26 February 2025

From the Principal

As you read this, Mr Dudgeon will have completed his first Athletics Carnival at Cambridge Primary, and a lot of students will be tired and exhausted at home. A huge thank you to all the staff who put in extra to make today happen – especially Mr Dudgeon, Holly, Liam and Mr Woulleman from very, very early on this morning. A thank you to all the parents who helped out with judging and scoring today as well. We trust that you all enjoyed the day!

Our school doesn’t have “Houses” for sports carnival days. I’m sure you most likely had Houses for competition when you were at school, I certainly did. I found this unique when I first arrived. I sat with it and have seen two clear things. First, our students have a lot of places to compete in life against their peers (sports teams are the predominate form) maybe having one less is a good thing. Secondly, the overall participation for our school carnivals has been very high, and the support or ALL students’ participation, rather than just a house, is a really special thing to see when everyone is cheering on a student giving their all for the race or event. After a couple of years, I certainly have come to enjoy the uniqueness that we have. In the end, it’s really important that as a school, we do what is best for our community, for our context. This will mean that we do some unique things. The uniqueness is what makes us great.

Every school will offer some different things based on their context and what the community wants. We’ll take some time over the next few Newsletters to discuss some of these things: Cooked Lunch, Bush School, School Camps, Recess and Lunch time choice groups, School Band, Japanese and a few more to talk about. We’re proud of what we offer, and yet we’re always open to discuss and think about what else we can do and maybe what needs to wrap up as it is not valued as much anymore.

School Association and Fundraising Group

To have the best say in what we do, offer and provide at school, think about jumping on the School Association! The School Association is the peak parent group at school. The role of the School Association is to act as an advisory body to the school. We discuss high level items and act as a conduit between discussing school thinking, sharing data and information in more detail, exploring and brainstorming ideas, and, most importantly, seeking feedback and input from parents. Even if you don’t wish to run for a position just now, it’s great for our ongoing planning to have a few parents sitting in and hearing the meetings, so you can slide in at some stage and keep the meeting and processes going with good background knowledge. From our point of view, this is succession planning for a School Association. So, if you’re interested to hear more about our school, to be willing to contribute to inputs and to be able to share the thoughts of the people in our community, then please get in touch and come along. We meet just twice a term for 90 minutes.

The school also has a less formal group that is just as, if not more important, the FUNdraising Group! This group was led by Carolyn Smith over the last few years. Carolyn’s insatiable appetite for fun ensured that a lot was done. In my time, I have seen a few leaders of our FUNdraising Group. The group is currently leaderless, and yet the important thing to know is that it only needs to do as much as the members have time and energy for. In short, you don’t need to do the work that Carolyn did. There is a band of merry workers who will chip in to help for events. The work of an informal leader in this group is to co-ordinate the helpers. If you are keen to be a helper, or keen to be a leader, please let the Office know and we can help link you in. It’s really important to us to have our Mother’s Day and Father's Day Stalls as regular events!

Home Reading

Home Reading is kind of like having “Houses” for sports carnivals, we all did it and we’re all used to it. What we are asking is – is our current approach to home reading working well? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Importantly, we are examining everything we do with reading as re-establishing our structured approach to literacy across all Departmental Schools. For us, much of what we are doing in our literacy teaching and learning at our school is really hitting the mark already.

What we do want to do, is to think about the purpose of Home Reading and what outcomes we want to achieve. We know that if families are reading at home to and with their children, these children do better on reading assessments at school.

From this year, we will start to communicate with our Kindergarten and Prep families more to be really specific about what we’d like to see and achieve with families supporting reading at home. We want to make sure that families are able to perform the function we are asking them to do. We also want to make sure that we are taking the best research and knowledge and then devising the right home program. To do this, we will start reviewing the programs for Kindergarten and Prep and work our way sustainably up.

Narelle (Our Literacy Instructional Specialist) and I will take the time to communicate to everyone what the 6 big areas of reading are and what you can best do at home.

In short, if you’re ever stuck, just read to and with your child. It is so important that they get to hear and see words with your reading. Pushing through decodable readers has value and so does reading and listening to really good books together. Your child needs you to read out words for them to later read. You are the key to help them access new words. Please never stop reading to and with your children.

Seesaw

Seesaw has been disabled from use for the last little while. This has been frustrating for all of us. From this week, it will come back on, and we look forward to sharing with you the magic of what is happening in our classrooms again.

School Photos next week! Looking forward to seeing all the fresh haircuts.

See you soon – Courtney

School Association News

School Association AGM – Wednesday 26 March 2025 at 5:30pm

We hereby give notice that the Annual General Meeting of the Cambridge Primary School, School Association will be held on Wednesday 26 March 2025 at 5:30pm.

Nominations for parent members must be received by the Returning Officer, Shelley Spong, in the office, by close of business on Friday 21 March 2025.

NAPLAN 2025

Students will be sitting NAPLAN between 12 and 24 March 2025

The National Assessment Program-Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) assesses literacy and numeracy skills that students are already learning at school. On its own, NAPLAN is not a test that can be studied for, and students are not expected to do so.

NAPLAN is just one aspect of a school’s assessment and reporting process – it does not replace ongoing assessments made by teachers about student performance; however, students and parents may use individual results to discuss progress with teachers.

NAPLAN has been held in March since 2023, having previously taken place in May. This change was made so school systems would have access to results earlier in the school year. These results can then be used to inform teaching and learning plans for the remainder of the year.

Why NAPLAN is conducted online

NAPLAN online provides a better assessment and more precise results.

One of the main benefits of NAPLAN online is that it uses tailored (or adaptive) testing. This means that students receive questions better suited to their abilities, so they can show what they know and can do.

Online testing also allows us to provide a wide range of accessibility options to support students with disability to access NAPLAN.

Feedback from students is that they find the online test more engaging.

Please note that students in Year 3 complete the Writing Test on paper.

Parent information brochures and other resources

Your questions answered on NAPLAN and what it means for your child:
NAPLAN information brochure for parents and carers

The link will take you to the official National Assessment Program (NAP) website.

Please contact the school if you have any further queries.

School Photos

School photos will be taken on Tuesday 4 March, and Thursday 6 March for Kinder C. Orders must be placed online. Please open the flyer above.

Parents who want to order individual and/or family photos can the use the Access Key G4SJLMZT

Family photo orders must be done by 4:30pm the night before Photo Day so Leading Image can organise a list of students who are having Family Photos taken. This will happen at lunchtime. Any family photos that have not been ordered before the cut-off will not be taken. Unfortunately, they cannot make any exceptions on the day.

All students will have an individual photo taken on Photo Day whether they are ordering or not. Individual student ordering will stay open after Photo Day.

Cambridge Soccer Club – Season 2025 Registrations Open

It’s not far away now!  Soccer Season 2025! Come and join all the fun……

Registrations are now open - please use this link to register and secure your child’s place in a team

Please like our Facebook page as there is lots of information on there that you need to know before registering.

If you have any issues registering, please contact the help desk on 02 8880 7983

The 2025 season kicks off on Saturday 3^rd May. 

It is so important that you are registered by Saturday 8^th March as we need time to place teams, organise coaches and forward our information to our local region for the roster to be prepared.

Please note all coaches will need to have a valid Working with Vulnerable People card, you can register Here.

Players not registered by that date cannot be guaranteed a place in a team. 

Registration fees must be paid at the time of registration.

We’ll provide more information in the coming weeks so please keep an eye on our page. If you wish to coach a team, be a member of the committee or have any further questions please contact us at cambridgesoccersocial@gmail.com.

Cambridge Primary Open Day – Tuesday 25 March

Do you know of any parents who live in our catchment area and who might be considering Cambridge Primary for their child’s education?

Please forward the link to the booking form below or pass on our phone details – 6248 5168, and they will be given a very warm welcome. They will be able to:

• See the school in action.
• View our classrooms and our flexible learning spaces. Come and find out more about our new school build.
• Understand how our Early Years Literacy Support works.
• Find out about Bush School.
• Hear about the whole school Cooked Lunch Program.
• Visit our school garden.
• Chat with staff about questions they may have.

Canteen Helpers Urgently Needed

The new Canteen is looking amazing! We now have a fantastic new space with lots of room and new appliances. I am putting together a roster for Term 1 and urgently need volunteers to help out. We operate on Thursdays and Fridays, and we have 2 time slots that we need help with. 

Thursday 9.00-11.00
Friday 9.00-11.00 or 11.00 -1.00

It’s a lot of fun and the children love seeing Mum, Dad or a Grandparent in the Canteen.  If you are interested in putting your name down, please leave your name and number at the office and I will get back to you.

Thanks, Julie Barwin, Canteen Supervisor

Let’s Celebrate!

Community Notice Board