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Principal's Newsletter
Hello to our wonderful Franklin community!
As I sit here and write this update, I cannot believe we have only had 25 days of school so far. This is because it has been absolutely jam-packed with wonderful learning, activities and opportunities for student success. Below are a few updates about our school.
Successful Start to NAPLAN We are thrilled to announce a successful start to this year's NAPLAN assessments. Our students have shown great dedication and resilience, and we are proud of their efforts. It continues next week with a focus on Numeracy and Language Conventions, and we look forward to seeing their final results later this year.
Progressive Achievement Testing in the Early Years Our Early Years students have recently participated in Progressive Achievement Testing (PAT). This testing helps us understand each child's learning progress and areas where they may need additional support. The results will guide our teaching strategies to ensure every student receives the best possible education tailored to their needs.
Clean Up Australia Day's Cleaning up Franklin Township Our school community came together for Clean Up Australia Day, focusing on cleaning up the Franklin foreshore. It was heartwarming to see students, and staff working side by side to make a positive impact on our environment. Thank you to everyone who participated and helped make our community cleaner and greener and thank you to Ella and Neil for organising this amazing event.
HPE Lessons from Tennis Tasmania and Hockey Tasmania This term, our Health and Physical Education (HPE) lessons have been enriched by sessions from Tennis Tas and Hockey Tas. Students have enjoyed learning new skills and the importance of physical activity. These lessons have not only been fun but also a great way to promote a healthy lifestyle among our students. Great job Mr Mitchell.
Looking Forward to Day of Delight on Wednesday the 19th of March We are excited about the upcoming Day of Delight on Wednesday, the 19th of March. This special day is filled with activities designed to bring joy and foster a sense of community within the Huon Valley B-5 programs. We encourage all parents with children B-5 to participate and make the most of this delightful day in Geeveston.
Once again, I continue to thank you for your continued support and involvement in our school community.
James Milne
Principal
Student Leadership at Franklin Primary School
This week, we were fortunate to witness our students step up and showcase their leadership potential during the SRC speeches. Students from Years 3 to 6 courageously prepared and delivered their speeches, sharing their ideas on how they could contribute to making Franklin Primary School an even better place.
Public speaking can be a daunting experience, but every student should be immensely proud of their efforts in overcoming any nerves and confidently presenting their case. Their ability to express their ideas, articulate their vision, and demonstrate leadership qualities was truly commendable. If we could have elected every student, we absolutely would have!
Parents, you should be incredibly proud of the resilience and confidence your children displayed throughout this process. The quality of speeches reflected the strength of our school community and the bright future ahead with these young leaders at the helm.
We are pleased to announce the 2025 Student Representative Council (SRC):
Millie M
Tildie M
Lewis P
Archie M
Maisy W
Addison W
Maddy A
Jedd B
Finn SS
Alice S
Maddi B
Additionally, we would like to congratulate our newly elected House Captains who will lead their teams with pride and enthusiasm:
River - Blue House:
Eliza S
Xavier L
Mountain - Yellow House:
Hunter S
William A
Congratulations to all students who participated in this process. We are excited to see our SRC and House Captains take on their roles, represent their peers, and make a positive impact in our school community.
Making a Difference: Franklin Primary School’s Clean Up Australia Day
On Tuesday, 4th March, our students and staff took part in Clean Up Australia Day, an event dedicated to making our environment cleaner and more sustainable. The day was a fantastic success, with students eager to roll up their sleeves and contribute to the local community.
With great enthusiasm, our students cleaned up key areas around Franklin, including the Foreshore, Oval, Park, and the streets near our school. Armed with gloves and rubbish bags, they worked together to remove litter, showing their commitment to caring for the environment and taking pride in their community.
The energy and engagement from our students were truly inspiring! They not only enjoyed the hands-on experience but also reflected on the importance of looking after our surroundings. This event has sparked conversations about how we can continue giving back to our community, and we are already exploring new ways to make a lasting impact.
A huge thank you to our students, staff, and families for supporting this initiative. By taking part in Clean Up Australia Day, we have made a real difference—not just to our local environment, but also in fostering a sense of responsibility and teamwork in our students.
Let’s keep up the momentum and continue to work together to protect and enhance our beautiful Franklin community!
Ella Heather & Neil Holmstrom
Community Engagement
Kitchen Garden News
We were looking at all things compost in kitchen garden last week. Children sorted various items into ‘yes’ and ‘no’ camps, with the 5/6s even undertaking a compost quiz, for bragging rights! Well done the Raspberry Crisps!
The 2/3s helped build our first layer of our compost lasagne – with classes receiving their new compost buckets this week to get cracking.
My cooking group, from the 2/3s picked zucchini from the garden and made zucchini slice to share with their class for morning tea. There wasn’t a piece left, so it must have tasted alright. I was so impressed by the way they listened to instructions and conducted themselves in the kitchen.
Herbs are a glorious thing! This week the children have been learning the names of a variety of herbs and their uses.
Mrs Stagg
This fortnight the kinder have worked on two letters a letter A and the letter T we have continued to explore our names and how many letters are in our name and we have also been practising writing our name a lot!
From our discussions around farms we talked about how there’s lots of farms in and around Franklin like Apple farms and cherry farms so we decided to talk about our community. We then made our own huge Franklin map with a river and boats.
We have loved spending time in our garden space and enjoyed planting our tiny new seedlings during garden and we have been expert bug catchers.
The last two weeks in Prep/1 we have been getting stuck into the real UFLI lessons, and creating our routines and expectations. It’s very structured and is the same daily, which is great because we know exactly what to do and what is expected and we can really focus on the content.
We have branched out from the Cartela, to look at the places in our Franklin community. We have been using Google Earth (which is so fun!) to take a virtual walk through Franklin to remind ourselves of the notable places we have. We have drawn the places in Franklin and are connecting them to a Google Earth image of Franklin to see where they are located.
In contrast we have also been using Google Earth to look at where SD Mutiara Anak Sholeh is located, what it looks like from a birds eye view and also what it looks like from the street. We have studied these photos and recorded our noticing and wonderings around the town of Sidoarjo in comparison to Franklin.
In science with Ms Frusher we have been looking at the noticeable features of animals, and have been able to use our powers of observation with the amazing animals she has been borrowing from TMAG.
We have been talking about compost with Mrs Stagg and have our very own compost bucket in class to contribute to the compost for our school garden.
It is hard to believe we are halfway through the term already, but here we are!
The last two weeks have been filled with team building. We’ve looked at how we are all different with different strengths, interests and challenges. We created a patchwork of our individual strengths and saw how they came together as a whole. We’ve celebrated our differences and talked about what we need to learn.
We’ve played games together to demonstrate our strengths – and learned how to support each other to learn.
We’ve also been investigating different ways to communicate and had a fun couple of afternoons looking at Semaphore, Texting and Morse Code. How are they similar and different!
5/6 fortnightly Wrap-Up
Over the past fortnight, 5/6 took a slight detour from our narrative writing unit to dive into a mini-topic on The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, aligning with Clean Up Australia Day. The students were incredibly engaged as they researched what the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is, where it is located, why it exists, its effects on marine and human life, and what actions we can take to help.
To guide our thinking and acquire knowledge, we used online information sources, ensuring we summarised key points from websites to extract factual and relevant information. This process helped students develop critical research skills, including identifying credible sources and distinguishing fact from opinion.
Our learning extended beyond the classroom during the Clean Up Australia Day event at Franklin Foreshore, where 5/6 worked together to collect, sort, and analyse rubbish into recyclable and non-recyclable categories. As part of this investigation, students posed and refined questions about the types of waste found, then used online research to determine the decomposition rates of different materials. They evaluated credible sources to ensure the accuracy of their findings and summarised key information to guide their understanding. Using this real-world data, students applied mathematical thinking to represent their findings in graph form, carefully selecting the most effective way to display their results. Through this process, they not only developed their data analysis skills but also deepened their awareness of the long-term environmental impact of waste.
To wrap up our mini-topic, we reflected on what we can do to protect our environment. Our first step was to educate others about the effects of rubbish in our oceans, and this led to a last-minute assembly presentation. Despite the rushed preparation, so many students enthusiastically put their hands up to have a speaking role, demonstrating incredible courage and bravery in public speaking. We could not be prouder of 5/6 for stepping up and sharing their research and informative writing with the Franklin Primary community. Their confidence and willingness to educate others on such an important issue were truly inspiring.
Well done, 5/6!
