05-Aug-2022
Dear Families
The Year 4 Surf camp was an amazing experience for our students and staff. The cold water didn’t stop our kids getting in and trying their hand at surfing – and pretty much all of them with a lot more success than me and our other teachers It is such a pleasure taking our students on camps, excursions and out in public. Exemplary manners, and kindness and respect on display at all times.
Swimming
Despite our best efforts to ensure our students in our Junior Year levels get the opportunity to participate in important lessons, the swimming program for Foundation to Grade 2 has been postponed due to swim instructor availability. Like many organisations, WAVES is struggling to have a full roster of staff due to COVID and other illnesses. Therefore, we will not be able to run the program during the expected dates. We are working very hard to find a suitable date later in the year and we will notify you as soon as we have more information. We apologise for this disappointment but do appreciate your understanding during this time.
We remain very hopeful that our Years 3-6 swimming program will proceed on the dates we have already secured- Years 4-6 August 22- September 1 and Year 3 next term.
Spelling Rules
Thanks again to the team at Five from Five literacy.
Although the English writing system is complex, it is more logical than many people think, and a well-informed teacher who has knowledge of phonology, origins of words, the meaning of morphemes, and how to combine grapheme-phoneme correspondences within a word, can explain the logic and patterns of English and help students to build efficient orthographic mapping and reduce confusion.
The critical word is patterns. Patterns represent a guide, whereas rules represent a law that cannot be violated.
According to Mark Seidenberg (2017) and others, the English system is not so much rule governed as statistical — some spellings are much more common than others. The split vowel digraph merely represents a very common spelling pattern. English is full of relatively predictable patterns and Louisa Moats (2010) highlights the following statistics:
- 50% of English words are spelled accurately by the sound-symbol correspondence rule alone
- 36% more are spelled with only one error
- 10% more are spelled accurately if word meaning, origin and morphology are considered
- Fewer than 4% are true oddities
Examples of some spelling patterns that beginning readers and spellers will find helpful
Homelessness Awareness Month
This month we as a school will be participating in Homelessness Awareness Month. Currently, there is an estimated 116,000 people in Australia who are currently experiences Homelessness. Of these its estimated that 6200 of them are students who are primary school aged. While we won’t be able to solve the issue around homelessness, we as a school can do our small bit to help and support people who are experiencing homelessness in our area.
Over the next month, our Student Leaders will be running a series of events to raise awareness and support others who may be less fortunate than many in our community in the Kingston area.
Later in the term, our famous Cupcake Day will run and students will be able to order a cupcake to help raise money and support the Homeless.
Throughout the month we will be doing our non-perishable food and toiletries drive. Previously we have managed to donate over 1000kg of goods to support the Chelsea Church of Christ Food Pantry – which is about 8 weeks’ worth of food. The Student leaders and some of our staff will also be supporting the Wednesday Breakfast service at Chelsea Church of Christ directly supporting those in need. Keep a look out over the coming months for all these amazing activities and look at how you can support them.
Enrolments in 2023
I have recently taken a couple of calls and fielded a few emails from DET representatives to explain that we are near our build capacity (95%) and have been instructed to take no further Foundation enrolments from families that live outside our designated school zone. We’ll have a tick under 500 students in 2023 (our build capacity is 500) and the following year we will be well over as our intake will be far greater than the number of students exiting. My hope is that we can get another relocatable (2 classrooms) and create a performing arts program at the same time.
Wherever possible we will have lower ratios in our Junior years and smaller class sizes which means that all spaces are used for teaching and learning. This includes using our DET allocated music room (didn’t know we had one :-)) and our STEM area.
Farewell Miss Bates
Today marks the last day of Ms Dinelle Bates’ tenure at Edithvale Primary school as she is off to teach, and lead, at the International School in Sharjah. Dinelle has been a tireless worker at our school and has been a positive influence on many, many students during her time here. She leaves a lasting legacy of excellence, care, and commitment to our great school and we wish her well for the next steps of her teaching journey.
Kind regards,
James Whitla
Key Dates:
- September 2 – District Athletics
- September 8 – School Concert
- September 9 – Student free day (TeamKids available)
- September 12-14 – Year 5 Positive Start Camp at Tallangatta
- September 14-16 – Year 6 Positive Start Camp at Tallangatta
- September 16 – Final day of Term 3. Early finish at 2:30pm