Forrest Newsletter 2025 Term 2 Week 8
Message from the principal
Athletics Carnival
A huge thank-you to all the parent volunteers and supporters at the Athletics Carnival yesterday! It was a wonderful day, the weather was as good as could be hoped, and the generosity of parents in making sure staff were fed and provided with hot drinks throughout the morning. A huge shout-out also to Mark Robson for his organisation of the day- that’s a wrap on the three big sporting events of the year!
International Play Day
Last Friday afternoon the FOOSHC staff setup and supported a range of play activities with the school. It was a roaring success! So much so, that we have decided to do this again towards the end of term three. A huge thanks to Ali and her team for this- we all loved it!
Parent-teacher interviews
We hope you have booked in a time to discuss the progress of your child with their teacher next week. This is an important time for you to be informed of their progress, ask questions on how you can continue this at home and get a sense of their approaches to learning: their research, thinking, communication, self-management and social skills. I feel these skills are equally as important to their future: research shows their attitude to learning and self-improvement is a greater indicator of future success than academic scores.
Keeping children at home when sick and supervision times reminder
This is just another reminder to keep children home when sick please. We have had chickenpox and Covid going through the school in recent weeks and this has caused some staff shortages as I wrote in the last newsletter. My advice is to also keep siblings at home to be on the safe side as their symptoms might be delayed. We appreciate your support in keeping our community safe and well. Related to this, staff supervise in the mornings from 8.40am and until 3.15pm at the car parks. Children should not be brought to school earlier than this and need to be collected by these times please. We have a wonderful FOOSHC and you can always contact them if you need your child to be at school outside of the school supervision times.
Staffing update
We have a new member of staff joining us next term as an Indigenous Education Officer (IEO). His name is Tremaine Cotter, and he will be here to support our First Nations children and families as well as providing guidance on First Nations perspectives through our units of inquiry. This position is funded by the Directorate and IEOs are moved around from school to school to balance the needs of the system as equitably as possible. I know you will join with me in welcoming Tremaine to the school when he starts next term or if you see him when he joins us for our Culture Club breakfast on the last day of term. Tremaine and I know each other well as we both volunteer to support a vulnerable child to navigate the challenges around him- Tremaine has a heart of gold to do this!
School Review
In the last newsletter I said we would organise a time for parents to speak to the school review team in the last week of term. We would like to organise this for the Tuesday afternoon (1st July) in our school library at 2.00pm for those who would like to meet a member of the review team in person and an online meeting on Wednesday 2nd July at 12.00pm. Please let the front office know and we will send you an invite to the link.
Chris
Cross Country Championships
Congratulations to all students who competed at the South/Weston and ACT Cross Country Championships over the past couple of weeks. All students represented our school with pride and demonstrated determination, teamwork and outstanding athletic achievement. A huge thank you to all parents and carers who came out to support Forrest’s Cross Country team.
Book Fair
A massive thank you to all of the families who supported the Forrest Primary Scholastic Book Fair that was held during week 6. Staff were rushed off their feet with lines of children holding their precious new books and diaries. We ran out of quite a few different books and children patiently waited for their orders to arrive and be delivered to their classrooms.
Overall, over $10,000 worth of books was sold, meaning that the library has a large bank of reward dollars to purchase student wish list titles for the rest of the year – we have actually already started this process and we will see many happy students in the next couple of months as the books find their way to the New Book shelf in the library.
Thank you again for all of your support, it is amazing how many book lovers our community holds!
Happy reading 😊
Parent Afternoon Tea
BIG Action Week
Donation of Items Needed
Kindy Health Checks Due
Kindy Health Checks will take place on the 28th of July. As yet we have received very few; please get them in as soon as you can.
Parent-Teacher Bookings Closing
The booking system is closing Sunday.
If you haven't been able to make a booking, please message the teacher directly.
This is a relatively new system, and it is mandatory that this is the system to be used for all future parent teacher bookings by government run schools in the ACT. It has many glitches which are being worked through by all sections of the Government involved.
Thank you for your patience.