Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome to our Week 6 newsletter. I would like to welcome our new students and their families as well as say a HUGE thank you to Saleh from Fettayleh Foods for their donation of sausages for school meet the teacher bbq. We are so lucky to have a wonderful parent community at Prestons.

Meet the Teacher

We had a wonderful afternoon on Wednesday. Thank you to our wonderful teachers for cooking the BBQ, setting up the playground with lots of fun activities and for being so warm and welcoming to our families. We hope everyone had a great afternoon and we thank all of the families for coming along.

Parent Forum

Mrs Lloyd met with a group of parents on Thursday both fact to face and via zoom to share, discuss and get feedback on our new homework policy and Inclusive, Engaging and Respectful schools policies. What a productive morning! We now have taken onboard your feedback and will be sharing our new policies with the whole school shortly. Thank you to everyone who came along, we deeply value the opportunities to work in partnership with our families. We look forward to continuing this partnership at future parent forums and P&C meetings. Look out for these in Week 4, 6 and 8 each term.

PSSA

Our students are certainly making us all proud with their behaviour and sportsmanship at PSSA. A big thank you to the teachers snd SLSOs who support our students so well. We also love having families come to cheer us on and model and encourage great sportsmanship. What a wonderful Prestons family we have.

Parent Consent note

We can't wait to get back into using Seesaw and using our Essential Assessment and decodable readers. To do this we need all parent consent notes to be returned. We are almost there, and request all families to return the consent note as soon as possible.

Updated Contact Details

We are excited about moving into using the Sentral parent portal. This will be a one stop place for you to receive notes, notifications, school report, pay for excursions, give permission for excursions, record student absences and so much more. In preparation for this, we have sent home updated contact detail forms to all families. Once these are all returned we will be sending home a parent key that allows you to access the parent portal. Thanks again for supporting us so that we can improve our communication and partnership with our families.

Bike Safety

We love to see students riding their bikes to school. However, we need to give a very important reminder about safety. Students should NOT RIDE THEIR BIKE TO SCHOOL IF THEY DO NOT HAVE AND WEAR A PROPERLY FITTED BIKE HELMET. Students without a helmet will not be permitted to ride home and parents will be contacted to collect the bike from school. Please encourage your child to ride their bikes safely when travelling to and from school.

Student Safety

A polite reminder to all families. School is a safe place for our children. Under no circumstances should a parent or family member approach another child. If you have any concerns about an incident at school you must approach a staff member who will be only to happy to listen, support and follow through on your concerns. Thank you for supporting us in this so that every child feels safe at school.

Have a wonderful weekend and don't forget to ask your child what they are learning at school.

Liz Van Der Meulen

Principal

Monday 6th March - Website open for Year 6 going into Year 7, Expression of Interest

Thursday 9th March - Jersey Mufti Day

Tuesday 14th March - World Purple Day - Whole School Fundraising

Wednesday 15th March - NAPLAN - Writing (Years 3 & 5)

Thursday 16th March - NAPLAN - Reading (Years 3 & 5)

Monday 20th March - Harmony Day

Tuesday 21st March - NAPLAN - Literacy (Years 3 & 5)

Thursday 23rd March - NAPLAN - Numeracy (Years 3 & 5)

Saturday 25th March - State Election Day

Friday 17th March- National Day of Action against Bullying and Violence

Thursday 6th April- Last day Term 1

Friday 7th April - Good Friday

Tuesday 25th April - Anzac Day (Public Holiday)

Wednesday 26th April - Students return for Term 2

Wednesday 26th April - Anzac Day Assembly

Friday 28th April - School Cross Country

Tuesday 9th May - The Rocks Museum Excursion (Year 5)

Wednesday 10th May - The Rocks Museum Excursion (Year 6)

Friday 12th May - Winter PSSA commences

Tuesday 23rd May - Zone Cross Country

Monday 29th May - Friday 2nd June - Reconciliation Week

Week 8 - 15th March (hosting 2 Monkeys)

Week 10 - 29th March (hosting 2 Zebras)

Parents and carers are welcome to attend in the school hall.

Week 8 - 14th March (hosting 6 pelicans)

week 10 - 28th March (hosting 5 Rosellas)

Parents and carers are welcome to attend assemblies in the school hall.

Students will depart school by bus each day at 9.15am and return to school at approximately 12.00pm. Parents and carers are welcome to attend.

• T/Ball and Softball - Jardine Park
• Newcombe Ball - Homestead Park, Chipping Norton
• Oz Tag - Woodward Park, Liverpool

If PSSA is postponed, we will advise via Skoolbag and our Facebook page.

Please ensure that your child has the following items for PSSA:

· Hat

· Sunscreen

· School Sport uniform

· Water

· Packed lunch with piece of fruit

We had a surprise visitor come and cheer us on at PSSA Oztag, Brian To’o. Thank you for your kind words and advice to our student. Penrith Panthers

Congratulations:

Zachary - 1 Lions

We are excited to be introducing our Passion Groups program for 2023!

All students will be involved in the program which is linked to PDHPE, wellbeing and key learning areas. Passion groups will be held every second Monday, commencing Week 8, from 2pm to 3pm.

Students have been placed into one of the groups that they selected as their own “top 5”.

The activity groups are:

* Mathletics * Photography

* Gymnastics * Oz Tag

* Hula Hoop Dance Troup * Ribbon Twirling Troupe

* Drama Club * Stop Motion

* Basketball * Choir

* Science Club * Art

* Cooking * Auslan

* Gardening * Arabic Dancing

* Sewing * Lego Robotics

* Music * Chess & Board Games

* Sculptures * Minecraft Education

* Soccer * Macrame

* Origami * STEM

Students are super excited to learn and develop new skills.

If you have expertise in any of these areas and would like to help our teachers with these groups, please contact Mrs Lloyd by phoning the office.

Purple Day is a global initiative dedicated to raising epilepsy awareness, dispelling myths, and increasing support for people living with epilepsy.

Prestons Public School will be holding a fundraising event for Epilepsy Action Australia on Tuesday 14th March.

Students are encouraged to wear the traditional colour of Purple on the day to show their support and to bring in a gold coin donation.

Students can also get their hair sprayed purple on the day for $1.00.

All proceeds will go to Epilepsy Action Australia.

Student attendance in school is compulsory and it is the responsibility of parents and/or carers to ensure that your child attends school every day. This daily attendance is important for your child to achieve their educational best.

More information is included in the attached letter.

What is the purpose of a Voluntary Contribution?

A voluntary contribution is a payment requested by schools to supplement existing funding. The purpose of these voluntary contributions is to support additional resources and to enhance educational programs.

Our school voluntary contribution amount for 2023 is $30 per family.

Voluntary contributions can be made at the office or online at www.prestons-p.schools.nsw.edu.au.

Payments can be made to the office by cash, EFTPOS or by the school’s preferred method of POP (Parent Online Payments). POP payments can be made by visiting the school website, www.prestonsp.school@det.nsw.edu.au and using the Make a Payment tab. Money and permission notes need to be sent to the office first thing in the morning. Please encourage your child to do this as this will establish a sense of responsibility. Payments and permission notes are best sent to the office in a sealed envelope marked with: Your child’s name and class, what the money is for (If making a cash payment please endeavour to send correct amount).

The department has digitised the Year 6 to Year 7 transition process. In 2023 parents and carers will go online to complete the Expression of Interest (EOI) and Placement not Required (PNR).

EOI and PNR forms will be available on the enrolment page on the Prestons Public School website from 6th March - 31st March 2023.

Enrolment - Prestons Public School (nsw.gov.au)

Further information will be sent home shortly.

I'm not lion we are having a great time learning!

We have been very busy settling into our new classroom and routines this term. We share a classroom with 1 Giraffes and Miss Rigas and we call our classes 1 Liraffes!

We have many friends from kindy but are also forming new friendships every day.

This term has been very busy with all the new learning we have been doing in our literacy lessons. During our independent reading time we are focussing on working on our reading stamina, we have been successful in reading for 7 minutes! We are all so proud of our accomplishment!!!

During our reading lessons we have been learning to use clues to make a prediction about the story we are going to read. We even had a guest character come to our class as a clue for the story we were about to read! It was so much fun, and we enjoyed getting to know the character and asking them questions.

In Maths we are learning about being a Mathematician and how to represent numbers in lots of different ways. We have become experts at sharing our learning with our peers!

We haven’t been in Year 1 for long but we have already learnt so much!

We are looking forward to all the amazing learning that is yet to come and cannot wait to share!

Until next time…

1 Lions

3 Sharks have had an amazing start to the year learning all about the planets and have just began exploring fractions.

We love learning and are so lucky to be able to use our iPads and laptops for research. Here’s a sneak peak of our awesome classroom filled with active learners

Skool Bag is a mobile app that communicates directly to parent smartphones. It provides access to key school information via one single Communication Centre for both students and parents. You are also able to inform your child’s school of their absence simply by logging and submitting their reason for leave. Simply search for Prestons Public School in the app store for iphone/apple users or the google play store for android users and install the Skool Bag App for free.

Our School community supports the wearing of school uniform to encourage pride in our school. Our school uniforms are sold from Moorebank Uniforms & Embroidery located in Liverpool and Moorebank. They can be contacted on 9601 0812

Orders can also be made online. Simply visit www.moorebankuniformsandembroidery.com.au

Enter the Password PRESPMUE2019 to shop online.