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Dear Families,
School has been hugely busy this week and there has been a real buzz as students have returned to classrooms, caught up with friends and teachers and settled into their learning routines. Our first week back has seen all classes continuing to work with our school priorities for the year: Reading and Positive Behaviour Support.
We have welcomed several new families to our school community and have had several new teachers join us. Mr Gunn will be on leave until the end of Week 2 in Term 3. Ms Grace Siggers and Mr James Ackerley will be teaching 4Gunn this term and have had a very positive week with the class. Ms Melinda Mills-Hope has joined our Support Team and has spent the week getting to know students who will work with her for small group support.
To support our ongoing approach to Positive Behaviour Support and Student Wellbeing, and in response to students, staff and parent feedback, we are making some changes to our playground areas from next Monday. While we will still have playground areas that are shared areas for students across Prep to Year 6, we will be putting in place some areas that are for only for students in Prep – Year 2 or in Years 3 – 6. These areas will support those students who feel most comfortable at break time with students of their own age. We will be monitoring this change during the term and reviewing it at the end of term. Students have had the chance to discuss their play areas with their teacher, in some cases, to walk to these areas ahead of Monday.
Students have lived out our school values through representing us in several ways recently. Thank you to our Student Leaders and Childrens’ University students who attended the Brighton community ANZAC Day Service in the last week of the holidays. Thank you also to students who attended our school based ANZAC commemoration yesterday. Further information about our school service is contained in today’s newsletter.
Over thirty students were supported by Mr Daft this week to attend the SPSSA Champions Athletics Carnival. Thank you to all those students who stepped up to participate in this opportunity.
Road Safety Week is a strong reminder for all of us within our school community about how we can protect and support our young people as road users – in the family car on the way to school, riding their scooters or bikes to school or walking in to school. Nationally, each day of next week will have a road safety theme and Tuesday 7 May is Road Safety for the Next Generation.
We strongly encourage you to use Road Safety Week to reflect on how you use the roads around our school: to think about where and how you pick up and drop off your children outside our school, the safety discussions you have with them about walking or riding into school, the use of bike helmets when they ride in and how you park at our school to make sure that all students can cross our roads safely.
We thank you for your continued awareness of the need to keep our roads safe.
There has been lots of conversation across the wider community lately regarding social media use. This follows a recent Reach Out survey on the mainland where 60% of parents responded that their biggest concern for kids was social media use. Discussion about cybersafety occurs everyday at school as part of educating students in safe use of devices. Another important part of our discussion with students and parents is how to get help when there are social media issues of concern or when there is a need to lodge a complaint about what has appeared on social media.
The office of the eSafety Comimssioner has information to support parents and schools to know what can be reported to eSafety, what you need to know to make a report and how complaints can be made. See the link at Parents | eSafety Commissioner or Report online harm | eSafety Commissioner for further support and information.
School will always try to work with families when a cybersafety issue is made known to us. We also continue to reinforce our school expectation with students that mobile phones are ‘off and away all day’ while at school. Our School Association is currently reviewing our Mobile Phone Policy and we will discuss this further over the next few weeks. Thank you for continuing to work with us through what is an increasingly complex issue.
This week’s newsletter contains information for families about how our School Association will be running their Mothers’ Day Stall next week. Students really look forward to the chance to go shopping at school and to purchase a small gift. For any further questions about this, please contact our School Office.
Kind regards
Sonya Plunkett-Smith
Principal
ANZAC Commemorative Service at Remembrance Park Brighton 2024
ANZAC Day 2024 - Thank you to all the students and families who attended the service especially to our student leaders who participated in the service laying a wreath and reading a poem. Thanks also to the staff members who attended. It was wonderful to see Brighton Primary School so well represented.
This years Mother's Day Stall will be held on Tuesday 7th May and Wednesday 8th May. The items for sale will range from 50c to $10. To make it easier for students to hide their items from their family, could they please bring a paper, plastic bag to put them in.
Thank you
With ANZAC Day falling in the School holidays we needed to wait until Term 2 began to have our school-wide learning and commemorations based in the Library. A big thank you to Nicole Sutczak, our Library Technician for her planning, organising and running these events. Each class had an ANZAC service in their Library time and each student was able to pin a poppy on the commemorative wall. On Thursday morning a special service was held with our school captains, Sophie Cross and Aidan MacDonald welcoming two gentlemen from the local RSL, Peter Taylor and Rev. Jim Colville. The invited students, School SRC and other nominated students, were all very interested in the stories shared by Peter and Jim, were extremely respectful and asked lots of great questions. A big thank you to our Kitchen Garden specialists (Kristie and Gabriel) and this week’s Grade 3 and 4 cooking groups for the beautiful morning tea of ANZAC biscuits, dipped in chocolate and decorated with edible flowers. They looked amazing and were delicious. We would to thank the Greenponds RSL for donating a '75th Anniversary end of 2nd World War Medal' for our school. Well done to the student leaders for their speaking roles and for the way they welcomed our special guests.
Tuesday 7th May | Mother's Day Stall |
Wednesday 8th May | Mother's Day Stall |
Friday 17th May | School Cross Country, Grades Prep-6 |
Wednesday 5th June | Interschool Cross Country |
Monday 24th June - Friday 5th July | Swimming & Water Safety, Grade 3-5 |