Goulburn North Public School Newsletter

Our daily school supervision begins at 8.40am. We have members of staff on active supervision from this time. However, whilst we have the gates open from an early hour, we have seen an increase in students arriving at school earlier than 8.40am.

We are now beginning to see students arriving at school at 8am. 

We ask our community to not send your children until 8.40am, when staff begin supervision. Before this time students are not supervised and the increasing number of students arriving prior to this time is causing some issue with negative interactions between groups of students.

In the event that your child is at school prior to this time can you please remind your children of school expectations. This is that students arriving prior to 8.40am, must sit under the main COLA until the 8.40am school bell. Students are encouraged to read and chat quietly until the teacher begins supervision.

We thank you for your support in this matter.

NAPLAN 2024 is almost upon us. Our Year 3 and Year 5 students will sit through the NAPLAN that will commence on Wednesday 13 March. All students sitting this years NAPLAN will begin with a writing assessment and will then complete further assessments over the next few days. 

We ask that if you have a child in Year 3 and Year 5, that they arrive on time, so they do not miss the commencement of any assessments. We also encourage you to promote this experience by ensuring your children have a full breakfast on the day. This means that their minds can be focused on the assessments on these days.

Goulburn North has been using its new school rules/expectations daily. The new key words are often heard in classroom and the playground when providing behaviour specific feedback to our students. 

Our focus has now shifted from 'Ready' to 'Respectful'. 

Our Respectful focus is continuing to building students understanding around how to speak respectfully to others. We are still using our 'Inappropriate Language' strategy. This is where the language used by students is identified and suitable replacement languages are found and encouraged in their use. You may be mailed or emailed copies of this language. We ask that you help reinforce this at home by reminding your child about the respectful way to speak to other people.

We thank our community for sharing all the feedback for our revised exit strategy. This will continue to be monitored as time progresses.

We have now added to this plan an adjustment with our School Gates on Union Street and side Hall Gates, being opened daily at 3pm. We would like to invite our community to come into the school and meet our students in the COLA Area, where students will congregate prior to departing the school. 

All classes will be at the COLA area by 3.05pm and you can collect your children from this area.

Staff will continue to walk students to the front and rear gates as we did last year.

Kindergarten has relocated from the previous location to B Block. We ask that parents collecting Kindergarten Students meet their children at this location also. Waiting outside the classroom has caused some congestion in this area and held up the rest of the school exiting. Please wait under the COLA and we will bring your children to you.

Please contact Mrs Winslet with any further feedback during Term 1.

Our Phone Policy has now been in place for a full term. Students are mostly following the guidelines. 

We ask our community to once again, please discuss the school Phone Policy and guidelines. Please talk about how this applies to their children. 

Please also consider if your child actually requires a mobile phone whilst at school. If phones were not brought to school, these guidelines would not be required. If your child does not need a phone for the trip to and from school, we recommend keeping these devices at home.

Policy and Guidelines are found below.

Mulwaree High School invites all Year 5 and 6 students and their families to join them on the 7th of March, 2024 from 6pm to 7:30pm. Information about what a transition to Year 7 will look like at Mulwaree High School will be shared as well as providing an opportunity for students to meet Head Teachers and school leaders. There will also be time to visit classrooms and enjoy a sausage sizzle!

Goulburn High School visited our Stage 3 students on the 22nd of February. Packs went home to Year 6 students with dates for Focus Days and Parent Information sessions. Please visit our previous Audiri post to find digital versions of the documents.

We now have 3 amazing volunteers to assist with Ethics Education in 2024. We still need someone to support with the management of the program and someone to support with Coordination. All training is provided. Please keep in mind that a teacher will be present to support with lessons. If you are in a position to support with this program, please contact the office and we will connect you with the Ethics Australia team. 

You should be sleeping 8 hours a night, right? Not necessarily. There is no magic number that we need for sleep. It is highly individualised, and usually depends on our chronotypes (whether we are night owls or early risers), our energy expenditure, genetic and biological factors, and more. We do know that children and adolescents need more sleep than adults, and that newborns spend most of their time sleep in polyphasic stretches (multiple times in a day). Below is a basic guide:

• Newborns (0 to 3 months) – 14-17 hours
• Infant (4 to 11 months) – 12-15 hours
• Toddler (1 to 2 years) = 11-14 hours
• Preschool (3 to 5 years) = 10-13 hours
• School-age (6 to 13 years) = 9-11 hours
• Teen (14 to 17 years) = 8-10 hours
• Young adult (18-25) = 7-9 hours
• Adult (26-64 years) = 7-9 hours
• Older Adult (65+ years) = 7-8 hours

Sleep is essential to our productivity, mood, and overall health, and when it is delayed, disrupted or of poor quality, there are health consequences, ranging from mild to severe. Lack of sleep can result in problems with:

Physical Health

Sleep is linked to recovery, boosting your  immune system and healthier overall bodily system. If you don’t sleep enough, you get sick more often, as well as heightening your risk for heart disease, gaining weight, obesity, diabetes, stroke and more. Sleep is not an option, it is a priority!  

Motor coordination 

When we are tired we become less vigilant, less careful, we make mistakes, get clumsier and our chance of human error dramatically increases. This means we are more at risk of having accidents due to inattention, as well as our normally accurate motor skills failing us. Gross motor coordination and learning has also been associated with “offline learning” aka learning while you’re asleep. When we sleep, we are able to enhance these memory processes, as well as stabilise declarative and procedural memory.  In plain english – our skills improve while we sleep.

Emotion 

Poor sleep is associated with increased likelihood of developing depression, at its most severe. Even without developing serious mental health disorders, lack of sleep or sleep disruption can cause people to become easily frustrated and irritable, moody, anxious, stressed, as well as affect their self confidence and their social behaviour. Often sleep deprived people will become antisocial or withdrawn, and less able to regulate their behaviour, which manifests itself in outbursts, hyperactive or aggressive behaviour. 

Complex thinking

Like our motor skills, when we are tired our cognitive skills decline. This leads to trouble concentrating, poor planning, poor execution, organisation, time management and general inattention. Our frontal cortex has amazing abilities to comprehend mathematics, sciences, and different languages, as well as solve and contemplate abstract concepts like philosophy and art, but if we are tired, our brain struggles. This impacts us on every level, from academic problems like falling behind in school or poor grades, to poor productivity at work, human error and sleeping on the job or missing work due to tiredness.

Learning 

Sleep, particularly Rapid eye movement sleep (REM sleep), is associated with storing and solidifying memory and experiences. There are theories that while we are in deep sleep, our brain is actively working through information that it was exposed to throughout the day, and without this time, we might not be learning or retaining information as efficiently as we are capable of. 

Creativity 

Lack of deep sleep is linked to a number of negative health issues, but it may also be affecting your creativity. Studies have shown that people who enter REM sleep in naps or sleep sessions perform better in creative thinking tasks. So, if you’re creative,  you may be doing yourself a disservice by burning the candle at both ends. Get some sleep and supercharge!

Excerpt taken from sleepeducation.net.au

Already 2024 is shaping up to be a busy year. We have students making great progress in many areas already. We are acknowledging the efforts of students this year with our traditional Merit award but we also want to acknowledge students following our school rules with Ready, Respect, Safe awards as well. Responding to feedback from the end of last year, we have simplified our Northern Passport system. Northern Star awards will be collected and be put into a draw at a Friday assembly. Keep tuned in to see what our Shining Stars are receiving when their names are pulled out.

The last few weeks have been very busy for our student leaders! All Year 6 students currently holding any role this year that requires a badge were invited to a virtual excursion on the 20th of February. Students watched and participated in a range of activities to discover how laws are made and what positions people have in the Parliament House of Sydney. This is the beginning of a slow roll out over the next couple of years to introduce a parliament model with our SRC and future Year 6 leaders.

Captains, Vice Captains and Prefects were invited to a Student Leadership Conference with Mr Timothy O'Keefe in Canberra on the 1st of March where they completed workshop activities and heard from guest speakers to develop their leadership skills.

Captains and Vice Captains were also invited to the Young Leaders program in Sydney on the 4th of March to futher develop their talents and hear from politicians, authors, sports stars, and other talented individuals.

Last week, students in Years 3-6 participated in the first HPGE Interest Groups of the year. Students were invited to select their preferences on topic areas that they self-identify as having talent, are passionate about, or would like to learn more about. These groups meet once per week and offer opportunities for students to develop themselves in touch football, soccer, gardening, dance, choir, creative arts, language (Bahasa/Indonesian), chess, and robotics/coding.

On Friday the 1st of March we had 15 students attend the Goulburn/Crookwell PSSA District Swimming Carnival.

All students competed well, we were very lucky to have a wonderful sunny day.

Congratulations to Alicia B and Eli L who will now go on and represent the Goulburn/Crookwell PSSA at the Regional Swimming Carnival on Tuesday the 12th of March. Good luck!

Goulburn North Public School want to thank our very own P&C committee for their wonderful donation towards new athletics equipment.

This donation has paid for new number stacks, shot puts, discuses, barriers, measuring poles, section tape and lots more. All this equipment will support the primary athletics carnival, but has also equipped us with the resources to hold an infants athletics carnival later in the year.

Term 1 assemblies for 2024.

We would love to share our Whole School Assemblies with our community. Save the dates below and come along and share in these treasured occasions.

Assemblies in Term 1 will be held on the following date:

• Friday 8 March - Presented by class Amethyst commencing at 12.45pm
  
• Friday 5 April - Presented by class Emerald commencing at 12.45pm

First Prize! First Prize! Our dazzling Diamonds and precious Pearls entered an abundance of artworks into the 2024 Goulburn Show. We explored painting and printmaking to create beautiful Australian flora. We looked at the works of Pete Cromer and took collage inspiration for Australian Fauna. Together the Pearls and Diamonds created a collaborative artwork showcasing the A-Z of Australian Fauna and Flora. Well done to our talented little artists!

Ruby have been enjoying morning fitness where they are refining their fundamental movement skills and preparing for the upcoming athletics carnival. They have been drawing inspiration from our current text, "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" by Roald Dahl, to assist them in their own writing process. This text is also serving as the foundation for our drama unit, in which they are re-enacting the story through reader's theatre.

Miss Lauren Franchi and Mr Michael Baxter would like to thank all the parents that attended the Meet the Teacher evening earlier this term. It was wonderful sharing information and speaking with you.

The students in our collaborative teaching environment have been enjoying listening to our focus text for this term 'The Wild Robot' by Peter Brown (at the time of writing this our robot friend, Roz, narrowly escaped his demise at the hands of two bears!). Students have been linking their writing and literacy tasks to the book and are learning about the science fiction genre and what makes a good narrative.

Additionally, Goulburn North Public School are continuing their wellbeing journey with the Grow Your Mind program. Emerald and Topaz have been listening to podcasts and completing activities around how to get dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins, and what some ways are to improve your mental health!

Please see information attached on our first AGM. We would love to see new faces at our meeting. Our community is invited to be involved for as little or as much as they would like.

Fireworks is also approaching quickly. We hope to make this years event the best one yet!!

The canteen is open weekly this year on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays, and if anyone is interested in helping out in the canteen to please contact our Sharon, our canteen manager  on 0428 259 791. 

Kind Regards

Sharon