Dear Parents and Caregivers,

Absenteeism and Lateness

If your child is going to be absent from school or is sick, please give the school a call or send an explanatory note with your child upon return to school. If your child is away for more than two days, parents are required to contact the school.

Children who arrive to school in the morning after homeroom classes begin are considered late. If your child is going to be late, please inform the school in advance, or send an explanatory note with your child. Parents will be contacted for unexplained absences.

High School students must comply with the requirements of the LIS Assessment Policy for any absences regarding assessment.

Year 9 Camp

In Week 9 of this term, our Year 9 students will be attending the annual Grade 9 Camp to Port Moresby. This Camp is a time build friendships and leadership skills, especially with our new Lihirian Scholarship students and other students new to the cohort. The camp will include a tour of Parliament House, and visits to the National Museum and Art Gallery, the Port Moresby Nature Park and to Tutu Beach Retreat (Dame Carol Kidu’s residence).

The Student Resilience Survey

As part of our new Wellbeing Program ‘The Resilience Project,’ all students from Grade 3 – 10 will undertake ‘The Student Resilience Survey.’

The Student Resilience Survey is an anonymous online survey which collects, analyses and reports the resilience of young people. It incorporates six international gold standard measures of mental health: life satisfaction, hope, coping, anxiety, depression and connection to nature. Specifically, the survey reports against nine domains of resilience: Positive Relationships, Social Skills, Understanding Self, Safety, Health Mind and Healthy Body, Learning Engagement, Positive Attitude, Positive Values, Positive Contribution.

The Student Resilience Survey has been administered to more than 900,000 young people aged between 7–19 across 3,500 schools globally. The results will provide a foundation for planning and implementing targeted resilience building initiatives at our school.

What are the key features of the Student Resilience Survey?

● Online, quick and user friendly – The 60-question survey typically takes 30-50 minutes to complete.

● Confidential, safe and secure – All student data is non-identified and anonymous. Data transmission and storage is secure.

● Widely used, definitive dataset – The Student Resilience Survey is the definitive measure of youth resilience and wellbeing in Australia, used by over 1,500 schools and nearly 400,000 students across the country.

For more information about the survey, please visit https://www.resilientyouth.org/surveys

Regards,

Mr Kevin Collins 

SCHOOL HOURS Prep - 6

Official school times are:

8.10 Bell rings

8.10 – 8.15 Home room (Assembly on Friday)

8.15 – 10.35 First session

10.35 – 11.05 Recess (15 minutes eating followed by 15 minutes play)

11.05 – 12.35 Second session

12.35 – 1.20 Lunch (15 minutes eating followed by 30 minutes play)

1:20 – 3.00 Third Session

3.00 End of school day

SCHOOL HOURS 7 - 10

Official school times are:

8.10 Bell rings

8.10 – 8.15 Home room (Assembly on Friday)

8.15 – 10.05 Two periods

10.05 – 10.35 Recess (10 minutes eating followed by 20 minutes play)

10.35 – 1.20 Three periods

1.20 – 2.00 Lunch (10 minutes eating followed by 30 minutes play)

2.00 – 2.55 Third Session

2.55 – 3.00 Home room

3.00 End of school day

2025

Term 1 Monday 27 January to Thursday 3 April

Term 2 Tuesday 22 April to Thursday 19 June

Term 3 Monday 14 July to Thursday 18 September

Term 4 Monday 6 October to Thursday 4 December

• Week 7: NAPLAN testing for year 3, 5 and 7 students
• Week 10: Parent / Teacher Interviews
• Afternoon activities: High School Volleyball, Primary Art and Craft, Religion (Monday afternoons); Afternoon swimming lessons (as per schedule); Homework Class (yrs 3-6) and Highschool Study (Wednesday afternoons)
• Saturday morning sport: High School Volleyball will be on this Saturday from 8.00am - 9.00am.

PE lessons

This term, all primary classes from prep – year 6 will be participating in swimming lessons. High school will do swimming from weeks 2-7 and volleyball weeks 8-10. Students will need to bring appropriate swimming attire, towel, thongs/slippers. If a student is unable to swim, please notify their respective class teacher or myself Judith.Meauri@newmont.com .

 PE days are as follows:

Monday – year 1/2

Tuesday – 3/4

Wednesday – year 9/10

Thursday – Prep and year 7/8

Friday – year 5/6

If you have any questions about sport or swimming, please do not hesitate to contact me.

After school and Saturday sport

After school activities for this term include Arts and Craft (Ms Saua and Ms Yip); Religion lessons (Mrs R-D); and High School Volleyball (Mrs Laien and Ms Baiwan) will continue next Monday. High school will have volleyball this Saturday morning from 8.00am - 9.00am.

Kind regards,

Ms Judith Meauri (Sports Coordinator) 

After-school swimming

Please see schedule attached below.

Classes will be as follows:

• Babies / Water awareness – Must have an adult in the pool.  (20 minutes duration)
• Beginners level 1 / Learn-to-swim (ages 3.5 - 5) – Must have an adult in the pool.  (25 minutes duration)
• Beginners level 2/ Learn-to-swim (ages 6 - 8) – Must have a supervisor at the pool.  (30 minutes duration)
• Juniors: Ages 8 – 11:  Able to swim 25m freestyle and backstroke with aid - must have supervisor at the pool.  (35 minutes duration)
• Intermediates (ages 8-10) – Must have a supervisor at the pool.  (40 minutes duration)
• Advanced (ages 11+) – Must be competent in freestyle, breaststroke and backstroke; some younger children who demonstrate competent skills may be placed in this class. (50-60 minutes duration).

Kind regards,

Ms Judith Meauri  (Sports Coordinator)

The LIS library is open for borrowing and we encourage all students to regularly borrow. Primary students do need to have a library bag. This will be provided to new students. Students can also return and borrow books at some lunchtimes.

Library days are as follows:

• Tuesday - Kindy and year 1/2
• Wednesday - year 5/6 and year 7
• Thursday - year 3/4 and year 8
• Friday - Prep
• Year 9/10 students do not have a set borrowing time; however, are encouraged to borrow at lunchtime.

Kind regards,

Ms Grace Savitas (Librarian).

NAPLAN testing

Students in year 3, 5 and 7 will sit the Australian Literacy and Numeracy tests (Naplan) in Week 7 of this term. Students will not be sitting on-line tests as per Australian schools but will complete paper tests. Teachers have been working with students to prepare them for testing. No additional preparation is required by parents. We want to remind parents that these tests are not a need for concern for you or your child but are another measure to gather information about individual and class learning progress.

Naplan assesses literacy and numeracy skills that students are learning through their regular school curriculum. Students sit assessments in writing, reading, conventions of language (spelling, grammar and punctuation) and numeracy. The questions assess content linked to the Australian Curriculum: English and Mathematics.

Why do students do Naplan?

NAPLAN assesses the literacy and numeracy skills that students are learning through the school curriculum and allows parents/carers to see how their child is progressing against national standards and over time. NAPLAN is just one aspect of a school’s assessment and reporting process. It doesn’t replace ongoing assessments made by teachers about student performance, but it can provide teachers with additional information about students’ educational progress.

How is Naplan reported?

Individual student performance reports will have four levels of achievement:

·         Exceeding

·         Strong

·         Developing 

·         Needs Additional Support

Reports will also continue to show the national average, the range of achievement for the middle 60% of students in each year level, and a dot placement for the student comparing their achievement against these measures. Student reports are expected to arrive in term 2 and will be distributed on arrival to school.

How are Naplan results used?

Students and parents/carers may use individual results to discuss progress with teachers. Teachers use results to help identify students who need greater challenges or extra support. Schools use results to identify strengths and areas of need to improve teaching programs, and to set goals in literacy and numeracy.

For further information please visit https://www.nap.edu.au/naplan/for-parents-carers or please do not hesitate to see your child’s teacher or myself.

Primary reading

At LIS, we expect every student to be reading every day and again we thank parents for supporting your children with your home reading. If you have any questions about reading, please do not hesitate to see your child's teacher. We are also seeking parent helpers to assist with listening to children read one on one first up in the morning from Monday to Thursdays. Parents can commit to reading for as many mornings as they wish. Please see your child's teacher if you are interested in helping. Your support is greatly appreciated.

Friday Assemblies

Parents and wantoks are invited to attend our Friday assemblies held in the basketball court every Friday, commencing at 8.10am. Each week a primary class or the Student Council will share a short presentation. This week it was the year 1/2 assembly and next week, it will be the Prep class.

Kind regards,

Ms Langusch.

Work Ready Program

The Batch 1 of 2025 WRP Trainees are midway into their training. They just completed their training on the Module: ‘Communicate at Work’, which basically covers the different modes of communication, the different stages of communication, the importance of communication, strategies for effective communication and its effects on performance outcome in the Workplace.

Next week, they will be introduced to the Module: Change Behaviour,  which includes topics on the relationships between Attitude and Behaviour, and strategies on how to achieve a Desirable Behaviour by focusing on Attitude and Behaviour.

Today the trainees are attending their mandatory Trupla Site Induction at Camp 4.

Also this week, we had 17 of our former work Ready students came into STM for their interviews for the Mine technician positions.  

Next week Wednesday and Thursday, we will have another Interview sessions with 9 Trainees for the Technician Laboratory Services Roles, Metallurgy,  at the Process Plant.

We are hoping, a good number of them will be successful in the interviews and get the jobs like previous years.

FODE

Our FODE program has also commenced this week and Students are continuing at their own Pace with assistance of the WRP Staff.

Kind regards, 

Mr. David Wengip