Five Dock PS Newsletter Term 3, Week 6, 2024
We Learn on Wangal Country
Principal's Report
Welcome to the end of Week 6, where we find ourselves getting nearer to the next school holidays.
We have had an extremely busy fortnight, starting with the amazing performance night last Tuesday evening. Congratulations once again to all of our students who did a wonderful job performing on the evening. Acting, singing, dancing and performing their hearts out, giving their best after all of those weeks of practice. A huge thanks goes to the teaching staff who worked very hard to prepare students for these performances. The School Leadership team did an outstanding job of coordinating the events and ensured that everything ran smoothly on the night. All staff were involved, included non teaching staff such as SLSOs and admin staff, which contributed to the success of the night. We sincerely appreciate our community's support and thank all who have expressed gratitude and thanks for the teaching staff. I was extremely proud that I was a principal of a school where all staff worked collectively to provide students with this opportunity, as well of the diversity in action that was on display with every student being a part of the night.
Club Five Dock RSL
The school would like to acknowledge and thank the significant financial contribution provided by Club Five Dock, led by CEO David Conway. We are incredibly grateful for their support via the grant for $8000. This grant is extraordinary and will go a long way towards supporting our school toilet project which we wrote about in the last newsletter. The money will be spent on this project in this calendar year and along with the money that student leadership campaigned for, will go a long way towards making significant progress with the upgrade of the toilets.
Literacy and Numeracy week
Next week is literacy and numeracy week. Schools focus on lietracy and numeracy every week, but Literacy and Numeracy Week is annual celebration of reading, writing and numeracy.
It is an opportunity to recognise what teachers and schools do to provide a rich diversity of experiences and learning opportunities to support these foundational skills.In a link below we have attached some activities that you could do at home to support literacy and numeracy.
Professional Learning
Over the last fortnight, staff have been undertaking learning in Strategic Directions 1 and 2. This has included focusing on using data effectively to plan for next steps in learning. Teachers have worked to identify individual proficiency levels that align with NAPLAN (Exceeding, Strong, Developing and Needs Additional Support). Through collaboration, staff will then use these to plan next steps in learning. This week, staff undertook learning related to the Explicit Teaching focus, looking more closely at checking for understanding and how this could be incorporated on a practical level in the classroom. Teachers check for understanding throughout the lesson to establish where all students are in their learning. Checking for understanding is crucial to identify gaps and adjust teaching before moving to independent practice or removing scaffolds. When every student’s learning is monitored it helps create a safe learning environment where students feel supported to be active participants.
School Administration and Support Staff (SASS) Week
This week we celebrated and acknowledged the extraordinary work that our non-teaching staff do in order for schools to run efficiently and successfully. Our non-teaching staff play a critical role in ensuring that our schools function efficiently and thrive. They are very often the first people that our parents and students meet when they come to the school and are a huge influence on students' experiences at school and their learning outcomes. We thank all of our SAS staff for the extraordinary work they do in supporting our schools.
Lost Property
This week, two of our community members - Karen and Kate significantly supported our school by sorting through the mountain of lost property. It was a huge undertaking and we truly appreciate the efforts that they went to. This involved sorting it out into the ones that had names and distributing it back to students. The unnamed ones have been washed and will be sent to the second hand store. We are currently investigating a new system. We will update you on what the new system will be. In the meantime, please ensure that all lost property is marked with your child's full name so that there is an increased chance of it getting back to them if it does go astray. Instilling this important life skill of taking responsibility for your belongings is also crucial, one in which we consistently promote at school. Please support your child by discussing how they can do this to ensure that uniforms are looked after and you do not have spend extra money on purchasing additional items.
Hats
It is that time of the year when the weather is really heating up and we are going to start regularly encouraging students to ensure they have a hat every day. Please support your child to take responsibility for remembering their hat every single day to ensure they are protected. As children, they would have a hard time relating to what can happen as they age due to increased sun exposure, and therefore it is our responsibility as adults to educate children accordingly. Below is some information from the Department oif Education about this issue:
Our schools take sun safety seriously and implement a range of strategies to support school environments that protect students from the damaging effects of the sun.
Much of the sun exposure that causes skin damage occurs in childhood and adolescence.
By the age of 15 many children have developed irreversible skin damage from exposure to the sun.
While skin cancer is the most common cancer in Australia, it is estimated that 95% of skin cancers can be prevented through reducing exposure to ultraviolet radiation from the sun.
Each school has a responsibility to provide a safe environment for students and staff and this includes providing adequate protection from the sun.
Schools support students and preschool children to understand why sun safety is important and to take action to protect themselves such as:
- wearing sun safe hats, clothing and sunglasses
- seeking shade during peak UVR times during the school day
- wearing SPF 30+ (or higher) sunscreen.
Below we have included some information from the Cancer Council.
Canteen
Our new canteen has had an extremely successful first week. Along with the canteen providers and manager, Marissa, we would like to thank our community for the incredible support you have all provided this week, as well as the positive feedback.
A reminder that orders need to placed before 9am. If for whatever reason you have forgotten, students can come to the office and complete the slips that you see in the link below. The office will then complete it and send it to the canteen. Please ensure that your account has enough funds as this may be a reason why the order does not go through.
PSSA Announcement
This morning you will have seen an announcement about Inner West PSSA has recently made about PSSA for 2025. This decision will be effective as of Term 1 2025. We have included the information in this newsletter as well.
Book Week
Last week we celebrated our annual Book week celebrations, which included our Book Week parade. Thank you to Mrs Davies for organising it. Everyone did an amazing job dressing up and there was lots of fun on the day. A huge thanks to our P&C who organised a fabulous cake stall.
Have a wonderful fortnight
Suzi Chosid
My New Gallery
Canteen Links
In the Classroom - 4S and Learning Support with Ms Virgona
This week our Director for Educational Leadership, Simon Paterson visited the school and went into 4S and Ms Virgona's literacy support group where she teaches the MacqLit program, an explicit and systematic reading intervention program for small groups of older low-progress readers. It provides teachers with a comprehensive sequence of lessons that includes all the key components necessary for effective reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.
4S were engaged in a writing lesson where they had to focus on personification, which included adverbs and adjectives in order to write more complex sentences that engage the reader. Below you will find Thomas, Ben and Lillah, who proudly came into my office to show me their excellent writing. The Director came in specifically to observe explicit teaching and was very impressed with the students and their work.
Kindergarten 2025
All children must be in compulsory schooling by their 6th birthday. Children can start Kindergarten at the beginning of the school year if they turn 5 on or before 31 July that year. Students should start school at the beginning of the school year. We are now taking new Kindergarten enrolments for 2025. If you have a child that you wish to enrol, please come to the office and pick up an enrolment package. It is extremely valuable for us to know how many students we are expecting as it impacts on our numbers and how many staff we are allocated and classes we are able to form. If you have any neighbours with young children about to start, please let them know that we are taking new enrolments now.
P&C News
Father's Day Stall
It has been a busy few weeks for Five Dock PS P&C!
We hosted our annual cake stall at the book week parade and are happy to announce we raised around $1100. Thank you to all those parents and carers who contributed cakes and other sweet treats to the cake stall, and thank you to the children and parents who visited us on the day. Thank you also to our lovely volunteers who manned the stall.
We held our annual Father's Day Stall on Wednesday, selling goodies for the wonderful Dads, Granddads, Uncles and father figures in the FDPS community. We raised over $1200. Thank you to the wonderful volunteers who helped on the stall.
As part of our ongoing partnership with Club Five Dock RSL, we are pleased to announce that we were successful in obtaining a Club Grant, which will go towards the upgrade of the toilets beside the canteen. Many thanks to David Conway, CEO of Club Five Dock, who spent time with us while we lodged our application and supports us in everything we do here at FDPS.
We have the Council Election Day coming up. FDPS P&C will be running a BBQ and cake stall on the day, so please spread the word to your neighbours and friends to come and vote at FDPS! All funds raised will go towards our annual upkeep of air conditioning and electronic smart boards across the school.
Our next meeting is at 7pm on the 12th of September. Come along to hear more about our upcoming Halloween event, and ask any questions you may have. We would love to hear from you!
Merit Awards
Debating News
Our FDPS Stage 3 debating team have had a very successful term. In Week 3 the teams debated against Nicholson St Public School about the topic “Self-serve at supermarkets is a good idea”. Our affirmative team Naomi C, Sonja B, Olive M and Olivia G won! Our negative team Zadie C, Emmy P, Alyssa M and Ethan H also won! It was a very exciting week. This week our teams debated against Birchgrove Public School about the very hot topic “AI is the way of the future”. Our affirmative team Mabel W, Izzy L, Isobel B and Eibhlinn W won. All our teams have been commended on their sophisticated and creative arguments by adjudicators. They have all really shone in their eloquent and passionate manner of speech too. I am so proud of their dedication to debating which requires a lot of time and effort before and after school. We are now preparing for our last debate in Week 10.
