21 May 2025

From the Principal

It has been great to see so many parents about school for Parent Teacher Meetings this week. We offer our meetings earlier in the year to other schools based on strong positive parent feedback over the past few years. Having the meetings earlier in term allows us all a chance to revisit any conversations with purpose later in the term and then still have over half the year ahead of us. A reminder to all of our families, if you have any need to meet staff at any time, you can always contact the office and we can arrange a meeting for you at a time that works for all parties – it’s not just this week! In addition to these meetings, you will receive regular Seesaw posts detailing “Learning Progress” throughout the year as well as two summative ‘reports’ with your child’s achievement against a nine-point scale at the end of Terms 2 and 4. We welcome your feedback on our approaches as we can explain what is a Departmental policy that we must do, and what is our response to the policy (ie our efforts to provide information to you). Either way, we are always seeking to improve what we do, and feedback is valued. We do think that we have come a long way from just one long written report once a year.

Combined with Cross Country yesterday, it has been a busy week at school. Thank you to Mr Dudgeon for putting on a great morning of races and I know we have a keen interschool team emerging for Years 3 to 6 to compete later in the term.

The builders have left! (Nearly)

This week, we are starting to move into our redeveloped section of the school! It is a fantastic occasion!

It is a really momentous and enjoyable time to have our school mostly back to us. There are some landscaping fixes and grow-ins accompanied with a lot of furniture now arriving, but we are now on track to slowly move into our new spaces throughout Term 2. If you’re about and would like to have a sticky beak, feel free to do so!

As our 1-2 Classes enter their new spaces, we will look to orient their entrances to and from the verandas outside. The inside doors are there to be used, and we would like most of the traffic to come through the outside. Everyone will work out the best paths for themselves with siblings and alike.

New furniture is slowly arriving and will complement our build well. The rubble and piles around the school will slowly vanish as we place things in rooms or remove from school. Please still be cautious when moving about school as we have items stored in a variety of locations right now.

The new playground on the North-Western boundary is still not ready for use yet, until we get it cleared by the landscape architects.

Nearly 20 years of work has culminated in this finished product – we hope you are as proud as we are.

While we put the finishing touches on the buildings and landscaping on our site, we are, behind the scenes, working towards furthering Stage 2 (the Gym and carparking). I’m hopeful that we can share news with you in the next newsletter.

Year 6 Camp Feedback

Last week, we started a conversation about offering a significant Year 6 Camp. If you haven’t read the article, please do so as it will enable you to follow on with this.

So far, all the feedback we have received has been positive and supportive of the proposed camp to Flinders Island, acknowledging the significant cost. We also respect that people may feel more secure in providing negative feedback via a more anonymous process. In this instance, we really do need and want all feedback. As such, please see the link below for an opportunity for all families (as eventually your child will be in Year 6!) to provide anonymous feedback.

We are only consulting on the Flinders Island proposal at this stage. If the parent feedback to our proposal stops this offer, then we may explore another option. As we have attempted to communicate previously, other camp options in southern Tasmania (lower cost) really do not exist. It would take a lot of investigating and planning.

From here, we will collate the feedback over the next few weeks. We will close the survey shortly after the next Newsletter (allowing for a reminder in that Newsletter – Week 6). We will also conduct some random parent phone interviews to gauge the overall sentiment of our proposal – ie did we reach enough people? Are our findings valid?

We will take the feedback currently received, the survey data and the interview data to the Week 8 School Association Meeting and decide on whether to proceed – both in general and then when. We will communicate our decision to you after this.

Answers to questions

Can we have a payment plan? Yes! We will offer a payment plan process from the start of Year 5 for all Year 6 camp parents – providing around 60 weeks to pay it off.

Can we fundraise? This will need to be explored further. In the past, specific year level fundraising has been challenging. Some families help out lots, some not at all. School staff end up doing a lot of the work. Our School Association will make a general contribution to the camp (as they do other camps). We can also look to further this, we would potentially just need a purpose and a keen group of parents! I would suggest it would be on a yearly decision. It makes sense, and seems straightforward, we have just had different outcomes previously.

Could there be an exchange program (of sorts) between schools? Yes, sort of. Our considerations around safeguarding planning make this slightly more complicated, yet not impossible. We have briefly discussed this already with Flinders Island District School.

When would you go? When the weather is best! Late March probably.

Would you get in the water? Yes! We would need to make sure that we have staff with the right qualifications on camp. We would also access the Flinders Island District School Staff for assistance (eg, their PE teacher could possibly come to the beach with us).

Please take the time to fill in the survey and answer as much or as little as you like. For those families who have already emailed in, we will add/input your responses thus far. 

Sure they can read, but is your child a reader?

The journey of reading at primary school is a wonderous process. Students start school with incomplete speech in Kindergarten and end up discussing complex themes from interesting books by the end of Grade 6. It is a really difficult task to be able to learn to read. Teaching a whole school to read is equally as hard. It’s a good thing that we like to do hard things at our school.

The principal reason why teaching reading is so difficult is that the process of learning to read is very individualised. There are a lot of generalities and we are learning more and more each year about how to teach reading better, and yet the rate, path and enjoyment of each student can be markedly varied.

To make matter more complicated, there is no one unifying model of reading development. It’s all theoretical. Irrespective of what you might read or hear, there is no definitive conclusion as to what is THE best way to teach. We do have a lot more information about what strategies should work best for what sort of students at what sort of times and stages.

THE Science of Reading does not exist; The-best-knowledge-right-now of the Science of Reading does exist. And it’s pretty complex. See below if you’re keen to read.
https://www.edresearch.edu.au/summaries-explainers/explainers/introduction-science-reading

One model that can help to understand reading is called Scarborough’s Reading Rope (any programs or sales attached to the explainers below are not endorsed or used by us!).

Video here: https://institute.aimpa.org/resources/readingrope

Graphic and simple explanation here: https://sounds-write.co.uk/scarboroughs-reading-rope/

We will use this model to explain what we are doing for each thread of the rope, how we want to weave it all together – AND how you can help at home. We have sort of covered parts of this so far. We’d love for you to engage in this model as it is really important and gives you a foundation as to why we are strengthening our word recognition and skills programs while also being clear that loving reading, reading for joy, meaning and purpose are fundamental to being a sophisticated reader in high school. Please ask questions about this model!

I look forward to seeing more faces about during Parent Teacher Meetings, see you soon – Courtney.

Jon Madin – Marimba and Wacky Instruments Workshop

On Monday 26 May, famous Australian music educator and composer, Jon Madin will spend the day at Cambridge Primary conducting workshops with the 4/5 and 5/6 classes. Students will have the opportunity to play on the marimbas and a variety of his wacky instruments including musical bikes!

The highlight of the day will be a concert in the afternoon commencing at 1.40pm in the MPR. Parents are welcome to attend.

Sally Sari, Music and Art teacher

Donations Needed

Kinder are in need of a bread maker. If you have one at home that you are not using and are happy to donate, please let the office know on 6248 5168.

Kinder and Prep are also looking for donations of blankets for our mindfulness time during bush school.  Please can you bring your donations to the school office. Thank you

Rose Bay High School Information Evening

Assemblies in Term 2

Assemblies are held in the MPR and start at 1.40pm. All are welcome to attend. This term’s remaining Assemblies will be on:

Friday 30 May
Friday 13 June

Get On Board – Tell Us About Our Buses

The Tasmanian Government wants your feedback on the current public bus network in Greater Hobart including outlying areas such as New Norfolk, Sorell and Southern Beaches, Richmond, Campania and the Huon Valley. We want you to tell us how easy or hard it is to use the network and why, and what you need to be able to use it more often (or at all).

Click here to tell us what you like and don’t like, and what you would like to see in the future.

It doesn’t matter if you currently use the bus or not, we would like to hear from you!

Consultation will remain open until 20 June 2025.

Term Dates 2025

Term 1:  Thursday 6 February to Friday 11 April

Term 2:  Monday 28 April to Friday 4 July (Student Free Day Friday 6 June, Public Holiday - Monday 9 June)

Term 3:  Monday 21 July to Friday 26 September

Term 4:  Monday 13 October to Thursday 18 December (Show Day Public Holiday – Thursday 23 October, Student Free Day Friday 24 October)

Reminder – Student Free Day

A reminder that there will be a Student Free Day on Friday 6 June.

Let’s Celebrate!

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