St Leonards Primary School

How amazing has the past fortnight been, and how quickly has it passed!

Last week we celebrated Book Week with a fabulous parade on Friday. It never ceases to amaze me how creative our community is. It was a little challenging for Little Mr and Little Miss staff members to leave their characters behind; however, it is such a great tradition at SLPS that everyone gets involved. I would like to extend a big thank you for the effort made by all.

It was unfortunate that we are still not able to have family members on site to watch the parade as we would normally, but we are required to operate following strict directions from SA Health that are developed to maintain the safety of students, staff, parents and the wider community.

Keeping our school community safe is the prime concern of The Department for Education. With the uncertain times that we are presently experiencing, we are unable to permit parent spectators at the up-coming sports day due to current SA Government COVID restrictions. We will confirm this in our next newsletter.

The upcoming disco is under review as the organising committee consider whether the safe drop off and pick up of students can meet current COVID restrictions. We will keep you updated of any developments.

Please be mindful that the 100 Years Celebration Committee is putting many hours into the development of a COVID safe application to hold a Community Event. This involves planning, providing, and monitoring stringent measures on the day to ensure the event is COVID safe. The Committee is doing an amazing job as they plan and prepare for several different scenarios that may be in place in October/November. These arrangements are specific for each and every event outside of regular school hours and are not comparable to the daily operations of school events. The opportunity to celebrate the centenary of our school will only come once, and we are hoping that it will proceed to honour the proud history of St Leonards Primary School.

We understand and feel the parent disappointment and frustration at being unable to attend and participate in student activities as we have in previous years. However, we will continue to make every effort to capture and share all events with our community.

Please understand that all we do, we do in a concerted effort to protect our school community to the very best of our ability in accordance with the directions we have been given.

Kathy Baker - Acting Principal

Heidi Bevan - Acting Deputy

Parking

For the safety of our students and families we have several drop-off and pickup zones around the school indicated by signs.  We strongly encourage all parents and caregivers to use these areas. If your child is not at the spot waiting please do another lap to keep the traffic flowing. These are not parking areas and can attract a fine from the council if inspectors do spot checks. Please also note that there is no drop off zone on the Jervois Street side and observe the signed areas.

Before school

Students who need to be at school before 8:30am should be attending OSHC as there is no yard duty until 8:30am. Students who arrive at school between 8:30am and 8:45am and are not accompanied by a parent or caregiver must wait or play on either the oval or the Russell street side playground where there are teachers on duty or inside the Library. All other areas are out of bounds until the bell at 8:45am. 

Brightpath is a continuous writing improvement cycle that St Leonards has implemented since the beginning of 2020 with our focus on narrative writing.

Students complete a narrative writing task twice a year (Term 1 and 3). After the narrative has been written, teachers then give the student a score by comparing their students work to the Brightpath writing samples provided. The process of comparing students’ work to the samples promotes reliable teacher judgements.

The Brightpath Program provides teachers with teaching points for students enabling them to ensure that their teaching program is directed to the students’ learning needs.

Using this information, the teacher can provide feedback to the students and they work together to form class and/or individual writing goals.

We have seen significant improvement in our pre and post Brightpath assessments. This demonstrates that students have increased their understanding throughout the teaching cycle.

We look forward to students enjoying their narrative writing and planning new goals with their teacher early next term.

Sharon Hill and Jess Ogilvie

Week 8

• Governing Council - 7:00pm Tuesday 7 September
• Festival of Music Performance - Saturday 11 September

Week 9

Chinese Culture Week

• Reception - Year 3 School Disco - Thursday 16 September, 6:oopm - 7:00pm TBC
• Year 4 - Year 7 School Disco - Thursday 16 September, 7:15pm - 8:15pm TBC
• Assembly - Friday 17 September, Rooms 2 &12 presenting

We have now started planning for the 2022 school year. This is a long process that takes into consideration new reception enrolments, current enrolments and the movement of students into high school. 2022 is a unique year as we will farewell both our Year 7 and Year 6 students as Year 7 becomes the first year of high school.

If your child/ren are currently in Reception - Year 5 and they are not returning to St Leonards, please email Mel Worden, Office Manager, melanie.worden673@schools.s.edu.au as soon as possible with your child's name, current year level and destination school.

Reminder

We request that all absences, late arrivals and early leaving messages are either sent through our dedicated sms number 0436483127 or phoned directly to the school on 8294 9811.

Please include the student's name, room number and reason for absence eg family,  illness, appointment etc.

With the weather warming up a bit we are finding lots of lost items including lunch containers, drink bottles and clothing. Items with names are returned via the class boxes. All unnamed clothing items are held in the Office. Pictured below are some of the lost clothing. If you recognise any please see Liv or Mel in the Office.

Each class is collecting items to make up raffle baskets for the 100 years celebration day. These are the themes for each class. If you are able to provide an item please place them in the raffle collection boxes in your child/rens class.

Chinese Hacky Sack (Jian Zi) Incursion

Chinese Hacky Sack (Jian Zi) is a traditional Chinese national sport. It is a fun, energetic and engaging activity. The aim is to keep a Jian Zi in the air by using your body however you cannot use your hands.

As part of the Chinese culture learning and curriculum, the Year 5, 6, 7 students will undertake a Chinese Hacky Sack (Jian Zi) workshop next week (Week 8) in Chinese. I have invited staff from Confucius Institute, The University of Adelaide to run the workshop.

In this workshop students will learn how to play Jian Zi. Students will get the opportunity to play with the Jian Zi individually and as a group. 

Week 9 is Chinese culture week, the upper primary students will apply what they learned and teach this traditional sport to the whole school on Thursday at lunch time. Everyone is welcome! Don’t forget to check out all the other Chinese Culture Week lunch activities.

As part of Chinese Culture Week we would like to celebrate the Chinese culture in our school by dressing up in cultural outfits, clothes or red / yellow colours, the Chinese lucky colours on Tuesday 14 September.

Ms Chan (Chinese Teacher)