Friday 5th

April

Last Day of term 1

School finishes at

2.30

Tuesday 23rd

April

Term 2 Begins

Wednesday 24th April

school cross country grades 3-6

Thursday 25th

April

Anzac Day

Public Holiday

Wednesday 1st –

3rd May

Grade 5/6 camp

Thursday 16th

May

Grandparents Day and Book Fair

Newsletter No.4 4th April 2019

Harmony Day

Last week we celebrated Harmony Day. Harmony Day celebrates Australia's diversity. It encourages and celebrates inclusiveness, respect and a sense of belonging for all. At Pakenham Hills PS we continually encourage such qualities from all of our students, staff and community members, bringing this all to-gether once a year by dressing in orange and participating in whole school activities over the day. This year was no exception, on March 20th students joined in multi age groups, visiting classes and teachers across the school. Over the day students actively participated in team building games, cultural craft, team bridge building and a school wide amazing race. In addition students were provided with a delicious pumpkin soup at our whole school picnic lunch, made specially by our wonderful ES staff. Pakenham Hills staff are proud of the efforts made by students on the day and the sense of belonging created and enriched by the celebrations. Kara Hermann had specific responsibility for organising this day and she did a fantastic job in bringing everything together.

School Communications

From the start of term two our school newsletter will not be coming home in hard copy form. We will be uploading the school newsletter to the school web-site and also to compass. Hard copies will be available from the school office, if you have a preference for this. As the school now has the platforms in place for electronic communication with parents, these will be the main form of notification to parents. Parents will receive notifications in regards to school activities, behaviour consequences, etc. from Compass. If you don’t have the Compass App installed on your mobile phone, our office staff are more than happy to help you install it and set it up.

Student Supervision at School Prior to and After School

We would like to remind all parents and careers that supervision of students before school begins at 8.45 am. Students should not be dropped at school without an adult before this time. There are teachers on yard duty from 8.45 am until 9.00 am and from 3.30 until 3.45 pm. Students should not be in the yard unless supervised by their parent or career outside of these times. We would appreciate your cooperation in this matter in the interests of the safety of your children.

Professional Practice Days

From the commencement of the 2018 school year each teacher is entitled to one day per term (four days per year) release from their scheduled duties, including teaching, to focus on the improved delivery of high quality teaching and learning. These days are in addition to existing pupil free days and pro-rata for a teacher employed part-time. The work undertaken on these days will be consistent with Departmental and school priorities and selected from the following areas - planning, preparation, assessment of student learning, collaboration, curriculum development, relevant professional development and peer observation including feedback and reflection. The professional practice days create opportunities for teachers by increasing time available to focus, reflect on and improve their practice and to have the opportunity to engage in purposeful collaboration so as to impact student learning. Our school has a local agreement for the implementation of these days. In the second last week of each term we have a plan-ning week. Each team is given a day together to plan, visit other schools or access professional learning, to improve professional knowledge and investigate new initiatives or programs. On these days our specialist teachers take the class of the teachers who are planning. We have found this to be the least disruptive method of implementing this EBA condition, as it causes the least disruption for our students.

Every Day Counts We all want our students to get a great education, and the building blocks for a great education begin with students coming to school each and every day on time. Missing school can have a major impact on a child’s future – a student missing one day a fortnight will miss four full weeks by the end of the year. By Year 10 they will have missed more than a year of school. There is no safe number of days for missing school – each day a student misses puts them behind, and can affect their educational outcomes. Most days start with Literacy or Numeracy; when your child is late they are missing out on this important learn-ing time. Remember, every day and hour counts. If your child must miss school, speak with your class-room teacher as early as possible. A school years is 42 weeks (210 days) long, usually. Two terms of 10 weeks and two of 11 weeks, or thereabouts. If a child has 90% attendance, they will attend 189 days and miss 4 weeks of school. If this happens every year of primary school they will miss 28 weeks of school, or almost three terms. If they have 80% attendance they will attend 168 days and miss 8 weeks of school. If this happens every year of primary school they will miss 56 weeks of school, or 5 and a half terms.

School Lateness

School lateness works in exactly the same way as absenteeism in regards to missed learning time. If your child is 30 minutes late to school every day they have missed 2.5 hours of their learning every morn-ing. Their late arrival is quite disruptive to their class and embarrassing for them. A child who is 30 minutes late every day misses 150 hours (6 days) of school in a year.

SLE

EP

ING

BE

AU

TY

SH

OW

DA

TE

S A

ND

BO

OK

ING

S

Card

inia

You

th T

hea

tre a

nd

AD

LIB

En

tert

ain

me

nt

Pro

ud

ly p

rese

nt

their late

st

fun s

ho

w in

th

e A

pril sch

ool h

olid

ays

Tu

esd

ay

9th

A

pril @

7.3

0 p

m

We

dn

esd

ay 1

0th

April @

11.3

0 a

m &

2 p

m

Th

urs

da

y 1

1th

A

pril @

2 p

m &

7.3

0 p

m

Frid

ay 1

2th A

pri

l @

11.3

0 a

m

Try

bo

okin

gs.c

om

/bbstw

or

tickets

at

the d

oo

r $

10.0

0