Five Dock PS Newsletter Term 1, Week 8, 2024

We learn on Wangal Country

Principal's Report

We have had a busy fortnight, with a variety of activities students have participated in. Last Friday night, I felt extremely privileged and proud to attend the Pulse Alive concert, a large-scale event, providing high-quality opportunities in the performing arts for students and teachers from NSW public schools in Greater Sydney and beyond. What a wonderful opprtunity and experience for our choir. Five Dock's choir did a wonderful job representing our school for this fabulous celebration of public education, where students came together from all different places to perform in music and dance. Well done to all the students who should be very proud of their participation and behaviour throughout the reharsals and performance. We would also like to once again congratulate Olive Milner for her role as a principal vocalist; she was wonderful and should be very proud of her performance. This will indeed be a memory that will stay with them forever and for that I would sincerely like to thank Ms Bakoulis and Ms Tay for supporting the students and for all of the many hours they put in to help the students prepare for this event. Without their dedication and commitment. it would not have been possible. A special menton must go to Ms Alessi for registering them and for the work she put in perparing them in 2023. 

We would also like to acknowledge the incredible support of Heather Hilton and the P&C for their contribution for the transport and for purchasing and delivering the dinner. We appreciate their generosity and for their contribution to this experience for the students. It was a great night had by all and a memory that will last forever for students. 

Harmony Day 

Harmony Week is the celebration that recognises our diversity and brings together Australians from all different backgrounds. It’s about inclusiveness, respect and a sense of belonging for everyone.​ The theme is "Everyone Belongs". On Thursday of this week, Five Dock PS acknowledged and celebrated this day with everyone coming dressed in orange or in traditional costumes and sharing a variety of different cultural foods. We are proud as public educators to celebrate inclusion and diversity and to teach students the importance of understanding and showing respect for others who may different to them. Celebrating and accepting this diversity shapes all of us and invokes emaptahy for others and their experiences. When individuals are respected for their differences, they are more likely to feel included and valued in society. This leads to a more equitable and just society where everyone is given an equal opportunity to thrive. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Harmony Day committee for organising this important celebration at our school; Mrs Gatsas, Mrs Lopes, Mrs Bolton, Ms Roche, Mrs Rago and Ms Loizos. The students had a wonderful day and gained much from their shared experiences. 

Road Safety 

We would like to remind parents and carers of the importance of manitaining safe road safety practices in and around schools. School zone limits are 40kmh and we strongly urge all drivers to maintain this limit to ensure the safety of our students. Roads around Five Dock are also narrow, therefore driving at any speed over 40kmh is dangerous with so many children walking to and from school.  This issue was also raised at the P&C meeting last week and over the past week I have witnessed unsafe behaviour from drivers. Please remember that as parents, we are role models and it is our responsibility to ensure we do everything we can to teach our children safe behaviour and keep them safe when around roads and traffic.

Here are some simple rules to follow:

• Drive slowly at all times in a school zone
• Follow all traffic / road signs
• Please observe parking signs carefully
• Use the pedestrian crossing and or traffic light crossing when coming to and from school
  

Please take time to view and read the above links with important information about Road Safety. 

Semester One Reports 

You may have seen on our Sentral calendar that we will be distributing the Semester One reports in Week 9. Following this, in Week 10, we will be conducting parent teacher interviews; these will be conducted in a similar way as our Getting to Know You interviews earlier this term. From this year, our reports will be distributed via Sentral and we will no longer be printing copies, except under special circumstances. Please ensure that you have downloaded the Sentral for Parents app in readiness for this change. We will be providing explicit instructions as to how to access them when the time arrives. 

Staff Professional Learning

Last Wednesday, the staff engaged in professional learning focused on the work of an educator that utilises the work of explicit teaching to ensure that all students are learning an engaged. This term and next term, all of our staff will be focused on a strategy called "Cold Calling". This strategy is used as a questioning technique designed to make every student think and be ready to think. The spirit of this is inclusive and invitational, not a chance to trick the student in any way. David, what were you thinking? Yusuf, did you have an answer? Yasmin, which three did you pick? In this way, everyone's contributions matter. The teacher explains this to the students in this way: I need to know what you are thinking if I’m going to help you the best I can. And you all matter to me. All of you, no exceptions. Accountability and inclusion are important. The effect is that students always feel involved; they can’t opt out. That routine level of accountability helps them to focus their attention and also communicates a sense that they belong; they are included; they matter. 

You may be interested in this article written by Tom Sherrington about how parents can support their child with learning: https://teacherhead.com/2023/01/15/tps4-how-can-parents-help-with-learning-and-revision/

NAPLAN 

We have all but wrapped up our NAPLAN assessments for the year and they have largely gone extremely smoothly, with a couple of minor glitches along the way. Congratulations to all the students on the mature, sensible and resilient way they managed these assessments. I would like to take this opportunity to thank both Ms Tay and Ms Edwards for their organisation and running of the assessments. 

URSTRONG 

This year the Department of Education provided an additional "Student Wellbeing Boost" with additional funding to support student wellbeing. One of the ways we have used this funding is through our participation in the URSTRONG program. 

URSTRONG provides teachers with a friendship skills curriculum, Friendology 101, that help kids establish + maintain healthy relationships, manage conflict with kindness, and increase their overall resilience.

Research shows that relationships are the heart of wellbeing and learning. When we get friendships right in schools, children flourish. We will provide further updates throughout the year on how we are implementing this program. 

Good News Story 

Congratulations to Drew Tenoyo who has successfully progresssed to Sydney East NSW PSSA Tennis Championships in May. Congratulations to Drew and we wish her all the best. 

P&C 

As you will read below, last week at our P&C meeting, a new committee was voted in for this year. I would like to take this opportunity to firstly thank the outgoing executive committee for their commitment to volunterring much of their personal time over the last three years to support the school in so many different ways, whether it is organising fundraising events, managing OOSH, purchasing school resources for students, such as for literacy and technology or seeking to create spaces in the school ground that support students' experience at recess or lunch. We appreciate everything the outgoing commiteee has done to ensure that they work in partnership with the school as advocates for the students and their improved learning outcomes. The P&C are active and valued stakeholders in public education and work tirelessly to support increased equity in our society. Congratulations to the new commitee; I look forward to continuing to work alongside them and the rest of the parents/ carers to support our students and promote our school in the community. 

Have a wonderful fortnight. 

Suzi Chosid

Harmony Day

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Term 2 Calendar & Semester 2 Calendar

Pulse Alive Photos

Pulse Alive

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SRC News

The SRC are well and truly up and running for the year and have already started to have extremely productive discussions. They are currently working on a campaign to educate students on the importance of sun safety; wearing a hat and sunscreen every day. Students will be hearing more about this in their classrooms, so please encourage them to talk to you about what they are learning. 

SRC Photos

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Class Parents

We have now identified all of the class parents for each class. Thank you to those families who have completed the School Bytes form asking you to provide your details in order for the class parent to create a what's app group to enable communication between families in the class. 

If you have not completed this school bytes form, we would appreciate it if you could check your email and complete the form as soon as possible. 

Class parents will be receiving more information about their role and will pass these on. There is a meeting scheduled in early April. 

Thank you to all of the parents who volunteered. 

Regional Swimming

Congratulations to Sian Lim and Reggie Palmer who have successfully made it to the Regional Swimming carnival. Well done to the both of them and we wish them all the best. 

P&C News

Last week we held our annual AGM and a new executive was voted in.

Introducing our new Executive Team for 2024:

President: Beth Collinge

Vice President: Amanda Watts

Treasurer: Ankur Chakore

Secretary: Jade Hsu

Uniform Shop Co-Ordinator: Karen Munro

OOSH Co-Convenors: Phil Carbins & Frankie Rimi-Cheng

We would like to thank our outgoing President Heather Hilton, Vice President Daniel Morgan and OOSH Convenor Jess Crause for their dedication over the past 3 years.

What does the P&C fund?

In consultation with the school (including the SRC) we look to support initiatives which benefit the children of Five Dock Public School. Funds are raised from events, through sponsorship and grants, plus our OOSH and the Uniform Shop. In 2023 we supported many initiatives, including our ongoing support of air conditioning in the classrooms and the Literacy resource, InitialLit. InitiaLit–offers an explicit and effective model for teaching reading and related skills to children in their first year of schooling in a fun and engaging way. The program incorporates daily lessons in phonemic awareness, reading and spelling as well as rich language instruction using children’s literature. A set of decodable readers, InitiaLit's readers are aligned to the instructional sequence, accompany the program enabling children to generalise and consolidate their skills.

We have some fun things planned for 2024 so watch this space! Our first event is the Easter Hat Parade cake stall, raffles and hot cross bun sale next week.

Please remember our school’s sun safety message and send your child in to school wearing a hat each day. If you happen upon a lost hat it can be put into the lost and found box behind the canteen building.

See you at the Easter Hat parade next week

P&C Executive Team

Library News

Premier’s Reading Challenge

The PRC (Premier Reading Challenge) is in full swing, and it has been impressive to see so many enthusiastic students taking part. I am particularly impressed to see so many of the younger students not only taking part but making a greater effort to challenge themselves by reading more widely. There has been a significant increase in books borrowed from the Non-Fiction area this term.

Congratulations to the 21 students who have completed the challenge already. These students are Leon Lui and Zoe Wright (Year 2), Aahil Chakore and Grace Wu (Year 3), Thomas O’Mainin and Otis Taufa (Year 4), Jasper Dempsey (Year 5), Aisha Addouj, Omer Aziz, Lily Beeston, Sonja Blom, Naomi Cahill, Zadie Cahill, Fehoko Fotofili, Ethan Hsu, Alyssa Meijer, Lachlan Murphy, Sejun Oh, Tulay Sallan, Declan Stone, Jesse Wright (Year 6).

ANZAC Day Competition Five Dock RSL Sub Branch and Anzac Day March

The Five Dock RSL Sub Branch are encouraging all students to take part in this year’s ANZAC Day Schools competition, with JB HiFi gift card prizes to be won for the best entries. Entries close 12th April, and winners will be announced on Saturday 20th April. Winning entries will be on show in the club from the 20th –27th April. More information about submissions will be given to students in the coming week during library lessons. We will be examining stories with an ANZAC theme and students will be taking part in a variety of activities which will help them develop a greater understanding of ANZAC Day and the importance of commemorating this special day.

ANZAC Day March to Five Dock Park – Please mark this date in your calendar, it is a fantastic local event.

When: Sunday 21st March 2024

Where: Club Five Dock RSL

Time: Assemble at 10am for the march to Five Dock Park

Ceremony, Wreath laying by school leaders, community groups and BBQ to follow.

Mrs Robyn Christopoulos

School photos - Wednesday 27 March

Don't forget to order your school photos. Photographs will commence with Kindergarten at 9.05am so please ensure students arrive at school before 9.00am.

-  Wear full summer school uniform

-  Place your order online before 27 March.

 -  Go to www.advancedlife.com.au and enter code Z3R A87 LHJ

-  Payment can be made using Visa, Mastercard or Paypal

-  If you are unable to oder online, collect an order envelope from the office and return it completed.

In the classroom -5B

In 5B, we learn extremely well together. We have done a few projects, and every student helps each other during the projects.  

In sport we have fun and we try our best. We play lots of games outside the classroom. These include Newcomb ball and golden child.

In science we have been learning about natural disasters such as volcanoes, tsunamis, cyclones and floods and we all have chosen a certain natural disaster to do a project on.

 In English we have been reading The Wild Robot and we even did a robot artwork. The artworks were beautiful and so far, the book is very interesting and intriguing. We have also been learning about tier 2 and 3 vocabulary words.

 A few students in our class do choir and they recently performed in Pulse Alive. One student in our class, Olive Milner, even performed as a Principal Vocalist!

In week 7 and 8 we did NAPLAN. We had four tests, writing, reading, conventions of languages and numeracy. For writing we had to write a narrative, and we all came up with excellent ideas. Everyone got through fine, even though there were some nerves.

 Written by Leo, Olive, Phoebe, Eibhlinn and Olivia. 

Merit Awards

OOSH News

We are excited to announce our 2024 Autumn Vacation Care Program is now available.

Bookings and permission forms will be online through Microsoft form accessible with the link below or QR code.

https://forms.office.com/r/7ZRmS4yT7H

The Program can be viewed via the link

https://sway.cloud.microsoft/XzZmyAcqqrZAt81t?ref=Link

Vacation Care Period
Vacation Care Week 1: Monday April 15th to Friday April 19th
Vacation Care Week 2: Monday April 22nd to Friday April 26th
Vacation Care Week 3: Monday April 29th 
Public Holiday: Thursday April 25^th – ANZAC Day

All booking forms must be completed by Thursday, 28th of March 2024.

NOTE: All fees must be up-to-date before we can book in Vacation Care

If you have any questions, please contact us.

FDPS OOSH

t: (02) 9712 3260 | m: 0477 809 642