30 November 2020
Newsletter Articles
November PBL Focus
Principal’s Message
Dear Parents and Carers,
Thank you Mrs Druce
Thank you to our outgoing P&C President Mrs Emmy Druce who has worked tirelessly to support the school and community throughout her two years as the P&C President. The P&C AGM was held on Wednesday 18th November.
It was really lovely to be able to have our final P&C meeting of the year in person and to see several new faces and parents returning to P&C. Thank you to the wonderful parents who have stepped in to take on roles for the 2021 school year. The P&C will be in touch regarding the first meeting for 2021. We would love to hear from parents who may wish to enquire as to the role of the President of the P&C on participating in the 2021 P&C meetings.
Presentation Day 2020
On the 9th of December, 2020 we will celebrate our Presentation Day at St Ives Park Public School. The Presentation Day event will be held during the school day. Under the current COVID-19 guidelines and with the four square metre rule, parent attendance will be by invitation only. To enable parents to attend, we have scheduled several shorter assemblies throughout the day. Parents are requested to follow social distancing practices and to enter and leave the school grounds promptly after the assembly.
There will be assemblies for each Stage: Early Stage 1, Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3 and 2021 Leaders. As a result of the guidelines only one parent per award recipient will be able to attend. Please read invitations very carefully. We are looking forward to the socially distanced and safe events with our invited families.
Invitations have gone home with students and after the final leadership elections tomorrow, further invitations will go home to families for the leadership assembly.
Parent Surveys
Thank you to the terrific response from our SIPPS community in the recent survey of parents.
The SIPPS personalised survey sent out mid November to assist the school in 2021 – 2024 planning provided the school with the following information which we will now take into consideration as we plan our next steps in forming the school plan.
Highlights from our parent responses included:
- Parents believe our strengths at SIPPS include …
- Community
- Population of school
- Staff
- Happy kids / Nurturing staff / small classes
- Grounds / Facilities - All students should be (highest responses):-
- Resilient, self-directed and successful learners 86.8%
- Encouraged to achieve their personal best 78.9%
- Developing expectations of respect, responsibility and personal best
- Engaged in learning 71.1%
- Respectful and inclusive 71.1%
- Challenged to learn 71.1% - Parents were asked what they value most in their child’s learning at school :
-Emotional and academic balance
- Learning in Mathematics and English
- Students reach their individual potential
- Effective communication between staff and parents re student learning
- Parents were asked if they wanted us to consider one thing to change moving forward into 2021 :-
- Increased focus on learning outcomes
- Reports – more individual / less generic comments
- Improve NAPLAN / academic results
- Query composite classes …
- Increase student numbers across the school
School Plan 2021-2024 – St Ives Park PS
The DoE Strategic Plan, whole of department plan focuses on Every student, every teacher, every leader and every school improving each year. Extending this mandate into the new four year school plan means that there are some changes in focus as we move forward.
Key data sources used to develop the School Improvement Plan include: NAPLAN, Tell Them From Me, internal school data sources, focus groups and parent surveys. These sources will all be used to guide the framing of the following sections in the school plan:
School Vision statement and School context statement will be derived from parent, staff and student input via focus groups, surveys and internal school data (including data above).
Strategic Directions – there will be three draft directions under consideration which include Student growth and attainment (in all NSW schools), implementation of Quality Teaching practices from the What Works Best research document and a direction relating to Connections and Wellbeing which will focus on students, staff, inter-school and community connections into the next planning cycle.
Next steps: Randomly chosen parents will be invited to attend one of several Focus Groups to discuss these directions.
The plan is expected to be completed by the end of Term 1 2021 in all NSW public schools.
Kinder Orientation 2020
The second Kindergarten Orientation session was very successful on the 17th November. So many confident students who left parents and went to the Kindergarten classroom without hesitation!
Google Drive established for parents to access valuable information for starting at St Ives Park PS. SRC video completed and uploaded for new families and Kinders so they can see familiar faces and places in 2021. Thank you to our current parents who have provided valuable feedback re the Google Drive from the parent perspective!
OOSH: Helping Hands 2020 – 2025
I can now confirm that Helping hands were the successful company via the NSW DoE tender process and will remain with the SIPPS community to support our students and families. Congratulations to Helping Hands as there were many keen applicants in the mix.
Documentation and fee structures for families wishing to enrol or continue with the service will be available this week.
Gifts and Benefits
The Department of Education has recently strengthened their protocols in relation to gifts and benefits provided to staff. The Department of Education is committed to managing gifts, benefits and hospitality in a transparent manner to ensure the reputation and integrity of the department and its employees. While gifts, benefits and hospitality may be offered as gestures of goodwill or a thank you for a job performed well, they may also be offered as an inducement or a form of influence with an employee.
The values and culture of the department establish an expectation that employees refuse any offer of a gift, benefit or hospitality that is not token in nature. A register of gifts, benefits and hospitality for Public Service Senior Executives (PSSE) and nominated employees is maintained and published on the department’s website on a quarterly basis to provide transparency to the community on the integrity of decision making by employees.
The Department requires that all gifts or benefits to staff over the value of $50 must be declared and handed into the Department. No cash may be provided to a member of staff. This is to ensure that no staff member can be inappropriately influenced whilst undertaking their duties. Parents are requested to please be aware and mindful of this requirement during your end of year planning. At no time should any parent feel obliged to provide their child’s teacher with a gift.
School Term Dates 2021
There are now TWO staff development days allocated to the beginning of each school year.
This means that students in Year 1 to 6 return to school on Friday 29th January 2021.
Kindergarten students will attend for their first day of school on Tuesday 2nd February 2021. Kindergarten will finish at 2:30 pm for the first week of school (Tuesday 2nd to Friday 5th February). Normal finish time is 3:10 pm for all students from 8th February.
Kindergarten students participate in their Best Start interviews on Friday 29th or Monday 1st February.
As we edge towards the holidays and the warmer weather, please ensure all our students have their hats and water bottles at school with them each day.
Stay safe and well,
Caroline English
Dates to Diary
No Upcoming Events
Celebrating Student Success
Inspiring & Nurturing Successful Lifelong Learners
MUSIC
This term in music Kindergarten students have enjoyed moving to the beat, listening, and responding through movement to a variety of classical music and playing our beautiful rainbow coloured chime bars to learn about high and low pitch. The remainder of the term will focus on Christmas and holiday music such as Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet, which is set on Christmas Eve.
Stage 1 students have also enjoyed playing chime bars and Xylophones this term. They have practiced playing several songs by Australian educator and composer Jon Madin.
Stage 2 students are now familiar with how to play the chords F, A minor and C on Ukulele and beginning to learn the G chord, which is a more difficult finger position. There are many fun Ukulele ‘playalongs’ of contemporary music available on YouTube and this makes practicing these sometimes-challenging skills more enjoyable for students. They have also enjoyed playing seasonal music on chime bars and “boomwhackers”.
Students from Stage 3 have researched and shared their interest in a wide variety of Musical Heroes from many different genres. There has been incredible diversity in students’ responses ranging from Beethoven and Mozart, ACDC and the Beatles to K-Pop and Arianna Grande. Here are a few examples.
Dear Parents and Carers
I am sure we are all in awe of how fast the end of the year is coming.
In the Learning and Support area during 2020 we identified reading comprehension as the literacy focus, and general maths support as the numeracy focus. Support time was allocated to all year levels on a ‘most in need’ basis.
For Reading Comprehension groups, we established small groups to work with the Learning and Support Teacher in focused weekly lessons. Comprehension is the understanding and interpretation of what is read; it involves decoding what is read, making connections to what you already know, and thinking deeply about what you have read. The skills of reading accurately, understanding vocabulary and the author’s purpose for writing, scanning for relevant information, writing complete sentences, and editing for sentence structure, spelling and punctuation were developed in the context of reading and responding to quality texts. Working in small groups encouraged students to participate at their level and be actively guided and monitored for their reading, comprehension and writing.
In Numeracy, in-class support helped students to complete class work successfully. This involved working with a small number of students within their classroom to ensure they understood what to do, kept on task, had someone to watch and guide their working, and be available to answer their questions as they worked. I believe this was a very successful model of making adjustments to suit the learning needs of our students in mathematics. It ensured that all students were following the curriculum with the same activities as their class mates.
It has been an absolute privilege to work with the students and families of St Ives Park Public School this year. I have seen so many students make progress and it really does reward me deeply.
Season’s greetings to all and may you all have a safe and happy Summer break.
Warm regards,
Adrienne Reid
Learning and Support Teacher.
Office
ONLINE ENROLMENT
Online enrolment for new students is now available at our school! If your child lives within the local intake area of our school and is an Australian or New Zealand citizen, you can make an application for enrolment through our school website under the ‘Enrolment’ tab. For further information please call the school on 02 9144 4085
Uniform Shop
Uniform orders need to be in by the Wednesday evening.
Goods will be handed out to your child just before the end of school on the Thursday afternoon. If you have any questions please call the school office or send an email to the uniform email address below.
School Uniform items can be purchased every week by using the QKr! App.
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.
http://www.helpinghandsnetwork.com.au/