Forrest Newsletter 2025 Term1 Week 4
Message from the Principal
Swimming Carnival and K-2 water fun day
A huge thank you to the parents and carers who were able to help or support their children at the swimming carnival and water fun day this week! It was an amazing day of fun and competitiveness. Finally, Mark, our PE teacher, deserves the accolades for organising an amazing carnival and to the staff group who helped him set up on the day. It was fantastic!
Getting to know you interviews
Another huge thank you to parents last week who took the time to come in and meet with their child’s teacher to discuss their aspirations for 2025. It is appreciated by the teachers. However, it was disappointing that on most afternoons a number of teachers were left waiting without notice. We ask that if you are not going to make an appointment (we understand, these things happen), please email the teacher to let them know with as much notice as possible. This way they’ll be able to utilise this time productively in planning for children’s learning. We appreciate your support in this.
IB evaluation and School Improvement
We have two school review/evaluation visits occurring this year. The first one is with our Directorate using the Student Centred Improvement Framework (SCIF- education, in general, loves an acronym!) and the second is the IB evaluation. We started the year purposely reviewing our entire programme of inquiry across the school to look for unintended overlap of content and skills, as well as any gaps. The Australian Curriculum continues to evolve (we are on the 9th iteration in about 15 years…) and it’s also important to consistently reflect on what aligns into each unit of inquiry to adjust them for what worked and what didn’t after we have taught it. For those who might be unsure, we broadly divide the curriculum into two: those we teach in the unit of inquiry and those elements which are broadly standalone. Often, but not exclusively, spelling and number tend to be taught as standalone subjects for example. Virtually everything else is taught in the units of inquiry (UOI). There are 6 UOIs from K-6 each year (4 in preschool due to the age and part-time nature of these children) and when these 46 units are combined this makes our programme of inquiry (POI).
There are some similarities between the two reviews but they have a broadly different focus: the IB evaluation is ensuring we are meeting the requirements of being an IB world school whereas the Directorate’s review is based solely around improvements for students. With the SCIF there are three dimensions (leadership, wellbeing and teaching and learning) and three domains in each. Schools choose three domains from the nine to be reviewed on. We have chosen ’Effective Teaching and Learning’ from the leading dimension and ‘Curriculum’ and ‘Assessment’ from the learning dimension.
Reading intervention
As foreshadowed last year, we are progressing with our intervention program across the school. It is our goal to have intervention groups across the school to support children who need additional support in reading as we believe reading is one of the most important skills children can have as they progress through school. In the early years we’ve been using a screening tool to ascertain which children are needing this intervention first. Please remember these groupings are fluid: children will come into the program, reach the level we are comfortable with, and new children will come in. Some children will never need intervention again as the intervention helps them to soar, others might plateau at that level and need support later on. Intervention is a way of meeting children’s needs. I had weekly speech intervention as a child through to the age of eight- those were my needs.
Seesaw messaging and the right to disconnect
As you might know from past newsletters, as a school we feel that one source of truth supports all parents and allows our school to manage communications more effectively. This one source needs to be through email as, if the Directorate requires us to send something out, it has to come through email. With this in mind, we’ve turned Seesaw messaging off as it’s another avenue for teachers to monitor messages from parents and, secondly, if teachers use this to message back then there is no record for the Directorate. Related to this is the expectation that school staff have a ‘right to disconnect’. It might be the same in your line of work, but it appears on some days that the technology that was promised would reduce my work seems to have failed in that quest! Whilst staff might, and do, choose to respond to emails outside of work hours, there is no obligation or requirement for staff to do so. Thank you for your understanding of this.
Take care,
Chris.
Year 3s Visit to Mount Majura
Year 3 attended an excursion to Mt Majura last Monday, doing a walk on Country with Tyronne Bell. Tyronne Bell is a Ngunnawal descendant who grew up in Yass, learning traditional culture from his father Don Bell (senior). We attended this excursion in relation to our current Unit of Inquiry; Where We Are In Place And Time – focusing on how our connection to places give us knowledge.
Mt Majura provides habitat for a wide range of wildlife, including several threatened species, as well as various opportunities for recreation. Bush foods, scar tree, artefacts and their traditional uses and scenic views across Mount Majura were some highlights of the excursion.
Here are some of our students' reflections:
My favourite part of the excursion was seeing how to make soap. – Adele
My favourite part of the excursion was when we went to the dam/pond and was throwing pebbles/rocks because it was my first time being at Mount Majura. – Myra
If we look after the land, it will look after us. - Kai
Year 3 excursion gallery
House Captains and Swimming Carnival
Congratulations to our 2025 Forrest Primary House Captains.
Dampier | Flinders | Cook | Phillip |
Abigail H Amina Amaya Max H | Jordan Chloe S Lily Alina | Marina Ayana Mirsab Saliou | Charlotte Glory Swaroop Sofia |
On Tuesday 25 February we had our swimming carnival at Stromlo Leisure Centre. It was a fantastic day of swimming, chanting and community spirit. Congratulations to Phillip house who received the most house points on the day. A special mention to our age champions listed below. We are looking forward to Cross Country in week 9.
8 years | 9 years | 10 years | 11 years | 12 years |
Chelsea N Daniil K | Polina A Charlie W | Madison N Archie C | Hannah C Max W | Abigail H Jordan S |
Year 5/6 Netball Gala Day
On Thursday, 30 students from Year 5/6 represented Forrest at a Netball Gala Day. There were 3 excellent Forrest teams that worked together and played in 6 games each, with one of the teams coming away undefeated.
P&C News
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