4 May 2020

Newsletter Articles

Principal’s Message

Welcome back to Term Two!

One of my favourite poems for young children is always ‘Now we are six’ by AA Milne. For me it symbolises that as a child and as an adult, change is always occurring within us as people and all around us. It is about growth. Just when we think everything is settled, things change: externally and internally, we branch out and learn more!

We as adults know children do not stop learning at six and life keeps moving. The difference currently is that rather than growing up and expanding in our world we are being confined and constrained by an invisible foe. The types of change and rate of change has been accelerated and people have had many of these imposed with short notice and little time initially to plan.

Adaptation takes time. We as people have not had a full year’s learning as in the poem to acclimatise to the external changes which have been thrust upon us all. Yet as humans, being creative and resilient we have all been able to make the most of our new found situations! This is a credit to our wonderful community! Thank you for your supportive approach to learning at home and the many positive and kind emails our school and staff have received in the past few weeks.

I hope you had time to catch your breath in the holidays. As we move into Term 2, I aim to assist our families as we move towards the Phased return to school for our students. In Weeks 1 and 2, class teachers will offer ‘Zoom’ check ins for their classes to begin the term. Zoom protocols linked to our SIPPS PBL have been sent to all families last week to support students and staff in this platform. Teachers were very excited to be able to ‘check in’ with so many students last week!

Phased student return to school

SIPPS Parents: There will be an email this week to provide specific information to each family regarding the assigned one day for attendance for each child.

Phase 1 begins 11th May, Week 3

The DET parent information graphic is located below for parents.

Parent health and safety

We are in a fortunate situation here at SIPPS. We have well set out buildings with multiple exit options for children and staff. We also have ample play space. Our biggest challenges are actually making sure our parents and staff remain safe and healthy when dropping children to school. Therefore, please contact staff by email or telephone wherever possible and we kindly require our families to remain off site unless invited in (for example for contactless collection of booklets) or by prior arrangement.

Although we all as a staff enjoy ‘catching up’ with our families, it is imperative as we move into the Winter months the staff remain as well as possible, ready to teach students. Thank you for your patience and consideration regarding this planning.

11th May, Week 3

In Week 3 we move to Phase 1 of the DET phased return to school. To make this time relevant to student learning we at SIPPS have planned to have half of each class return at a time whilst also co-ordinating siblings wherever possible.

This means that the identified students will be with a teacher for ‘face to face’ teaching on their assigned day, one day per week.

Parents – drop off and collection of children

The health advice for schools regarding COVID-19 focuses on schools being safe for children. However, we need to be mindful that staff are required to practice social distancing.

Parents are therefore required during Phases 1 and 2 to drop off their children using a ‘kiss and drop’ method, remaining in their cars and not entering the school grounds without prior arrangement.

Accessing school grounds for students

To ease congestion and ensure social distancing for adults dropping their children to school, parents are asked to drop their child to the relevant gate:

K-2 are to enter via Gate 1 closest to the Office Admin block and the morning quadrangle playground.

3-4 are to access the school grounds via Woodbury Road gate entrance, Gate 3.

5-6 are to access the school grounds via the Acron Road gate entrance closest to the hall, Gate 2.

Multiple children in the family: Where there are two or three children in a family, please drop your children at one gate.

Student Learning in Term Two

Each Stage sent out their Stage overview of learning and topics to keep parents up to date. These were emailed to families last Thursday.

NSW Department of Education support to families.

To supplement school planned student learning the DET has arranged other opportunities for students to engage in educational learning.

ABC Me channel has begun educational programming for students K-12. This may support families while students are learning from home.

NSW Education LIVE is available each day at 8:45am for a special #learnfromhome live stream as some special guests help the students of NSW kick start their learning. Different personalities are participating each weekday.

Sparkling and new!

Although students have been off site, we have had the Department working to improve our facilities for our students and families which is always appreciated.

Our outdoor play area adjacent to the playground equipment has had a mend and repaint.

The movement areas outside OOSH and our 5/6 classrooms have been redone with antislip paint.

Next we will have the movement areas outside E block updated and the stairs up to Years 5/6 so they will all match.

All new carpet in our K-2 classrooms too! Carpets across the school have also been cleaned ready for students to return. Also, 1/2 Emerald classroom is expected to be repainted before Week 3.

It has been very busy here at school with so much work going on. However, it will be just lovely for our students when they return this term.

Support Services

There are a range of services available to families in these challenging times.

Thank you

Congratulations to every member of the school community, parents, students and teachers alike, for all their hard work to make Term 1 a success for students.

Staff are looking forward to seeing our SIPPS students as they return to school in the coming weeks.

Warm wishes,
Caroline English
Principal

Stage Information

Early Stage 1 - Kindergarten

Welcome Back to Term 2 !

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your support and your efforts in transitioning to online learning. I am so proud of K Rainbow and how they have showed resilience and persistence in their learning.

With the continuation of online learning for the foreseeable future, you will have noticed that I have created a weekly timetable. Please note that this timetable is advisory only. As each family’s situation is unique, you may wish to tailor it so that it works best for your circumstances. I ask that you focus on English and Maths. Revisiting previous phonics and maths lessons is also a good way of reviewing and consolidating learning.

Last Thursday, the Early Stage 1 - Term 2 newsletter was sent out with specific information pertaining to our topics of learning for this term and other relevant information.

Once again, thank you for your patience and support during this time. Please, do not hesitate to contact the school or myself via email, if you have any queries or questions.

Kind Regards,
K Woodwell

Stage 1

I would like to start by sincerely thanking all parents and carers of Stage One for their ongoing support of their children (and us) during this time. The way the students (and parents) have adapted to the online learning mode is impressive, to say the least! Mrs Took, Mrs Cipollone and myself are incredibly proud of each and every one of the students for their attitude and completion of work.

As you are aware, we are using Zoom in order to communicate with students in ‘real time’ whilst the online learning at home mode continues. At this stage, we have used it as a form of check in. If online learning continues for a sustained period of time, we will look at using Zoom as a means of introducing new learning for students.

Last Thursday, the Stage 1 Term 2 newsletter was sent out with specific information pertaining to our topics of learning for this term and other relevant information.

Once again, we thank you for your patience and support during this time. Please, do not hesitate to contact the school or any of us via email if you have any queries or questions.

Kind Regards,
Stage 1 Team

Stage 2

In Stage 2 we are looking forward to getting back to our online learning and integrating allocated class learning days as the term progresses. With the transition of Phase 1 back to school learning, we ask that students and parents are patient when requiring online assistance. We are also very excited for our Zoom ‘check ins’ in weeks 1 and 2 with our individual classes and looking forward to seeing all the children’s smiling faces. Online behaviour expectations have been posted on Google Classroom and emailed home, we encourage you to discuss these expectations with your child.

A scheduled timetable outlining the weekly overview will continue to be posted in Google Classroom and a copy will also be available on the Schoolzine website.

We have been impressed with the children’s motivation with online learning and have enjoyed witnessing strategies and skills through problem solving, patience and perseverance. We require at least one literacy sample of work to be uploaded each day for teacher feedback. We are delighted to see multiple samples of work from the students and encourage them to continue to attach copies of their work frequently to allow teacher monitoring and feedback of their learning.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your ongoing support with your child’s learning journey throughout these hard times.

Kylie Follows
Relieving Assistant Principal

Stage 3

Welcome back to Term 2! We want to take the opportunity to thank you for your patience and support with the transition to online learning last term. Mrs Field and I really enjoyed seeing so many of our Stage 3 kids on our Zoom check-in on Thursday & we are already looking forward to our next one! We understand there may be some difficulties getting on, we have posted instructions in Google Classroom under the Zoom heading under the Classwork tab.

This term we will continue with the Google Classroom mode for online learning as well as the one day per week transition back to school from Week 3. We will be using this opportunity to listen to our students read, explicitly teach writing and Maths content and work on our Earth Parliament unit for History, this will be the same daily structure for those learning from home too. On the days we are teaching face-to-face we will be online less to assist students, so please be aware of this.

We look forward to seeing everyone soon, please keep safe & well.

Miss Emerson

Parents and Citizens Association

Keep up to date

To keep up to date with P&C social events, please make sure you have subscribed to receive P&C emails from our website at the link below.

If you have any queries or would like to get involved with the P&C, you can email us at: stivesparkpc@gmail.com

Uniform Shop

School Uniform items can be purchased every week by using the QKr! App.

Orders need to be in by the Sunday evening.

Goods will be left at the school office ready for pick up on the Tuesday. If you would like your order to be given to your child to bring home please contact the school office.

If you have any questions please send an email to the uniform email address below.

sippsuniform@gmail.com

Helping Hands OOSH & Vacation Care

Helping Hands Network are the company who provide before and after school care at St Ives Park Public School.

All information about Before and After school care can be located on their website. Please click on the link below.