End of Term Newsletter – Principal’s Message
Date: 2 July 2025

Dear Parents, Carers, Students, and Staff,

Who would believe we are already halfway through the year!!!As we wrap up another successful term, I want to take a moment to celebrate the incredible achievements of our school community. It has been a term filled with growth, collaboration, and continued progress—and I couldn’t be prouder of what we’ve accomplished together.

One of the most exciting highlights this term has been our continued improvement in reading outcomes and student engagement. Across all year levels, we’ve seen students embracing literacy with enthusiasm and confidence. This is a testament to the dedication of our teaching staff, the support from families, and the hard work of our students.

We are also thrilled to share that our NAPLAN results have shown significant growth from year 3 to year 5, with our school performing above both the state average and similar schools. These results reflect the strength of our learning programs and the commitment to excellence that defines our school culture.

Together, we are building a learning environment where every child can thrive. Reflecting our school vision “Embracing community, growing together”.

Wishing you all a safe and restful break. We look forward to welcoming everyone back for another exciting term ahead.

Warm regards,
James Milne
Principal
Franklin Primary School

Dear Franklin Primary School Community,

It’s been another busy term for teaching and learning at school.

I’d like to start by thanking all of our hard-working teachers and TAs for all of their efforts in providing such rich learning opportunities for all students. Secondly, thanks to the families for your support and hard work in ensuring that your child’s learning doesn’t end at 3pm each weekday. Education is based on a strong partnership between schools and families, and I strongly believe that we have that here at Franklin Primary School. Lastly, I’d like to congratulate every one of our students for coming to school each day and trying your best. We have again seen much growth across a number of key learning areas, and I’m sure that I can speak for all the staff when I say it’s an absolute pleasure to play a part in your educational journey.

This term, we have continued to implement with fidelity a number of key strategies designed to drive further student achievement in reading. Our explicit reading programs (UFLI for P – 3 and Word Origins for 4 – 6) have become imbedded into every classroom, and we continue to track student progress using the DIBELs suite of reading assessments. Importantly,  our intervention programs (MiniLit: Years 1 – 2 and Macqlit: Years 3 – 6) are ensuring that all students receive the support they need as well.

In Term 3, we will be working hard to implement a consistent program across each grade to ensure that students develop the skills they need to read a variety of texts with fluency. This will form the basis of our Professional Learning Teams (PLT) inquiry for next term as well.

I hope all students and families have a relaxing break, and I look forward to seeing all of the amazing teaching and learning at our school continue next term.

Warm Regards,

Nick de Tarczynski

PLT Inquiry – Term 2, 2025
Focus: “How do we respond effectively to WO/UFLI review data to improve student results”?

In Term 2, I had the opportunity to lead our Professional Learning Teams through their second inquiry cycle for the year. This inquiry focused on enhancing our existing literacy programs — Word Origins (Years 4–6) and UFLI (Prep–Year 3). These programs are implemented through daily whole-class (Tier 1) instruction in every classroom.

Our inquiry guided us to use weekly assessment data to inform follow-up teaching and targeted interventions, ensuring all students can apply their learning effectively. Teachers used the resources within the WO/UFLI programs to enhance student learning  through choral and repeated reading, focus words for writing, highlighting and swapping words to show comprehension, repeated revision and application to other learning areas.

The assessment data indicates a strong start, with every class showing growth in mastering the focus concepts. I’m excited to continue leading our teams as we refine teaching strategies and review intervention practices.

Congratulations to both teams on their ongoing progress and positive growth.

Bec Witts
PLT Leader

Kinder syllable data

Prep UFLI data

Year 2 UFLI data

Year 3 UFLI data

4/5 Word Origins data

5/6 Word Origins data

Well, the long-awaited day finally arrived this week with the making of our school scarecrow! The 1/2s produced some great designs and we were able to make them come to life (some of them. The mermaid was a bit of a stretch) on Monday. The children were SO excited and had so much fun during this project. A huge thank you to all the families who donated materials and a special mention to Laura for her support during the making phase. We couldn’t have done it without you.

Our scarecrow is in need of a name, any ideas would be welcomed.

J is for Joyful Memories!

What an incredible final week we've had together, making lots of joyful memories!

This week, we truly embraced the letter J! We had a fantastic time making and tasting delicious orange juice, enjoyed some wobbly jelly, and even got creative designing our own colourful jumpers.

Our journey into stories and Julia Donaldson books continued with two more delightful tales: Zog the Dragon and A Squash and a Squeeze. Inspired by Zog, we channelled our inner dragons and made some fantastic dragon wings. We also put our heads together in small groups to design our own farms, bringing the world of A Squash and a Squeeze to life!

Our role-play areas were a huge hit again this week, with the pizza shop and grocery store buzzing with activity. The dress-ups were especially popular, sparking so many wonderful storytelling adventures and imaginative play.

In math, we kept up our hard work with numbers 1-10, focusing on matching digits to their correct amounts. It's been wonderful to see how much progress everyone has made!

A Heartfelt Thank You

As I finish my time as your child's teacher, I want to express my deepest gratitude, love, and thanks for being such a special part of this wonderful community. It has been an absolute honour to be a part of your child's learning journey, and I will truly miss each and every one of them. The memories we've made together will always hold a special place in my heart.

Thank you for your support, your trust, and for sharing your amazing children with me.

Warmly

Shannon Thrift 

What a busy term we have had in Prep/1! It’s hard to believe we are halfway through the year. We have:

• begun the term with Mrs Miffy while Ms Bec returned from Indonesia,
• completed our PAT and DIBELS testing,
• run the Cross Country,
• learnt to collect, represent and read data, covered part-part-whole, explored teen numbers or numbers to 120, made patterns and extended them, practised working with worded problems, worked on addition number sentences,
• done our daily UFLI lessons, practised our handwriting, blended and segmented sounds to read and write words, learnt to write sentences or improve them, practiced our reading fluency,
• done a term of science with Mrs Stagg,
• created amazing art with Tom,
• moved our bodies and learnt new skills in P.E,
• welcomed Eva to our class,
• gone on excursion to the museum,
• explored families and how they are the same, different and have changed over time, created our family trees,
• played in our post office,
• enjoyed Mrs Jones’ weekly chosen story and library sessions,

And much much more! The second half of the year will allow us to solidify our learnings and give us more opportunities to explore, question and wonder about the world around us.

The most recent thing we explored and wondered about was a typewriter that Eva bought in for us to have a go with. This highlighted the fact that typing in itself is a skill, and we need to learn how to do it. We opened up notes on the iPads and practised writing our names and a sentence about ourselves. Typing will become one of our regular tasks in class so we can take steps towards using technology as a tool.

Grade 2/3 have been doing some excellent work in the last two weeks of Term 2! We enjoyed the visit from Terrapin Puppet Theatre in Week 9 and some of us have engaged with cooking experiences after earning 50 Frankies!

In English, we have been focussed on developing our knowledge of spelling patterns at the ends of words. We have explored word families through our UFLI program and created word sliders to help us visualise these patterns.

Plus, you should see our persuasive texts! We have spent lots of time analysing the structure of successful persuasive texts, pulling apart strong opinion phrases and investigating persuasive devices. Now we are certain we have some convincing arguments! We will share these early in Term 3!

It has been amazing to see our mathematical skills developing as we practice using a number line to solve addition and subtraction problems. Our confidence using this strategy has grown enormously! Some of us have also experimented with using a number line to order large numbers as we challenge ourselves with six-digit numbers!

Miss Ratcliffe & Mrs Newton

This week, we’ve been busy exploring fractions! As a class, we investigated equivalent fractions using hands-on tools like blocks, magnets, and by creating our own fraction wall. These visual tools helped us understand how different fractions can represent the same amount of space.

We discovered that ½ is the same as 2/4, and 2/4 is the same as 3/6. This led some students to notice a pattern: the numerator (top number) was half the denominator (bottom number). From this, they were able to generate multiple equivalent fractions, such as 4/8, 12/24, and even 50/100!

We also explored fractions like 1/3 and 2/6, which helped us realise that in these examples, the numerator is one-third of the denominator.

Then came the number lines… and some great questions! Why is 1/5 greater than 1/6? How can 1/10 be larger than 1/100 if the denominator is bigger?

Our investigation into the world of fractions continues…

What a term – and where did it go?! It felt like a sprint to the finish line, but we made it through! Our final week was full of reflection and celebration, and I couldn’t be prouder of the effort each student has put into all areas of their learning.

We wrapped up English this term with a hands-on editing and assessment task that placed students in the role of the teacher. Each student was given three information reports – one written below the standard, one at standard, and one above standard. Using a rubric, they were asked to mark each piece and identify the features that made the difference. This activity opened their eyes to how small changes – like clearer paragraphs, more specific vocabulary, and stronger elaboration – can lift writing to the next level. I thoroughly enjoyed reading their thoughtful and constructive feedback to our "imaginary students." (They thought they were marking real student work and put so much effort into their assessments – it was brilliant to see!)

In Maths, we explored budgeting, fractions, and percentages through our very exciting (and very real!) Pizza Party Project. Students calculated quantities, compared prices, and worked together to come in under budget. It also sparked some great conversations – and a few shocked faces – about just how expensive food can be! Hopefully, they'll think twice before eating us out of house and home over the holidays!

I wish you all a safe, relaxing, and happy break. See you bright-eyed and ready for Term 3!

Funkita Official Online Store | Funkita Swimwear

The School Association would like to thank the above company for their donation to our quiz night.