30 July 2025

From the Principal

The Winter chill is certainly here! Term 3 can be fresh, particularly in the mornings, but that isn’t stopping us here at school.

Our Term 3 Winter Sports Roster is in full swing and is always a highlight of the year for our older students. We are in a roster with nearby schools and started the term well with wins in both Football and Netball against Richmond last week. More importantly, everyone had a lot of fun. Due to us losing our Netball court, we are playing “away games” all this year. Hopefully our Stage 2 Development can move at a good pace, and we will be able to play games in an all-weather gymnasium sometime soon!

Stage 2 Redevelopment Update

The Council has recently completed their statutory process to lease us a parcel of land, for our Gymnasium and sports court to be built on. We should be receiving formal information from Council soon, with a view to starting consultation and design work this year. This is really, really exciting stuff. Mr Dudgeon and I went on a little drive to Snug and Margate Primary Schools last week to see the size and scope of their gyms; our costings have been initially performed on the scale of these gyms. We are really excited by the opportunities we will have!

Reading – Explaining the parts of a Model

Earlier in the year, we shared a bit about why we might move home reading to grow students’ strengths in vocabulary and background knowledge. To recap, in short, these are the areas that parents are best able to support without systematic and in-depth training.

We also shared earlier that we would use the Scarborough’s Rope Model (image below) to talk about key parts of reading over a few Newsletters: word recognition (week 4), fluency (this week), and language comprehension (week 6). Later we will share with you, our screening, tracking and Tiers of Instruction (week 8), and finally our theory of improvement for our school and our Driver Diagram (week 10). There’s a lot to share.

I also spent some time over the holidays re-reading saved material – and re-found an excellent simple article from the ABC that can explain a lot. Please do read this!

Many parts make a whole in reading. To make it more complicated, as evidenced in the image above, as you progress in reading proficiency, reading gets harder and you need to get better at the parts. Being a great reader does not stop when you can access books by yourself. We at schools need to teach reading skills all the way through formal schooling years. We are asking you as parents to support your students all the way through too. There can be a real trap in reducing your support as your students get old enough to “read by themselves”. There are not too many “P” platers that are excellent drivers (sorry kids). You need to practise a lot to become fully fluent and automatic. Today we want to break down the term fluency for our community and what supporting that might look like at home.

What does fluency mean in reading?

Fluency is made up of three parts. You need to be good at these three parts with age-appropriate books to be deemed a fluent reader. A person needs to be accurate (say exactly the right word they are reading, read at a good pace (we expect readers to be able to read more words per minute as they get older) and with good expression (this is called prosody). If you can weave all three things together you are a fluent reader!

When children are younger they have little fluency, as they are trying really hard to decode and sound out words. They are working hard on the parts, not the whole. This is very normal.

As everyone gets older, fluency reduces if the text you are reading gets harder. Even as adults, if it’s a challenging read, we might not have a lot of great expression on our first read of something.

Fluency, from what you see and hear at home, is where it all comes together. It’s where all of the parts of the rope intertwine. Each part is used together to make the whole. When students increase their fluency, they are able to read to us in a way that we find much more appealing (as do any other family members). To be fluent, you do need to have good decoding skills first. The ABC article above gives a great example for early readers.

As you get older and books and text get harder, you also need to have a good bank of words that you know just by looking at them (rather than sounding out every sound to blend together to make the word). If you’re reading this Newsletter, you’re doing this. It’s called using your orthographic memory – the memory of letters and patterns of letters that you have automatically assigned to sounds. When a word is particularly tricky, you might use your orthographic memory to break the word into known parts or patterns.

Fluency really matters. Fluency is the biggest predictor of overall reading success (based on world-wide meta-analysis data from the ORF – Oral Reading Fluency Test). If you are a fluent reader, you have great understanding of what you are reading as you are able to read it, monitor your own actions and make it engaging for others.

Like any skill, fluency is built over time, through exposure to increasingly complex books and text. We teach fluency daily. We have four specific fluency routines that we choose from. Current research shows that primary school aged children receive a big lift in fluency skills with just ten minutes of fluency practise a day. We are not asking or wanting you to do more of the drills at home.

How to support fluency at home

To get better at fluency (your work at home), it’s best to do two things:

1. Read widely and a lot
2. Re-read set, practised parts

The second point is what short “reader” books from school should provide at home. Students should not be decoding the sounds and struggling through – that means they need more instruction from us. The books that they read with you, they should be able to read, albeit with lots of focus. We are asking you at home to read them, read them again and then again. On each read, focus on giving feedback about the expression in reading, for example:

• “I liked the way you paused at the full stop.”
• “You did a better job of making that sound like a question” (should be an upward inflection in tone)
• “I liked the different voices you tried out for the different characters in the book”

Reader books also allow your children to showcase their talents and improvement to you. They have a role – just probably not the role that we used to use them for. We don’t want you to have to teach sounds and blending with these books at home.

Keeping this in mind, your child needs the book that the teacher has set. It might seem “easy”, they need to work on being fluent. Simply put: do they sound like an adult reading the book? If no, practise more. Once a day with the book should be enough if it is focussed. Squeezing one read in with some feedback and another quick read would be excellent.

For our older students, we have fluency passages that they can practise with. We do the instruction at school and if your teacher believes your child would benefit from more or some fluency practise, they will be in touch.

Next week we will talk about word recognition and our refreshed approaches to this at school, plus what you can do at home to support this.

I hope you’re all settling into Term 3 well – please stay as healthy as you can! We know that Term 3 is a bigger illness term in Tasmania. We do our best with cleaning, hand washing and windows being open and air flow to reduce any illnesses. Please keep your children home if they are unwell, to reduce the flow of any illness here at school.

See you all soon – Courtney

Start of Term Reminders

We are a Nut and Egg Aware School

A reminder to families that we are a ‘nut and egg aware school’. There are several students within our school community that are highly allergic to nuts as well as students highly allergic to eggs.

Please do not send nuts, or foods containing nuts in your child’s lunch box.

Please do not send egg sandwiches, or hard-boiled eggs in your child’s lunch box.

SunSmart Program

Children are required to wear hats when outside at all times from September to April.  Digger, Legionnaire or “Bucket” hats are the only hats to be worn at school and children without a SunSmart hat will be required to remain under the shaded area.  Sunscreen will also be available to students and this will be located in classroom areas and at the office.  Application of school sunscreen is your child’s responsibility so please ensure they can confidently apply this to themselves.  Please also feel free to apply sunscreen at home in the morning prior to the school day. This is in line with the SunSmart Program sponsored by the Cancer Council.  Hats are available for purchase from the school office for $10.

Levies

Invoices were posted by the Department in February. Please pay promptly if you haven’t already. Contact the office if you wish to discuss payment options.

Contact Details

Has your phone number, email or address changed? Please inform the office of any changes as they occur.

Volunteering at School

If you are volunteering in our classrooms and/or coming along on an excursion this year, you MUST obtain a Working with Vulnerable People Card and complete the Safeguarding training via this link.

When you have completed your training, please send your certificate via email to cambridge.primary@decyp.tas.gov.au and take a screenshot of your certificate and save it on your phone.

Lost Property

Lost property is located at the MPR end of the main corridor. Please clearly name items of clothing, drink bottles and lunch boxes. If students are recycling second-hand clothes, please delete the old name. Any un-named items that are left at the end of each term will be disposed of.

Car Park Safety

Please drive slowly and with care in the carpark. Do not park in the bays allocated to buses, even for a short time. Please also keep the area under the big pine tree clear at all times so buses have space to manoeuvre.

Disabled Car Park

We have two disabled carparks near the school gate. We also have several families who either have disabled children or carers. These families need the car parks. We understand that the carpark can get full at times, but please, do not park in the signed spots unless you have a valid disabled parking sign.  

School Gates

As we all know, manners are very important, but we ask that when opening the school gates, please only let out the child that is in your care.

Office Hours

8.10am – 3.30pm

Uniform Shop

Opening hours 8.10am – 3.30pm. Alternatively, uniform can be paid for via Qkr. Items can be collected from the office or handed to students. See side panel of newsletter for Qkr instructions. 

Class Times

School commences 8.40am
School concludes 2.40pm

Duty of Care

It is important to note, before 8.10am and after 2.40pm, your children need to be supervised by an adult (unless they are at after school care or waiting for a bus to go home). To be clear, please do not drop your child off before 8.10am and please collect them at 2.40pm, as our duty of care is not before 8.10am or after 2.40pm. We appreciate your support in keeping everyone safe with supervision.

Student Absences

Please notify the school office by 8.40am each day your child is absent from school. There is a link to an absentee form on the sidebar of the Schoolzine newsletter.

Or call, or leave a message, on 6248 5168.

Student Late Arrival or Early Departure

Students must be signed in/out by a parent/carer using the Kiosk electronic sign in/out at the office, if they arrive late or are leaving school early. If you take your child after Assembly please sign them out at the office.

Qkr App

The Qkr phone app gives parents the opportunity to pay for uniform, canteen orders and the Cooked Lunch Programs on smart phones and other devices. Instructions are on the side panel of the newsletter.

Clarence Children’s Services

For enquiries about Outside School Hours Care please email Clarence City Council at the email address below:

OSHC@ccc.tas.gov.au

Or click on the link below for information regarding all care services Clarence City Council have to offer.

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)

Student Free Days 2025

Friday 6 June 2025

Friday 24 October 2025

NAPLAN 2025

The national literacy and numeracy assessments were undertaken by Year 3 and Year 5 students mid-way through Term 1. Parents of Year 3 and Year 5 students have recently received a written report outlining their child’s results across the NAPLAN tests against the national standards.

School-wide trends in NAPLAN results also support us to reflect on the effectiveness of our learning programs. The levels of growth that students show between Year 3 and Year 5 is a terrific indicator of the effectiveness as it shows whether a student has made, or even outpaced, the expected level of academic growth over the two years. Each student’s growth measure (relative gain) is determined by comparing their gain to the gains of Tasmanian students that had the same (or similar) NAPLAN score two years ago. The percentage of students in each category of growth (low, medium, high) can then be compared to the state average and to schools with a similar socio-economic profile.

In Reading, 34% of Year 5 students had high levels of growth. 9% higher than the state average and 5% higher than similar schools.

In Numeracy, 34% of Year 5 students had high levels of growth. 9% higher than the state average and 6% higher than similar schools.

While Cambridge Primary already has a reputation for strong academic achievement and student wellbeing outcomes, it is, non-the-less, encouraging to see this reputation further strengthened by the results of national testing.

Swimming and Water Safety Program – 4 to 15 August

A reminder that our Swimming and Water Safety Program for Grades 3,4 and 5 will commence next Monday, 4 August. Please help your child/children to be ready each day with bathers, towel, plastic bag and swim hat, if they have one.  

Car Park Safety

As mentioned above in the Start of Term Reminders, please drive slowly and with care in the carpark. Do not park in the bays allocated to buses, even for a short time. Please also keep the area under the big pine tree clear at all times, so buses have space to manoeuvre.

Cooked Lunch Program

Are you tired of the cost of groceries and making exciting and healthy lunch boxes? Have you been thinking about signing up for cooked lunches, but you think it costs too much?

An average lunch box cost around $8 to put together, which equates to a whopping $240 per term. Not to mention the time to prepare, last minute trips to the supermarket, wasted food that wasn’t eaten and all the plastic rubbish.

Cambridge Cooked Lunch costs $130.50 for Prep-Grade 3 and $159.50 for Grades 4-6 per term. Recess and lunch options rotate throughout the term. Recess consists of biscuits, crackers, popcorn, veggie sticks, fruit and baked cakes, muffins and cookies.

Along with a nutritious and tasty lunch, students enjoy a variety of freshly prepared salad and seasonal vegetables often from our school garden and freshly baked bread. 
All our cooked lunch packaging and waste is recycled into soft plastics, cardboard, cans and glass. Our food waste is fed to Mrs. Birchall’s chickens and turkeys.

It couldn’t be any easier and less stressful, you can pay per day, per week or even half termly on the QKR app. Check with the office if you have any questions about signing up or payments.

Check out the photos of some of the food platters we offer and the students enjoying lunch with their friends.

Book Week – Second-hand Book Swap Shop

We’re excited to announce that the Kinders are creating their very own Book Shop for all CPS students, as part of our Book Week celebrations!

We warmly invite all families to donate good quality children’s books to be part of our Second-hand Book Swap Shop. For every book your child brings in, they will receive a raffle ticket. These tickets can then be used to “purchase” a new book from the shop during our special Book Shop days.

Here’s how it works:

• Bring in your pre-loved children’s books to Kinder.
• Receive one raffle ticket for each book donated.
• On Book Shop days, use your tickets to choose new books to take home!

For example, if your child donates 5 books, they’ll receive 5 tickets and can select 5 “new” books from the shop.

Book Shop Days:

• Tuesday 19th August
• Thursday 21st August
  Both days will be held during Recess/Morning Tea. 

Please start bringing your books to Kinder now so we can get your tickets ready! 

Thank you for supporting our love of reading and helping us celebrate Book Week in such a fun and sustainable way!

The Kinder Team

Scholastic Book Club

The next Book Club orders are due by Friday 1 August.

Free Access to StoryBox Library for Tasmanian Families!

Tasmanian primary school students now have free access to StoryBox Library - a fun and educational digital library you can enjoy at home!

StoryBox Library is a subscription-based website and app featuring Australian storytellers reading hundreds of much-loved children’s books. It’s a fantastic way to nurture your child’s love of reading and support their literacy development.

With features like Read-Along, Closed Captions, Auslan stories, and engaging audio-visual content, StoryBox Library is designed to be inclusive and accessible for all children.

How to Access: 1. Visit www.storyboxhub.com or search “Story Box Library” on your device’s app store.

1. Click LOG IN at the top right of the homepage.
2. Enter the school username and password (provided below)
3. Start exploring hundreds of stories – Anytime, anywhere!

School Login Details

Username: CambridgeReads

Password: CambridgeReads

Please visit the DECYP website or StoryBox website for more information.

Assemblies in Term 3

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

Friday 1 August
Friday 15 August
Friday 12 September

Let’s Celebrate!

Community Notice Board