Dear Families and Community Members,

As we near the end of a busy and eventful few weeks, I want to take a moment to express my heartfelt thanks for the incredible support and care shown by our school community. Your kindness, encouragement, and support, whether through conversations, or simply checking in—have made a meaningful difference to our staff, families and students alike.

Next week, we look forward to sharing student reports and continuing our open lines of communication with families. These reports are a valuable opportunity to celebrate progress, reflect on learning, and set goals for the term ahead. We encourage you to take the time to read through them with your child and reach out to teachers if you have any questions or would like to discuss their learning journey further.

I’d also like to highlight and make a special thank you to our wonderful School Association for their recent fundraising event. The energy, creativity, and commitment that went into organising the trivia night was truly wonderful, and the funds raised will go directly toward enhancing learning experiences for our students. We are so grateful for your ongoing support.

Wishing everyone a restful and well-deserved break over the weekend and look forward to chatting about your children and what they need,

Warm regards,
James Milne
Principal

The 4/5s have been making the most of the kitchen element of our kitchen garden program. In pairs they were given a list of ingredients to choose from to design the ultimate toasted sandwich. And last week they got to make it! The hub was a buzz with excited children looking at their designs and assembling their sandwiches ready for toasting. A big shout out to Ryan for his excellent skills and organisation manning the toasty machines. Some children had never made their own toasty before. Bringing life skills to the program is heartwarming.

The children are continuing to work on the soil and build our compost in preparation for Spring.

In kinder this fortnight we have been working a lot around our wellbeing. We discussed personal space, respect for ourselves, our friends and our classroom and we discussed how to be kind. We also did some work on our emotions using the zones of regulation. 

We have been using the mini movers program to explore music, movement and rhyme. The kinders particularly loved using the scarves to practice throwing and catching. 

To continue our inquiry we have been exploring books and stories. In particular we have been looking at Julia Donaldson. Her books contain beautiful rhyme and whimsical characters. Some of our favourite activities this fortnight included making super worms out of paper towel and expanding them with paper and making dragon wings just like Zog the dragon. 

The kinder children have also been loving their daily PE lessons with their lovely grade 5/6 leaders. 

We would also love to say a big thank you to Sammy who has been a TA in our room while Lacey has been away on her placement. 

Shannon 

Prep/1 enjoyed a day out last Friday on excursion to TMAG to explore the ningina tunapri exhibition. We had previously been talking about huts, what their purpose was and how they were built. Before we went to the excursion we looked at an ABC news article around. Pakana ranger Brenton Brown is helping re-build traditional Aboriginal huts at Preminghana on Tasmania's west coast to educate the public about the region's Indigenous history. We looked at some of the photos from the article and made some observations. We continued to read the article as a class and learn more information about hut building. Then we chose a picture to write a complete sentence caption for.

When we were at the exhibition, we were excited to see a hut example and we could study it closer. Other popular favourites were the stringybark canoe, the shell necklaces, the mutton-bird holes, and of course the audio of Fanny Cochrane-Smith singing. Some very proud descendants were amazed that they were hearing their actual ancestor’s voice. I think the next thing on our agenda will be a trip to Fanny Cochrane-Smith’s church at Nicholls Rivulet.

In other news we have been exploring families, looking at who lives in our house, who is in our family tree and how our families and connections differ from family to family. The Grade 1’s have been focussing on how their role and life in their family has changed over their lifetime, and will be looking into the changes for other people on their families.

Next week is our last week with our student placement teacher Eva. While we will be very sad to see her go, and miss her interactions with us every day, we are confident she will complete her studies successfully and be a very competent teacher.

Over the past fortnight, we've kicked off a new English unit on persuasive writing. Students have been expressing their opinions on a range of topics and generating strong arguments. In Maths, we’ve been practising partitioning as part of the split strategy, helping us break down numbers into place value pieces to solve problems more efficiently.

Our creativity has been flowing in Art, where we’ve printed colourful reef slogans onto t-shirts to share an important environmental message. We've also had some very special visits from Murphy the puppy, who brought lots of smiles to our classroom. 

We rounded out the week experimenting with a recipe to make slime! It was an exciting session with lots of laughter but we found that Miss Ratcliffe’s recipe needs some more tweaking! 

Last week, our Year 5/6 class visited the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) to deepen their understanding of Australian history and First Nations perspectives. While exploring the Ningina Tunapri gallery, students engaged with cultural stories, artefacts, and language that helped bring Tasmania’s Aboriginal history to life.

The experience sparked rich discussion and reflection, inspiring an assembly presentation where students shared their personal responses and collaborative artwork. Their piece centred around the powerful phrase “Nara makara lumi… waranta makara lumi” — “we will always be here” — surrounded by emotive words such as strength, truth, sorrow, pride, and resilience.

Students drew inspiration from key gallery items including Fanny Cochrane Smith, kelp water carriers, shell necklaces, and stone tools, using art and language to express their growing empathy and understanding. It was a meaningful opportunity to engage with First Nations voices and think deeply about how the past continues to shape the present.