Swansea Public School Newsletter

Swansea Secret Agents:

Our ‘Swansea Secret Agents’ playgroup for children aged 3-5 years continues to grow from strength to strength. Our ‘Swansea Secret Agents’ playgroup runs on Tuesday morning between 9:15am-10:45am.  We encourage all families with children aged 3-5 years to contact our school to learn more.  We also strongly encourage all our 2022 Kindergarten students to be part of this playgroup, where possible, so we can continue building our connections, in addition to our upcoming Kindergarten transition program.

Athletics Carnival – Friday June 18 (Week 9):

We are very excited about our Athletic Carnival coming up on Friday next week.  Who will win the ‘Kindy Cup’?  Which House will take out the 2021 honours of Athletics Carnival Champions?  Will the staff put a relay team in this year and go head-to-head against our Senior Relay Team?  So many unanswered questions we look forward to answering together on Friday next week.  At this stage we are planning for the inclusion of spectators at our carnival.  Understandably, things can change in the COVID space so we will keep an eye on NSW Department of Education requirements so we are all informed on how we can maximise community involvement, while meeting NSW Health advice.

Building a Restorative School:

Being restorative is about reflecting on the PAST, acknowledging the PRESENT, and planning for an improved FUTURE.  Throughout Term 2 we have been introducing the concept of PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE  to our students when working through conflict.  When we are restorative, we are focused on FUTURE…focussing on how can we learn from a mistake or event and move forward from this in a better way.  Across Term 2 we’ve been coaching students the importance of ‘getting quickly to the facts about what happened’ (PAST), thinking deeply about ‘how these things are impacting or affecting others’ (PRESENT), and how we can ‘repair any harm caused to strengthen relationships’ (FUTURE).  By focusing our work on relationships and how our actions impact others, we build a culture of empathy.  Research tells us that when empathy is present, people are far more likely to go out of their way to be helpful and kind.  At Swansea Public School we describe ourselves as one BIG family.  We aspire for our family to have an observable identity that is both helpful and kind…and working through the PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE model of thinking, placing greatest emphasis on FUTURE…we will achieve this important goal.

Budget Adjustments – Staffing Changes:

School funding and staffing entitlements are determined by student enrolments.  Due to a small drop in student enrolments since the beginning of the year (12 students), Semester 2 timetable adjustments are needed to match our reduced Semester 2 budget.  In 2021 we introduced a Specialist PE Teacher Program where every student across the school enjoy 2 hours of specialist PE lessons with Mr Andrews.  This program was introduced in response to student surveys and focus groups in 2020 wanting more sport and physical education in their learning program.  Mr Andrews has done a fantastic job delivering a quality program across Terms 1 and 2.  Unfortunately, this program is a school-funded initiative that runs in addition to our school staffing entitlement.  As such, our Specialist PE Teacher program will not continue in Semester 2.  Please note that we will be formally evaluating this program to inform planning for 2022.  If the evaluations are in support of running a Specialist PE Program in 2022, we will endeavour to work on ways to include the same model, or something similar in 2022.  For the remainder of 2021, class teachers will be responsible for teaching PE to their individual classes.  I’d like to publicly thank Mr Andrews for his outstanding contributions across Terms 1 and 2.

Library Upgrade Update:

In partnership with our P&C, our school has been successful in securing a grant for a $100,000 upgrade to our library.  We are excited to announce that plans have been finalised and builders have been locked in to do the upgraded works across the upcoming June / July holiday break.  We are hopeful these works will be completed early Term 3, with plans to officially launch our New-Look Library in Education Week next term (Week 3).  As stated in our previous newsletter, while our official staffing entitlement for Teacher Librarian has been reduced to 2 days per week, we are maintaining the provision of Teacher Librarian at 3 days per week as we have had in Semester 1 this year and in previous years. 

Semester 1 Reports and Parent Teacher Evening:

Semester 1 Reports are scheduled to go out to parents and carers on Monday, June 21 (Week 10).  K-2 Parent Teacher Interviews will be the following day on Tuesday, June 22.  Our 3-6 Parent Teacher Interviews are scheduled later in Week 10 on Thursday, June 24.  Interviews will be 15-minute timeslots and will run from 2:15pm through to 6:00pm.  To maximise attendance, parents will be able to select either an on-site face-to-face interview, or a phone interview.  Details on how to book an interview with your child’s / children’s teacher will be sent out via Skoolbag.

Attendance:

Our school has been part of an SMS Attendance Trial this term where we have been sending texts out each week to the families of our students in Years 1-6, updating parents and carers on what their child / children have been learning.  This week is the last SMS that is being sent out as part of this trial.  This final text has a link inviting parents and carers to provide feedback on the SMS Attendance Trial.  We encourage all parents and carers to contribute to this evaluation.  

Regards,

Brett Carr

4/3B have been busy these past few weeks. A few of the students have been helping plant native vegetation donated from Landcare and have thoroughly enjoyed getting their hands dirty! 

In Maths, students have been refining their whole number strategies and can show each other three ways to make a number using money, a number sentence and using MAB blocks.

Last week Miss Lane, a practice student from the University of Newcastle began her four week practicum and has been creating very fun and engaging lessons. In maths, the students made pikelets using their knowledge of grams, kilograms, cups and tablespoons. They even got to add choc chips and eat the finished product! We can't wait to see what else Miss Lane has in store for us. 

To help parents'/carers' and students' we have launched a uniform service for children who are presenting to school 'out of uniform' or 'without uniform' items. At the start of the day, if a teacher identifies a student who requires this service, they are directed to the office. 

Mrs Kylie Bales our coordinator will then assist with the required clothing. At the end of the day, the clothing items are retuned to the office for washing.  Mrs Bales will make a phone call advising the action that has been done for your child. We have alot of children presenting at school without warm clothing on.  As winter has well and truly arrived we encourage all students to bring their SPS black jacket complete with name labelled. If you need to purchase uniform items please see our office staff  - no appointment necessary.

Thank you to our Parents who helped transport our team to Windale on Tuesday 8th June.

Our team showed great spirit and energy in our game, but unfortunately were defeated.

Great work from an amazing team!

SPS has registered for Wonder Recycling Rewards (a fun and easy program to collect and recycle bread bags and bread tags). Once collected, Wonder is going to turn the plastic into wonderful things like school play equipment! As a registered school, our recycling efforts will earn rewards points to redeem new sports equipment from RHSports.

Thank you for your efforts so far but REMEMBER it  ends on the last day of Term 2. 

Place your empty bread bags (ANY BRAND) in the collection box at the front office. We are also still collecting bread tags for Mrs Prince.

Please note a bread bag is considered to be any soft plastic bag that held any bread-type product, including wraps. Please take all other soft plastics to your local supermarket for recycling.