routines for working at home will be important. This will come with time and student independence will be a skill we are hoping grows with time and the challenge involved in learning away from school. For parents please know that we are here to support you as well as your child. It is important for you to know that this is a partnership and we will need to develop this over time for the best outcomes. Please note, we will be asking parents of students working from offline work packs to phone the school when they require the next pack to be set home. This will support a differentiated approach for each family rather than a ‘one size fits all’ approach.

Above all we will keep communicating as quickly as we can to ensure that you are fully aware of any developments. We will continue to use Facebook, Schoolzine, SMS, email and phone calls to support regular communication and connections between home and school. If you have an email address that we don’t have and that you are happy for us to use to communicate with you we would appreciate a phone call or even an email to the school administration address: St.Marys.District.School@education.tas.gov.au with your details.

Further information in regards to Term 2 Learning can be found in the link below.

We look forward to staying in touch with families in terms of learning needs but more importantly if there are other concerns or issues that you or your children need support with. Please contact the school so we can continue our support for all our students. We don’t want Learning from Home to be a barrier to ensuring the safety and well-being of our students.

Please be safe in these challenging times and wishing all members of our school community a happy family focused holiday.

Kind regards,
Carolyn Watson

Learning From Home

The Department of Education has developed a site of useful ideas for Learning at Home. Many of these ideas don’t require computer use.

https://www.education.tas.gov.au/learning-at-home/

St Marys District School Facebook Page

Are you part of our School Facebook Page? We are finding in this current situation, that our Facebook page is a valuable communication tool to help keep our families up to date on what’s going on.

Follow this link to like our page:

https://www.facebook.com/StMarysDistrictSchool

Use of School Playgrounds

CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

St Marys District School play grounds and equipment must not be used by anyone during the holiday period to support Australian Government regulations - NO use of playgrounds and outdoor gyms. We have placed signage up on our school playgrounds indicating they are closed until further notice.

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.

BEATING COVID-19 STRESS AND WORRIES

Useful Links

Our support team have provided some great links and contacts to help families at home.

https://brave4you.psy.uq.edu.au/

https://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/getting-help/self-help-tools-apps/bite-back

https://www.biteback.org.au/

Government Financial Support Options

https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/individuals/subjects/affected-coronavirus-covid-19

Crisis support for Families and Individuals

Red Cross – 1800 733 276

https://www.redcross.org.au/

Salvation Army – 13 72 58

https://www.salvationarmy.org.au/need-help/

City Mission Australia – 63 35 3000

https://www.citymission.org.au/

Anglicare – 1800 243 232

https://www.anglicare-tas.org.au/when-life-is-difficult/

Mental Health Support

Life Line – 13 11 14
Beyond Blue – 1300 224 636
Kids Help Line – 1800 555 000
Mental Health Help Line – 1800 332 388

https://headspace.org.au/eheadspace/

School Calendar

Sync Calendar

School Calendar

Term 4 Commences

All day

LIL 10.30-11.30 Kinder

All day

Pre Kinder Group 1 9-10am

All day

Grade 3 Sleepover

16 Oct 2025 - 17 Oct 2025

TasBGas Construction Skill Set Student interviews - Ref Tanya time tbc

All day

Construction Skill-Set Interviews

All day

HoL PL - KG, WI

All day

Kinder Excursion- St Marys Town Hall Children's Week

All day

Pre Kinder Group 2 9-10am

All day

LIL 10.30-11.30 Kinder

All day

NC/LC Enrolment Interviews

All day

Grade 9 Camp - CYC Blue Lagoon

27 Oct 2025 - 29 Oct 2025

Immunisation Catchups - if required

All day

Grade 5 Camp Rostrevor

29 Oct 2025 - 30 Oct 2025

LIL 10.30-11.30 St Marys Hall

All day

Pre Kinder 9-10am

All day

Transition visit 4 BPS Y6 to SMDS - OPTIONS Day

All day

World Teachers' Day 2025

All day

Student Free Day - Professional Learning

All day

Recreation Day (Northern Tas only)

All day

HoL Pyegana Dairy Co

All day

'Knock Knock' Performance K-4 PAC

11:15 AM - 12:15 PM

Kinder Excursion Serpentarium

All day

Pre Kinder 9-10am

All day

LIL 10.30-11.30 PAC

All day

Sporting Schools Surf Groms Gr 5/6

All day

Secondary Athletics Carnival

All day

PAC/Common Room closed for Student Exhibition Set Up

07 Nov 2025 - 14 Nov 2025

RYDA (Simmons Plains)

All day

National Theatre Company Water Literacy Performance 3-6 2.15pm

All day

National Theatre Company Water Literacy Performance K-2 1.30

All day

2025 Student Exhibition

All day

Year 11/12 EOY Lunch @TBC

All day

LIL 10.30-11.30 Kinder

All day

Inter-High Athletics @ St Leonards

All day

Pre Kinder 9-10am

All day

Recurring event

OUR WEEK AT SCHOOL

Staff and a number of students attended school 30 March – 3rd April for the last week of Term 1. Social distancing, joke competitions on the green, impromptu music sessions, sewing, storms and flooding kept everyone busy.

SMSDS

THE BRAVE PROGRAM

There are a lot of negative and stressful events occurring in our world every day – but when something like coronavirus (COVID-19) becomes so pervasive that it affects almost every country in the world, and is talked about almost every hour of the day, we, along with our children and teenagers, can become quite anxious. The Brave online program is a great resource for parents and students to help manage this anxiety and also has information specific to coronavirus. Check out the links below for further information.

https://brave4you.psy.uq.edu.au/

https://www.brave-online.com/beating-stress-and-worries-about-coronavirus-covid-19/

GRADE 3/4 BENNETT – WATER PAINTINGS

The students in Mrs Bennett’s class explored paintings inspired by the bushfires in our community in December & January. March saw them experiencing heavy rains and floods and inspired these beautiful water themed pieces of art.

BLUE

PREP -5 STANFORD/GARTH

Hoppy Easter

Some lucky people will be receiving these beautiful Easter Cards and Crafts made by the students and Mrs Stanford at Fingal Campus. Aren’t they Eggcellent!

EASTER

ANZAC Heroes

If you have driven past the Fingal Campus lately, you may have been lucky enough to see these beautiful silhouettes created by Mrs Stanford/Garth’s class. The silhouettes in red and black, the colour of the remembrance poppy depict images commemorating our ANZAC heroes. Students have learnt about the heroes from the past, as well as modern day heroes as part of their unit of work around ANZAC Day.

ANZAC DAY 2020

In the interest of the safety of our war veterans and the wider community, the RSL have unfortunately cancelled ANZAC day services around the country.

WE CAN STILL REMEMBER THEM

In a media statement on 3rd, RSL Tasmania has encouraged all Tasmanians to commemorate ANZAC Day on the 25th of April in a different way than how they traditionally pay their respects to those who have fallen in service to this country.

RSL Tasmania State President, Robert Dick said “although we are devastated by the need to cancel traditional ANZAC Day commemorations this year, we’ve been encouraged by the alternatives many of our community have shared. RSL Tasmania has adopted the Light up the Dawn campaign, and we ask that at 6am on ANZAC Day, let’s gather – separate but united – at the end of our driveways or on our balconies and observe a minute’s silence as the sun rises.”

CRAFT ACTIVITY – Light up the Dawn

Candle holders, 2lt milk cartons & permanent marker pens.
Cut down your milk cartons to size.
Free hand draw or choose a simple outline picture and place on the inside of the
milk carton, trace the outline and colour in.
Fill base with sand for weight and safety.
Place in a tea light, candle, battery operated light.
Light up the Dawn on April 25th

Please share with us your ANZAC day craft and how you remembered by messaging us on our Facebook Page or emailing your pictures to st.marys.district.school@education.tas.gov.au

Anzac Craft

Rainy Day Easter Sewing

Students who attended school last week participated in an Easter Sewing craft activity. Please enjoy these photos.

BIG BAND

Students and staff combined on Friday 3rd April to a smile on everyone’s face with this piece of music which was learnt in one lesson.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCON6N1G2NY

PRIMARY CHALK DRAWING

Last week some of our Primary Students started work on complicated piece of chalk drawing. It was looking fabulous until it rained!

#SMDS@home

Many students learnt from home last week. Here is a gallery of all of their activities.

KINDERGARTEN

Our Kindergarten students have been investigating shapes.

We have been learning to:

  • recognise shapes in the environment,
  • identify and name common shapes,
  • describe features of shapes – such as sides and corners,
  • understand that shapes make up our world and that certain shapes are suited to a particular purpose.

To show their understanding of shapes, students used a selection of shapes to create their own pictures.

GRADE 1-2 HILLIARD

This term the Year 1/2’s enjoyed listening to some of the pigeon series of storybooks written by Mo Willems. We then created our own pigeons using acrylic and watercolour paint. We love how different and special each pigeon turned out.

Hilliard

You can find out more about the Pigeon series as well as Piggie, Knuffle Bunny, Leonardo and more on Mo’s website – Pigeon Presents. The site has reviews of books, activities and more.

http://pigeonpresents.com/

GRADE 3-4 GRAY/KELLY

In Science Grade 3/4 Gray Kelly having been learning about the relationship between some plants and animals.

In doing so we have been learning about insects and their body parts.

In Art we practised what we had learnt in Science by drawing and painting different insects.

Gray

GRADE 5/6 FYLE/COOK

Did you know that Maths can create patterns?

These patterns were created using the digit pattern of the 3x table – 3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 27 30 so we use 3 6 9 2 5 8 1 4 7 0 to create a 10 pointed star. All tables can be used to create various patterns in the same way.

Fyle - cook

HOME IS WHERE THE ART IS

Are you feeling arty and looking for something to do in the holidays? See details below of Zart’s art completion “HOME is where the ART is…..”

https://www.zartart.com.au/zartstatic/page/home-art-competition

COMMONWEALTH BANK MESSAGE FOR PARENTS

The health, safety and wellbeing of our communities and our people remains our highest priority. Due to the ongoing uncertainty surrounding coronavirus, the School Banking program will remain on hold. We will continue to monitor the situation and keep you informed with any updates including how we will be managing Dollarmite tokens for students.

In the meantime, here are some handy online resources for parents who wish to maintain momentum with their child’s financial education:

  • Start Smart: these resources have been created to improve children’s money management skills, and is aligned to the Australian Curriculum and the National Consumer Financial Literacy Framework.

https://www.startsmart.com.au/teacher-resources/primary-resources/

  • The Beanstalk: offers videos and fun activities for children to learn about money.

https://www.commbank.com.au/personal/can/teaching-kids-about-money.html?ei=tl_visit-beanstalk

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