| Date | Event |
| 1 July | Whole School Assembly 11:30am |
| 3 July | Semester 1 Reports distributed |
| Week 10 | 95% Attendance Principal's Morning Tea |
| 5 July | Last day of Term 2 |
| 23 July | First day of Term 3 |
| 6 August | 3 - 6 Athletics Carnival |
I would like to take this opportunity as we come to the end of Semester 1 to thank our teaching staff for their dedication and commitment to excellence for every student at our school. We have much to celebrate this semester with most students achieving their personal learning goals and having a lot of fun in the process. Teachers are currently finalising Semester 1 reports. These reports are designed to communicate detailed information about your child's learning and progress in all Key Learning Areas, using the NSW Department of Education's prescribed scale of achievement. Students who are working at the level they should be for their year will receive a S-Sound. Semester 1 Reports will be sent home on Wednesday 3rd July.
Student Behaviour
During 2024, all schools in NSW will work to update their Behaviour Support and Management Plans. In coming weeks, during professional learning time, the staff at Telopea will work on refinement of our Behaviour Support and Management Plan focussing on clearly defining our school-wide behaviour expectations, how we acknowledge and reward positive student behaviour and how we plan to respond to behaviours of concern. There will be opportunity for community consultation in this review during Semester 2.
A reminder to parents and carers that your first point of contact for behaviour concerns is the classroom teacher. School issues are always best dealt with at school, rather than on parent chat forums.
Staffing News
At the end of Week 9 Mrs Hickey, our EAL/D teacher will be finishing up at Telopea Public School. She has only been with us for a short time but has had great impact supporting our students with English as an Additional Language or Dialect. I would like to thank her for the work she has done for the children at Telopea and wish her and her family all the best with their move. I am in the process of recruiting a replacement teacher for Semester 2.
Explicit Teaching
This term, our staff continue to work during professional learning time on improving teaching and learning using explicit teaching. This is a focus for the NSW Department of Education in the new Plan for Public Education and has been a key feature of our success here at Telopea for many years. We are working with a network of schools across the state, called the “EAST schools” to lead in this area with a particular focus on the development of evidence-based units of work in Mathematics. Late last term I had the opportunity to meet Murat Dizdar, the secretary of the Department of Education, along with the principals from the EAST network to speak about the work we are doing. Following this, there has been some very positive responses in the media with some articles listed here:
NSW education: doubled its NAPLAN high achievers. Now its techniques are spreading (smh.com.au)
Go EAST as classrooms embrace explicit teaching (nsw.gov.au)
Earlier this term, Mrs Vasilareas and Ms Michie had the opportunity to visit Blue Haven Public School to view explicit teaching in action. They came back with lots of ideas for us to use here at Telopea. We have seen positive impact of this approach in our preliminary NAPLAN results data for 2024. NAPLAN results for parents are expected to arrive early in Term 3.
Mrs Erin Dooley
Principal (Relieving)
