Goulburn North Public School Newsletter

The School is making a very minor adjustment to break times from week 8 to the end of term. Currently, our 1st break is 40 minutes in length and our 2nd break is 30 minutes in length. We are reducing 1st break to 35 minutes in length and increasing our 2nd break to 35 minutes in length. 

This will equalise each break for the remainder of term.

During this time, the school is trialling a few playground adjustments to determine if this will assist with improving the playground overall. Some of these adjustments are as follows:

• All students will be able to access any area of the playground, with the exception of Soccer Games.
• The recent purchases of additional Soccer posts, will allow for more games to be established. These games will be assigned to specific cohorts of groups, to allow for these hectic games to be reduced in size.
• We will also be trialing different playground activity options.

We will keep our community informed of the progress made and what we find from making these adjustments.

Grow Your Mind is being implemented at Goulburn North Public School. We are currently moving into our third week of this program. Evidence of its impact is beginning to creep into conversations and discussions.

An altercation took place recently and through discussions with the students, one student began discussing how their 'Guard Dog' was heightened and alerted. They felt uncomfortable and that they did not know how to calm their Guard Dog. This is a break through! Students are being provided with a common set of language to work with through these situations. Staff are able to instantly access and support students with workable strategies.

Ask your child about their 'Guard Dog', ask them what causes their guard dog to stir and react, and what strategies they use to calm their 'Guard Dog'.

The school has continued to keep a focus on 'Inappropriate Language' and we will continue to follow this focus throughout the school term. However, we have discovered a noticeable decrease in incidents being logged revolving around 'Inappropriate Language'. We are still on the journey, but we are beginning to see a noticeable improvement across the school. We would also like to thank our amazing North Community in this regard for your assisting and support with helping our school in this space.

We have started to notice that nuts and food containing nuts are beginning to creep into school again. We would like to ask our community to have nut free options for student lunches. We have a number of student at school that have nut allergies and nut intolerances. Whilst we maintain a strict 'no sharing of foods policy' to keep all students safe, some students can have a reaction from a few particles in the air or being in close proximity to students that have nuts. To assist us in keeping all of our community safe, we ask that lunches have nut free alternatives if at all possible.

We thank you in advance.  

We have been asked if we have students that would like to participate in the Fairy Festival in later in the year. Students would be able to dress up as a fairy and be apart of the parade during the long weekend. If you are interested in participating in this event, please contact Mrs Nixon.

Our K-2 teachers have become experts at implementing the new English and Mathematics syllabuses with their classes this year. Their knowledge of the curriculum will greatly assist our Stage 2 and 3 teachers as we implement the new 3-6 English and Mathematics syllabuses next year.

To access introductory videos on the new K-2 and 3-6 English and Mathematics curriculum, please click on the following link:

https://curriculum.nsw.edu.au/resources/syllabus-introduction-videos

This information is taken from the ‘Digital Lives of Teens’ report compiled by the eSafety Commissioner (2020).

State of Play

• Teens spent an average of 14.4 hours a week online (boys 15 hours, girls 13.8 hours)
• Teens used an average of four different socia media services
• Top social media services were YouTube (72% of respondents), Instagram (57%) and Facebook (52%). The trend for these services has gone down since 2017. TikTok has had substantial growth in Australia (12% of respondents in 2017 compared to 38% in 2020).

Negative Experiences

• Just over four in 10 teens had at least one negative experience in the six months to September 2020.
• This increased to five in 10 for those aged 14 17
• These negative experiences included being contacted by a stranger (30%), receiving inappropriate content (20%), social exclusion (16%), receiving online abuse (15%) and having things said online to damage a student's reputation (15%)
• Almost one third (30%) said that their negative online experience related to bullying that occurred at school.

Digital lives of Aussie teens | eSafety Commissioner

Have an amazing birthday!!!

Friday 15 September @ 12.30pm

Our next whole school assembly for Term 3 will be held on Friday 15 September (Week 9) commencing at 12.30pm.

We will be holding our assembly underneath the junior COLA. Please feel free to come along and join us celebrating the successes of our students. 

Additional assemblies for Term 3 will be held on the following date:

• Friday 15 September @ 12.50pm under the Junior COLA.
  

Over the last week 1L have been exploring length. The students have used informal units of measurement to estimate and compare the length of two different objects.  We have also been exploring equal parts  such as whole, half and quarters .They were lucky enough to have some students from 5/6 F assist them with a recent problem solving task. They were presented with 6 strips of paper which represented 6 salad rolls which they needed to share equally between 4 people.  This was very challenging but after some discussion and manipulation they were able to determine how they could be  equally share.

Over the last week 3/4B have been investigating acute, right, and obtuse angles. We identified them in our environment and created an angles art piece. To do this we used washi tape to mark off a piece of paper. We then painted with watercolours. Once dry we removed the washi tape and revealed all the different angles in our painting. 

Our meetings have now changed to Weeks 4 and Week 8 each term. This will mean that our next meeting will be held on:

Monday 4 September in the Staff Room at 6pm.

We hope that you can come along and join in with the team.

The P&C would like to welcome our new canteen manager Sharon Warn. The canteen is now open on Wednesdays and Fridays. If you have a few hours to volunteer on a Friday to help out, even once a month, we would love your help! Please contact Sharon on 0428 259 791 if you are interested.

P&C meetings are now held 6.30pm Mondays in weeks 4 and 8 each term in the school staff room. Casual members always welcome!

• Updated Student Details
• Stage 3 Camp Forms and payments