Dear Franklin Primary School Community,

I am excited to share some wonderful updates and important information with you all.

Literacy Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS)

We are thrilled to announce the implementation of our Literacy Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) across the school. This support includes quarantined literacy reading every morning, ensuring that all students have dedicated time to focus on their reading skills.

• Tier Two Support: Small group sessions will be provided to students who need additional learning, allowing for more personalised instruction.
• Tier Three Support: Individual support will be available for students requiring intensive assistance, ensuring that every child receives the help they need to succeed.

Athletics Carnival Success

A huge congratulations to Mr. Mitchell for organising a successful athletics carnival! It was a fantastic day filled with energy and enthusiasm. We extend our heartfelt thanks to the staff, school association, volunteers, Huonville High School students, and our amazing Franklin Primary students for making the event a memorable one. Go River, Go Mountain, Go Franklin!

NAPLAN Testing Reminder

Parents, please be reminded that our Grade 3 and Grade 5 students will be completing NAPLAN testing later this term. This is an important assessment, and we appreciate your support in ensuring that your children are well-prepared and present on the testing days. We want to know what everyone is capable of and where they might need more help.

Student Leadership

Congratulations also to our newly elected Student Representative Council and House Captains! We are proud of these students for stepping up to take on leadership roles and look forward to their contributions to our school community.

Thank you for your continued support and involvement in our school. Together, we are making Franklin Primary a place where every student can thrive.

Warm regards,

James Milne
Principal, Franklin Primary School

Building Stronger Community Connections

As a leadership team, we have been exploring ways to strengthen community engagement within our school. We are fortunate to already collaborate with incredible local groups, such as the Living Boat Trust through the On the Water program and the Huonville Salvation Army. However, we are eager to further grow these connections and establish new partnerships.

In addition to working with our community, we also want to give back. As part of this commitment, Franklin Primary School will be participating in Clean Up Australia Day. Our students will take to the local Franklin area, actively working to clean up litter and care for our environment.

We hope this initiative is just the beginning of strengthening our students’ connection to their community and reinforcing the importance of looking after the places in which we live, learn, and play.

At the beginning of each school year, I like to remind families of my role. One of my main roles within the school is to undertake Kindergarten Health Checks beginning in term 2. These free checks are offered to all students in kindergarten as part of the state-wide School Health Nurse Service.  I am also able to complete hearing or vision screening for any child in school with parental consent.

Alongside the Kinder Health Checks, I can provide health promotion that runs in line with local, state, and national health promotion initiatives, including vaping/ smoking education, growth and development and respectful relationships, oral and sleep hygiene and SunSmart.

Each month you will see an article in the school newsletter from me related to a local, national, or international health awareness event. This month the focus is on National Lunchbox Week.

9 - 15 February 2025

​The campaign celebrates the lunchbox and how it reflects diversity, enjoyment and nourishment.​

Encouraging enjoyable and pressure free lunchbox experiences supports children’s wellbeing and helps build a positive relationship with food. 

National Lunchbox Week helps families, schools and early childhood settings by:

• inspiring practical lunchbox ideas and recipes 
• supporting positive lunchbox experiences for children 
• embracing the diversity of lunchboxes
• promoting supportive, judgment-free conversations around food.
• For more information visit Lunchbox Week | Lunchbox Nutrition and Lunchboxes | Healthy Kids                                                                         

Emma Middleton, Primary School Health Nurse - Cygnet, Huonville, Franklin & Glen Huon Primary School

Kinder has been a hive of learning, play, friendships and fun. 

We have been busy exploring our names, tracing them, counting the letters in them and learning what letter our name starts with. 

Our inquiry has been focusing on our bodies, how they move, how we fuel them and our emotions. We loved reading the story the colour monster and creating our very own colour monsters. 

We have also been spending time making patterns and sorting objects based on their properties such as size, shape and weight. 

Our outdoor environment has also been a huge hit with lots of bike riding and bubble blowing. 

The last fortnight in Prep/1 have been very busy! With the news that the Cartela had sunk, we took a walk down the road to have a look. This was very sad but exciting and engaging and we had lots of questions. We began to research on the internet, looking for videos with information we could all readily access. These quickly became firm favourites and we have watched many of them several times. The most popular piece of information we discovered was from Mr Holmstrom. He had a special story about his little dog following his Dad to work on the Cartela, having a little look around Hobart, then hopping on the Cartela to get back home to Lindisfarne! We have explored a few different lines of inquiry:

• Why did it sink?
• Why do boats sink?
• What happened to the boat to make her take on water?
• What has the Cartela been used for?
• How old is it?
• Can it be fixed?
• How was it powered?

This has been a really good way to begin our HASS learning for the year.

We have almost completed our Getting Ready lessons for UFLI and have been focussing on all the uppercase letters and their formation. We have been practising them in many ways, using shaving cream, oil pastels and handwriting on the iPad are just a few.

We have had a really good start to the term in 1-2.

Lots of learning, playing and having a great time with our classmates.

We have started our investigation into how things change over time.  Students have looked at images of recent and older toys and thought about ‘What is old?’ and ‘When was the olden days?’

With students answering:

Kate: If something is rusty and dusty.

Imogen: You are getting older, your age is old.

Lexie: Wrinkles.

Olly: The Big Bang Theory and space!

Emily: Dinosaurs were around.

We’ve seen how toys have changed through time and wondered why.  We’ve looked out what materials they were made out of and how they operated. We’ve played some games like knuckles, hop scotch and rolling hoops.

We’ve wondered why our grandparents had different toys than us and how different were their lives as children.

Students laughed at Mrs Witts getting a ‘speeding’ ticket in Home Ec class for going too fast on the sewing machine!

Mrs Witts

Hi 4/5 Families,

Welcome to the end of Week 4!

Swimming and Double Dipping Success:
Last week, we had a full week of swimming and double dipping at Port Huon Sports Centre. Water safety and swimming are vital parts of life in Tasmania, and it's essential for our students to learn to be safe and competent in water environments. I was absolutely blown away by our 4/5 students as they overcame challenges, conquered fears of water, mastered treading techniques, and learned all the swimming strokes—truly demonstrating our Franklin Culture!

Congratulations and Shout-Outs:
A huge congratulations to our Term 1 class captains, Marlee and Jesse, and our SRC members, Archie, Maisy, and Maddy. Your leadership and enthusiasm inspire us all!

Athletics Carnival:
Thursday's Athletics Carnival was fantastic and run superbly by Mr Mitchell—what a phenomenal HPE teacher we are so lucky to have! A massive thank you also goes to all the family members who volunteered their time; your support helped the day run so smoothly.

Well Done, Everyone:
Well done to all the students who gave it their all. I hope you can catch up on some much-needed R&R this weekend. I look forward to seeing you all next week!

Warm regards,

Tiarna Donnelly

Weekly Learning Recap – Year 5/6

This week, we began our Library sessions, where students explored different book genres and read for fun and enjoyment. It was wonderful to see them engaging with a variety of texts and sharing their reading interests with one another.

In Mathematics, students expanded their understanding of Place Value, focusing on unitising and renaming decimals and the multiplicative structure of ×10 and ÷10. Through hands-on activities, they explored how numbers shift in value based on their place in the number system, reinforcing connections between whole numbers and decimals.

To help reinforce this learning at home, we encourage parents to use everyday experiences to highlight the use of decimals in real life. One great way is to explore money when shopping or collecting change. Ask your child to look at a receipt and identify the whole dollar amount and the cents, reinforcing that the decimal point separates whole dollars from parts of a dollar (cents).

For example, if a total comes to $7.85, encourage them to:

• Identify the whole dollars ($7) and the cents (85¢).
• Rename and regroup the amount in different ways, such as:

• 7 dollars and 85 cents.
• 785 cents (since there are 100 cents in a dollar).
• 7 ones and 85 hundredths (applying decimal place value thinking).
• 7 ones, 8 tenths, and 5 hundredths (showing place value understanding).

During English, we have continued with our novel The Silver Donkey, analysing key events, character motivations, and new vocabulary. In our Literacy block, we have begun our Word Origins study, which explores the history, structure, and meaning of words. This study helps students understand where words come from, how they have evolved over time, and how different parts of a word (prefixes, root/base words, and suffixes) contribute to its meaning. We have really been enjoying investigating the origins of different words, discovering where they originated on the world map, and exploring how they have (or haven’t) evolved over time. It has been fascinating to see connections between languages and history through words, and we are incredibly proud of how quickly the students have picked up and embraced this new program.

We are also so impressed of how our Year 5/6 students conducted themselves during the Athletics Carnival. They demonstrated leadership by cheering on and supporting the younger students, showing kindness, encouragement, and respect throughout the day. It was fantastic to see them leading by example and fostering a positive school spirit.

Kitchen Garden News!

Well, our kitchen garden programme has got off to a great start. It’s been heartwarming to see the children’s enthusiasm and willingness to contribute.

The first couple of weeks were spent getting to know the space. Each class discussed what it meant to be ‘Garden Guardians’ and together we created a garden agreement, so that our garden space can be enjoyed and looked after by all.

The students then spent some time learning about the different tools we will use in the garden throughout the year and how to use them safely. Classes used this knowledge to acquire their tool licence!

Some brassica seedlings have been planted by the 5/6s in the beds which the P/1s lovingly prepared. The zucchinis are going gang busters, and we are harvesting ready for some cooking.

Cooking will take place in rotating small groups on a Thursday morning. My first group made delicious focaccia with tomato and basil, to take back to their class to share.

Lastly, a big shout out to my wonderful husband Matt, for making the children some bench seats. He was able to use some of the big tree offcuts in them which was a nice touch. 

Children’s University

Children's University is back at Franklin for 2025!  We held our first CU Club on Monday and it was great to see some many new faces as well as those returning for their second, third, fourth or even firth year!  CU Club will meet every Monday lunch and students can log the time in their passports. We will do a little activity and provide access to the online portal to support students to do their reflections.  While we are waiting on passports to arrive for our new students, please starting recording hours (and minutes!) on the temporary passport sheet coming home soon. 

Not sure what Children’s Uni is all about or if it would suit your child?  Get in touch with Miss Frusher, our school’s coordinator via the office. 

This year our students are invited to come along to Lego Club on Wednesday lunchtimes.  These sessions will be a mixture of free building and challenge builds.  There is no obligation to come every week, but if your child is a part of our Children’s University program, they can count every Lego Club session as 30 minutes.  We kicked things off this week, and it was great to see so much imagination and collaboration from our young builders!

Science

In P/1, 2/3 and 4/5 this term we are looking at Biological Science.  We are very excited to have joined the TMAG specimen lending library which allows us to study some of our local wildlife up close.  We currently have a Blue Tongue Lizard and a Ringtail Possum Check. Check out these great scientific drawings, labelling external features, from students in 4/5.