ENewsletter

From the Principal - Jo Meredith

The end of term is an exciting time to reflect on the growth and achievements of the past 10 weeks, and anticipate what is coming next! As such, midyear reports will be available through the parent portal today and keep an eye out for the Audiri notification for the Term 3 calendar release.

Playgroup

For several years, playgroup has been offered to families with children aged 0-5 every Friday morning from 9am. Trudy runs this program and welcomes families to join in with play-based indoor activities and/or access to the nature play area (weather permitting) adjacent to the JP classrooms. Unfortunately, playgroup has been poorly attended and we are currently evaluating its viability. If you would like to attend playgroup, please meet Trudy at 9am this Friday, on the Metcalfe lawns (where JP children wait for their teacher before school). If you can't attend this Friday but would like to attend playgroup on a regular basis, please email dl.0177.admin@schools.sa.edu.au providing your name, number and the names/ages of your children.

Term 3 Staffing

At the end of this term we congratulate Rose Williams on her retirement after 4 decades of service to public education. We also thank Tamara Denton who has spent the past 6 weeks teaching in our year 3 class while Kerrie Evans has been on leave. Families of classes impacted by staffing changes in Term 3 have been advised via See-Saw so please keep an eye on those communications.

Grounds update

During the holidays, the dirt track near the 'courts crossing' will be upgraded to a concrete path and the areas either side will be landscaped. This work is due to commence from 10th July which of course means this area will not be accessible to the public at that time.

Healthy eating

We encourage children to access a balanced diet that supports optimal brain function and ask that they only bring water to school in their drink bottles. Please note that soft drink and 'Prime' drinks are not appropriate for children to bring to school. The Canteen policy has recently been published on the HBPS website and you'll notice its focus on providing healthy choices for food and drink as an option for families.

Assembly - NAIDOC week

Our year 3/4 class is hosting assembly in the gym tomorrow at 2:20pm. All families are welcome and we hope to see you there.

Please have a safe holiday break with your children. Enjoy many special moments, perhaps as you share a good book and play some dice or card games to keep up their love of literacy and numeracy!

Community Survey

https://forms.gle/N4sorXdN6kJAX6ii9

Friday 7 July @ 2pm

Reminder: School will finish early the last day of term at 2pm.

OSHC is available.

Reports Parent Portal

HBPS reports are released via the Parent Portal in Sentral today.

Assistant Principal - Aileen Clancy

Again, I have had the privilege to go into classes to get to know our students and talk to them about their learning and their school experience.

Something I noticed in the year 4 class when I walked in was a small group of boys singing very quietly, completely in tune, not disturbing anyone else, just enjoying their time together AND continuing with the work. Students were finishing off their spelling work and Liam was very proud to show me some of the words he has been trying to learn and use in his writing. It was pretty impressive and I came across a word that I did not know! It was a word influenced by a wonderful book they have been reading in class called the Dragon Keeper written by Australian author, Carole Wilkinson. The word Liam had chosen to learn to spell and use was ‘Necromancer.’ Do you know what this word means? I needed an explanation!

In the year 4/5 class students were settling into their daily routine of guided reading. Even with a relief teacher in the room, students were quick to move to their rotational activity. The students I spoke to were able to articulate that they enjoy reading with the teacher and talking about and investigating the new words they come across.

Students in the year 2 class were busily writing extended sentences using adverbs such as ‘loudly, quickly and noisily’. In addition, I was fortunate to spend some time with Nelson who explained to me how he has to go through his story and find the words he thinks he has spelled incorrectly and highlight them to come back to later. This is excellent evidence of how students can edit their compositions independently once they have been given the tools to do so. Phoebe was experimenting with turning her completed and edited story into a book and working out how many paragraphs she should put on one page. She made the excellent decision to leave the ‘… OH NO!’ to its very own final page! Again, evidence of student agency.

School Holiday Reading

It is really important that children continue to read every day while on the school holidays. All text types have their value and are to be encouraged.

I noticed when reading reports that some of our older students have been advised to practise reading aloud at home in order to improve their overall presentation skills. Even our very oldest students still enjoy having an adult read to them so, to encourage this, perhaps family members could take turns to read either their own or a family book during these holidays and beyond.

Remember too that we are currently in the middle of the Premier’s Reading Challenge and the books which are in the challenge can be found here: Book List | Premiers Reading Challenge SA

To compete the Challenge, students must read 8 books from the Premier’s Reading Challenge booklist and 4 personal choice books. Don’t forget to sign off the record sheet for the books that your children read at home.

Book Week

Book Week will be held in week 5 next term (21 to 25 August). The theme for this year is Read, Grow, Inspire and the featured artist is Matt Ottley.

As is the tradition, there will be a Book Week parade on Thursday, 24 August where students will be able to dress as their favourite character.

More information will be given next term; - we wanted to give as much notice as possible to help with the costume discussions, ideas and creation.

Wellbeing and Inclusion - Alecia Cailes

As we come to the end of term 2, I thought it would be useful to share with you some ideas for the school holidays for wet weather. The July school holidays are always a tricky time with the weather being so unpredictable, and finding activities to do can be a challenge! Here are 20 wet weather ideas you can try:

Have a family movie night

Read a book

Play board games

Bake and decorate a cake or biscuits

Solve a jigsaw puzzle

Play cards

Cardboard box fun

Build an indoor obstacle course

See what they are doing in space (have a look at the NASA website)

Do a family yoga session (try cosmic kids yoga online)

Put on a fashion show

Have a teddy bears' picnic

Have a dance party

Listen to a podcast together

Make a family time capsule

Make and play with playdough or slime

Set up stations with favourite activities and rotate through them every 15 minutes

Write letters for neighbours/family members

Write a book together (it could be a story or a ‘how to’)

Jump in puddles!

I would love to hear if you try any of these during the break!

Please be reminded that this Friday 7/7/2023 is a casual day. Students can wear their pyjamas for a gold coin donation which will go towards the canteen purchasing more sustainable products. Please remember to wear appropriate footwear on Friday.

Wishing you a safe and happy holiday break. I look forward to seeing you all in term 3.

By Luca, Ryelin and Evie, Student Executive Committee

The lunchtime soccer match between the year 6 students and teachers had a great atmosphere! There were lots of people who came to cheer on the players. Here are some facts about the game:

Staff participants: Adam, Georgia, Mr. Kitchin, Bec, Mrs. Buckley, Mr. Wuttke, Tracy, Referee: Mr J

Student participants: lots of year 6s! Commentators: Matilda, Kobe, Ethan and Fraser

Scorers: Kobe and Luca

Score: 3 all!

Sustainability - Did you know…?! Nancy Coleman

Glue sticks CAN be recycled! Simply remove the inner sticky bit (these have to go to landfill) and put the lid and stick into a milk bottle. When the milk bottle is full, put the lid on and drop it into your YELLOW bin. Lots of small hard plastics can be recycled inside milk bottles like this, it keeps the small pieces together instead of scattering them at the recycling facility, so they don’t drop through the machines. Every classroom has a milk bottle for collecting small hard plastics. Why not start your own SMALL HARD PLASTICS milk bottle bin at home?!!