Newsletter Week 4 Term 4 2024
Message from the Principal
2025 Classes Reminder
As I wrote in the last newsletter, we are busy working through the ‘jigsaw puzzle’ which is determining the right teaching teams for each year level and the classes for 2025. Thank you to all parents who have responded to the school regarding friendship preferences for next year; we appreciate your help with this as we start determining classes next Tuesday.
If you have a request outside of this form, please email me directly under the subject line of ‘2025 Classes’ and I will give due consideration to each request with the team. My email address is chris.jones@ed.act.edu.au. Please do this before midnight next Monday so I have time to attend to these before we commence class placements. You will be notified of your child’s 2025 teacher before the end of this term and have the opportunity to meet them early in the 2025 school year. We hope to make the transition from this to next year as smooth as possible for your children.
Culturally Responsive Research
In the last newsletter I also wrote about Tara Durnin (Year Six teacher) presenting her research findings at the University of Canberra and I enthused about how fantastic she was. That’s been recognised again as she has been selected to present her research in Adelaide later this month! Including myself, we currently have five staff undertaking postgraduate research and our school will always endeavour to support the development of staff to provide them with opportunities to excel further!
The Next Few Weeks
Schools have built up an extensive evidence base over many years about term four. In each of the four terms, school staff, students and often parents build up to a level of tiredness and fatigue where our calmness diminishes along with our ability to make the best choices. Term four is particularly marked as the adults are often rushing around even more with end of year events and planning for the following break. In this situation, especially with daylight lasting longer, children might not be getting the rest they need which exacerbates this problem. Please keep your children to their routines as much as possible so the learning can continue, and we see reduced issues and disagreements on the playground.
Have a lovely weekend,
Chris
Kindergarten Health Check Program 2024
The Kindergarten Health Check Program offers a kindergarten catch-up appointment for those children who missed their health check at Forrest Primary.
The catch-up appointments are available at City Health Centre, 1 Moore Street Canberra City on the second floor.
Appointments can be made by ringing Community Health Intake on 5124 9977.
Call the School Health Team office on 5124 1585 with any questions you may have.
The Program will be running again next year for the 2025 Kindergarten students.
Sustainable Steps Poster Competition Results
On Saturday 2nd November, the Sustainable Canberra Expo 2024 was held at Exhibition Park where there was a Sustainable Steps Poster Competition open to all schools in the ACT.
Taking climate action doesn’t have to be complicated. By taking small steps and making smart choices we can all make a difference and live more sustainably. The Sustainable Steps Poster Competition invites students to create a poster that will inspire Canberrans to take a simple action for sustainability.
As part of our Sharing the Planet Unit, Year 3 students inquired into stewardship and how their everyday choices can have strong impacts. We created posters highlighting small and achievable actions. The Year 3 teachers submitted any posters for students who were interested in participating in the competition. Many Year 3 students from Forrest were selected as finalists, with their posters on display!
Winners will be announced at the Sustainable Schools Awards in early December 2024 and will also be announced on the Everyday Climate Choices website. In addition, a People’s Choice Award will be selected by the public at the Sustainable Canberra Expo on 2 November 2024.
Congratulations to the following students for making it as a finalist in the Sustainable Steps Poster Competition:
Max - 3L
Ridhi - 3L
Samar - 3MD
Naomi - 3V
Ramin - 3V
Rocco - 3V
Sokhayu - 3V
Student Individual Achievements
Congratulations to Olivia in 6D who came 3rd in the Women’s 10km Event at the Canberra Times Fun Run last weekend. Her time was 41 minutes and 18 seconds!
Library News!
Reader’s Cup
On Friday the 25th of October a group of 12 students from Year 5 and 6 attended the Reader’s Cup competition at St Monica’s Primary School. Our 3 teams had a lot of fun answering the questions on the 5 set book titles that they had spent 6 weeks reading. The titles were Bindi, Pie In The Sky, August and Jones, Cop & Robber and Rabbit, Solider, Angel, Thief. The students all enjoyed reading the books as some of them were genres that they would not normally borrow from the library.
On the day, the 3 teams worked together to answer the questions, with Forrest Team 1 even coming in the top 3 teams for one of the rounds, out of 43 teams from Primary schools across the ACT!
Forrest Team 1 was Liv, Mimi, Linda, Mia and Zoe (with one team member alternating to join Team 3).
Team 2 was our year 5 students, Alina, Ayana, Lucy and Sadhana.
Team 3 was Nate, Flynn and Aakash.
After 5 gruelling rounds of 10 questions each, the final results were Forrest 1 in 9th place, Forrest 2 in 37th place and Forrest 3 in 11th place.
We look forward to next year’s event!
The Book Fair
Well, the Buy One, Get One Free Book Fair was a HUGE success, with basically every book being sold!!! I hope Scholastic doesn’t mind us sending back empty shelves…..
Thank you to everyone in the community who came to purchase books. We had some very happy students, though some were disappointed that the book they wanted had already sold out when they came to visit.
The Book Club
We will be having our last Book Club of the year being sent out next week with the closing date for all orders Monday the 2nd of December by 3pm. This should ensure that books are delivered by the end of week 9 or beginning of week 10.
Returning Books
The library will cease borrowing in week 6 with all library books to be returned as soon as possible. Reminders of overdue books will go home in week 7 so that library book hunts can happen in houses!! If you are unable to locate any borrowed books, please email Belinda.kowalski@ed.act.edu.au. Families are welcome to provide a replacement book to the library in these cases. It does not have to be the exact book, but something similar to fill the gap that the missing book leaves would be appreciated.
The Colour Run
Yesterday was an amazing day not just for the children, but for the parents and teachers too. I think everyone had a fun day. I know I did!
The P&C would like to thank all the parents, teachers and support staff for all your help yesterday, we could not have done the event without you. We had some very ingenious parents who brought their own water guns, which were an absolute hit with the kids!
A special thank you to the parents who helped out for both shifts, having to hang around during the breaks, the teachers, including our amazing MC and organiser, my P&C colleagues, including DJ extraordinaire, icy pole organisers and our new principal, who was right in the action with us all too!
Yesterday was a great team effort all round!
For those who signed up for the online sponsorship, don't forget to go online and order your prizes from today for the next week. If you don't want the prizes, you can always donate to one of the five causes.
The highest fundraising class is...4V🎉🎉 Well done! I will be in touch with your teacher about organising the Pizza Lunch for you all.
Further information will be available shortly on the amount raised and progress towards our fundraising goal of furniture for the year 6 open space.
I look forward to seeing you all at our next Event.
Community Liaison and Events
Social Events
