Forrest Newsletter 2025 Term 2 Week 4
Message from the Principal
Staffing update
I would like to thank Tara Durnin who has been the acting Executive Teacher for the years one and two teams for the last month. Tara has shown exemplary leadership skills and we will miss her around the office area and in the classrooms with her team. However, I know her class in year six are very keen to have her return! Georgina Sofatzis, the years one and two team leader, Deputy Principal and Disability Education Coordinator (DECO), will be joining us substantively from next Monday. This week Karen Tozer has joined us working with the year two team on the day each that Veronica Munoz and Blair Singh don’t work and has been busy finalising assessments across years three to six to run our senior RTI (Response to Intervention- what would have been called reading support in my childhood) groups on the other days of the week. Finally, we are saying goodbye today to Aidan Richards who has been working at the end of the week in our Small Group Program class. Aidan has brought a wonderfully calm presence to the room and we will miss this and the care he provides for the children. Aidan trained as a high school teacher and has been offered a fulltime role at Belconnen High to teach Humanities, what he has been studying to do for the last four years. I know you will join with me in wishing Aidan well in the latest chapter of his career.
Art Therapy
Last term we were successful in applying for a wellbeing grant which has enabled us to secure an art therapist, Jo Wallace. Jo is a former teacher- still registered and has duty of care as a teacher- who will be working with small groups of around 4 children at a time to support their wellbeing. Children will go to their art therapy during class time and parents will be contacted to give their approval for children to attend. Generally, children will attend with other children in their year group. Each session will last for less than an hour and children will be selected based on the needs we see at school. Please understand there are some complexities to this, it’s usually a bit of a jigsaw puzzle to ensure the right children are in the group for the therapy to work as expected. Typically, the sessions will last for a term and then we reappraise on need, similar to what we do with our reading RTI model.
Car parking
We ask all parents who enter the car parks to please do so with respect and understanding for all. There are clearly marked spaces for pick up and set down only and we ask all parents and carers not to park in those areas during the times indicated. When the car park ‘flows’, we can move 20-30 cars a minute. When cars are stopped with no children in sight, or are parked whilst the parent goes and looks for their child, everything slows. You might be asked to move on or go around; we only ask that so things move quickly and we can move the highest number of children in the shortest space of time. Your support of this is vital and we really appreciate the difference you are able to make to speed things up whilst maintaining a safe space for children, staff and other parents.
Scholastic Book Fair
Interschools Snow Sports Championships
Calling all snow sports enthusiasts!!!
Forrest Primary School is looking for any students who love to SKI or SNOWBOARD, to enter the 2025 Interschools Snow Championships.
Held in Perisher, from 22-25 July, students from ACT and Southern NSW will join together for some fun on the snow.
There are many different events to choose from, and students can participate as an individual or a group.
If your child can ski or snowboard ( they can be a beginner or more advanced), we would love to hear from you. Please send your interest to:
Registrations for the event open online from May. For more information, please go to the link below:
School Photos
Please see below a school photo schedule for next week.
Please ensure your primary school child is in full school uniform on all photo days, including either red or the darker grey bottoms. Please note that students will also be asked to remove all jackets for photos. While every effort will be made to stick to this schedule, some changes may be unavoidable. Unfortunately, we cannot confirm the time of photos for each class.
Sibling photo order forms are pink and can be found outside the library, near the front office and are due back on Wednesday, 28th May.
Personalised photo order forms were sent home with each child last week, if you have misplaced your envelope, please contact the front office.
