Sutton Public School

Week 4 Term 4 - 29th October 2021

From the Principal

Today is World Teachers’ Day!

I want to thank and congratulate our teaching staff for their resilience and dedication.  They continue to go above and beyond to meet the unprecedented challenges for teaching during these uncertain times.

Beyond the teaching and learning for students, including adapting to learning from home, our staff have continued their own professional development after school hours, attended many meetings and made preparations and plans for lesson delivery taking all eventualities into consideration.  Sutton teachers put in an enormous number of hours outside the school day.

Teachers are now busily teaching, assessing, beginning reports and planning end of year activities and events; again, planning for all eventualities. Thank you to all the teachers and executives at Sutton Public School. It is a great privilege to work with such high calibre colleagues.

We also want to give a shout out to our parents and carer’s, recognising the significant role you have played in your child’s education this year.

Happy World Teachers’ Day to all!

Clare Sullivan | Principal

Important Information

Upcoming Events

November

5th - High School Transition Program with Kids Helpline

8th - Scholastic Book Fair begins

11th - Remembrance Day

           - External Validation 

16th - K - 2 Class Discos

22nd - School Captain nomination letters due to Mrs Sullivan

25th - P&C Meeting

26th - Stage 2 Activity Day

December

 2nd - Stage 3 Activity Day 1

 3rd - Stage 3 Activity Day 2

 6th - Captains Speeches

 7th - Mini Fair Fun-raiser

        - Semester 2 reports and Special Work folders home

 9th - Christmas Church Service for Scripture students ( TBC)

10th - Presentation Day

13th - Whole School Sovereign Reward Day

         -  Year 6 Graduation and Farewell

16th - Final day for students

17th - Final day for staff

End of year planning

Each year, schools must plan staffing for the following year based on strict ratios of teachers to student enrolments. These ratios are set by the department. It is extremely helpful to know the expected enrolments as early as possible prior to begin planning for the new school year. If you are planning a move in 2022, could you please advise the office as soon as you can.

Our school has a process in place for allocating students into classes each year. The procedure ensures that the professional judgement of both the teaching staff and executive leadership staff is informed and that all available information is applied to the placement process. The interests of children are paramount to the decisions taken by the school taking into consideration the academic, social and emotional needs of each student.

Parents and carers may provide the principal with specific information about their child’s learning needs that they believe the school may not be aware of. Such information would not include a request for a particular teacher. Such requests cannot be accommodated. The information should be provided in writing (letter or email). This information will be referenced by the Executive Team, along with all other information, during the class placement process.

We are hosting a Book Fair - 10th - 19th November!

Our annual Book Fair will take place next week from Wednesday 10th November to Friday 19th November.

There are many good reasons why Mrs Doran organises our annual book fair.

  • Book fairs give children a motivation to read by offering them a wide selection of books to choose from that they can look at before they decide to buy.
  • The Book Fair is open before school to give parents and children an opportunity to pick out and read books together. This increases the likelihood that they will want to continue reading.
  • Our teachers get a chance to see books their students enjoy.
  • Our teachers get a chance to see and buy books they would like to use in the classroom.
  • Our Book Fair helps our school library. Our school receives a percentage of all fair sales to spend on books or library supplies.
  • Our book fair celebrates reading. Our school hopes to instill a love of reading that last a lifetime!

Students will visit the Book Fair during school hours and prepare a ‘wishlist’ to take home for parents to consider.  Online payments to Scholastic are required to confirm an order. Scholastic will notify the school when purchases are complete and the school will then deliver the order to the students.

Preparing for virtual assemblies

While we continue to operate under Level 3 restrictions, we are unable to hold a whole school assembly, so we are preparing to move to an online ZOOM assembly.  Technology is being tested and scripts are being prepared to move to a virtual whole school assembly, ZOOMing between classrooms and as soon as we can to you!  We want to get things right before we go live and thank you for your patience. 

In the meantime, merit awards are building up and sovereign certificates are ready to be presented.  From next week we will begin to present students with their awards during our trial virtual assemblies each week.  Parents will be notified that their child is receiving an award.  We will also celebrate our students by recording the names of merit certificate recipients in the weekly newsletter.

Staying safe this bushfire season

With the support of the Sutton Rural Fire Service, our school and community will monitor local conditions during the bushfire season – particularly when there is bushfire activity in the local area - and be ready to respond. Our Bushfire Management Plan, which has been reviewed by the Rural Fire Service, is available on our website

Our bush fire management plan ensures our staff

  • Know the risk to our school and community
  • Know the plan and can respond to an emergency
  • Have the school ready to minimise danger
  • Are alert and aware during periods of increased risk
  • Are trained to implement an appropriate incident response following an event.

In the event of a local bushfire three options for action are available to the School’s staff:  1. Evacuation procedure 2. Refuge procedure or 3. Cancellation of school procedure. The implementation of any one of these three options is dependent on the conditions at the time and any expected changes to those conditions, with student, staff and parents safety the paramount deciding factor. Details of each response is outlined in our plan.  In all circumstances however, the school will:

  • Follow the directions of emergency services 
  • Call the Incident Report and Support Hotline 
  • Keep the Director, Educational Leadership updated

If concerned by a report of bushfire activity or smoke int he area, parents may contact the school by phone for information. During a bush fire event, parents will be informed and advised of planned school actions via our skoolbag app and our website.  

Finally, thank you to all those volunteers from our community helping others during this difficult time, particularly the dedicated volunteers and RFS teams.

In the event of a positive COVID-19 case at school

A question was asked at P&C about procedures the school will take if the school receives advice from a parent/carer, a staff member or from NSW Health that a person who has been on school grounds tests positive for COVID-19. The department has provided principals with response protocols, beginning with a phone call to our Incident Report and Security Hotline. At that point the Health and Safety Directorate will advise of the next actions the school which will include some or all of the following:

• Communicating with parents advising you whether your child has been in contact with a confirmed case.

• Ceasing operations of the school (where it is deemed appropriate)

• Contact tracing to identify all contacts to a confirmed case. In some instances, this may require ceasing the operations of the school while the contact tracing process is completed

• Thorough cleaning of the school site to ensure the environment is clean and safe prior to the school resuming onsite learning.

Again, we ask you to please advise the school of changes to your email, phone number, your child’s emergency contacts and your address so that you can be easily contacted if required.

Hats are required in Term 4

Brimmed or bucket hats are required to be worn as part of the school uniform. Students who do not have their hat, or have misplaced their hat, will be asked to sit in the shade. Students keep hats in their chair bags; doing so usually results in fewer hats being lost or misplaced. Please note, caps are not part of the school uniform.

Sutton Sovereign Class Rewards

Sutton PS has trialled a new system for positive behaviour this year, “the Sutton Sovereigns”, which was developed by a committee of teachers on staff. Class rewards across the school will begin rolling out shortly, such as games afternoons, extra playground play, or a G-rated movie and popcorn. Stay tuned on SkoolBag to learn of what your child’s class reward is this term!

Tin lids - Sustainable Garden Feature

Our school Sustainable Garden is coming together beautifully!

We now need some help collecting 'tin lids' like the ones you get from a milo tub. If you have any spare laying around, or if you finish a tin, we would love if you could keep the lids aside and hand them into the office. These will be used in the garden.

150 years of facts and fun at Sutton Public School!

Katie in Year 6 has now traced her family tree back to two former Principals, Lizzie Whyte ( 1880 – 1885) and her husband James Williams ( 1885 -1894).

Sarah (Tottie) was Katie, Abbie and Will’s great, great, great, grandmother and also James Williams’ younger sister!

Can you believe it?

· The roses, just outside Mrs Sullivan’s office flower particularly well each year! What makes them grow so well? Does Mrs Sullivan have green fingers? The truth is not as pleasant! The roses were planted on the site of the old pit toilets! The toilet block was built in 1975.

· Ambrose Thomas, Principal in 1907 - 1910 used to march around the classroom playing his prize violin for the students as they wrote on their slates.

· Laurie Kershaw ( 1966 – 1973) fondly remembers in Chris Bayliss’s time making balsa wood rockets, attaching them to a gas cylinder tied to fishing wire attached to a strainer post near the RFS shed on Victoria Street. They would light them and let them fly across Victoria Street towards the school! Children do NOT try this at home.

· During WW2 children often went home coated in mud – they’d been playing in the trenches built around the school.

· Stirl Kershaw ( 1935 – 1941) told the story of how one day someone ( perhaps who should remain nameless!) put a dead snake near the girls pit toilets. Stirl was asked to rush home to get the gun for the teacher who thought the snake was alive. When the teacher found out the snake was already dead and had been put there to frighten the girls, he was not amused. All the boys were punished with the cane that day!

· Thomas Lake, Principal between 1894-1907 was paid a small allowance to maintain his horse. In the mid 1890s the average attendance of the school was only fifteen students, so Sutton School was conducted half time with Brooks Creek. For three years he made a twelve-kilometre round trip. Brooks Creek school’s numbers dropped further and eventually, Sutton was merged with the school at Mulligan’s Flat.

· A school in Bywong! In October 1895, a small school was opened in Bywong, following a lucky strike of gold in the area. Over 300 people lived in the gold mining community. By 1901 the township had disappeared, and the school closed in 1906.

· In 1988 the Sutton interchange and dual carriageway on the Federal Highway was opened. Pupils from Sutton Public School attended the event, and in return, the principal at the time, Pamela Guilfoyle, arranged for some of the fill from the excavation work to be delivered to level parts of the sports field!

We know there are many family members and neighbours of our school community who attended Sutton Public School. Please ask them to jot down or email us with their favourite memories of their school days. We’d love more stories and photos if you have them.

Fun Around the School

A massive thank you to Bunnings Warehouse Gungahlin for the large donation of flower bulbs for our garden! Students assisted Mrs Frame with planting these bulbs in our front garden.

Other Notices