Richmond Primary School Newsletter Wednesday 4th December 2024

Principal's Address

Dear families,

It is with great sadness that on Thursday we heard of the passing of Bevis Ross, husband of Jan, both great supporters of our school.

Bevis having been a primary school principal, was born in Bracknell and spent his early career in country schools, before working for the last part of his career as the Principal of Princes Street School.

Bevis had a great commitment to the local community of Richmond through sporting clubs and the local school, he loved his garden, had an amazing vegie patch and kept bees in his later years. He had a great affinity with children, it was only earlier this year Bevis and Jan hosted 5/6 A for a garden party.

Such a wonderfully wise, generous and kind man will be greatly missed by his large family, his wide circle of friends and colleagues and by this village community.

We offer Jan and family our love and condolences at this very sad time.

As the school year begins to draw to a close staff and the leadership team have been reviewing our 2023 - 2024 School Improvement Priorities and assessing progress against our 2024 improvement targets.

All schools undertake the annual review process. The process provides us with the opportunity to celebrate the efforts and achievements of our students and school staff across the year. The annual review process also helps us to identify areas for future focus in 2025 and beyond.

Our Values

Our values represent the foundation of DECYP's culture and guides us in all that we do. The values have been decided by the collective and adopted here at Richmond Primary. 

These values are now prominently displayed across our school as a reminder of our commitment to them.

In the hall you will also see our tree of values. The leaves record individual commitment to the values that are celebrated during our Meet and Greet sessions each Monday and Wednesday. Students are recognised for acts that demonstrate they are living the values.

Reporting

On Thursday 12^th December students in Prep to Year 6 will be receiving their end of year reports.  As parents and carers, you have been updated on your child’s learning progress through a range of communications across the year. These have included: 

• school reports at mid-year and end of year 
• sharing evidence of learning 
• opportunities for parent-teacher conversations in Term 2

The end of year report is a summative report of your child’s progress in the subject areas they have been engaged in.

Staffing

We will be farewelling three T.A.’s at the end of the year – Al Cunningham, Trish Epping and Madason Jones. Al and Trish have been working in our kindergarten supporting our youngest students and Trish has also worked with older students across the school. Both Al and Trish have been enthusiastic about supporting and improving the learning outcomes for students.

Madason Jones is leaving to begin her career as a teacher at Bothwell District School. Madi has worked with our prep classes over the last few years, and we wish her well as she begins her teaching career with the DECYP.

We thank them for their work at Richmond Primary.

The final staffing change at this stage is with our Speech Pathologist Marnie McNichol, who is leaving to work with the Justice Department for a short secondment. Replacing Marnie is Amber Haverstock. Amber has been familiarising herself with our case load and meeting some of our students, so she will hit the ground running in 2025. Thank you to Marnie for supporting the speech and language development at Richmond Primary.

Due to the fluctuating student numbers, it has been challenging to establish the staffing for 2025.

Our current projections for next year sit at 191 F.T.E (full-time enrolments). The model below is the class structure for 2025.

Congratulations

Congratulations goes to Mark Nichols who this week celebrated 25 years’ service with the DECYP.

For those of you who don’t know Mark, he is our Health and Physical Education teacher, working with whole classes and small groups to improve their health outcomes.

So, congratulations on your successful career Mark.

Fundraising

Our students have been actively fundraising towards our playground this term.

The cupcake stall was a great success, raising over $1200.00. 

Today they held a small Christmas stall with items donated by the Coal River Valley Gardening Club, which raised a further $148.65.

Thank you to our families for supporting these fundraisers, every little bit helps!

Regards,

Clare McVilly

1/2A News

Students are wrapping up an amazing year in 1/2A with a unit of work in English about Narratives. Students are learning that different types of texts have identifiable text structures and language features. They are becoming familiar with the components of stories, including the characters, setting and plot.

To enhance our understanding of narratives we read the class novel “Matilda”. We wrote some character descriptions which had a focus on adjectives. We also worked on adding commas to list the adjectives in our writing. Check out our great descriptive writing!

To celebrate the end of term 4 we will watch Matilda the movie(s) (1996 and 2022) and will be able to compare how a novel from 1988 portrays characters versus how characters are portrayed on screen.

In addition to our work on Matilda and narrative studies, students thoroughly enjoyed watching Alice in Wonderland at the Botanical Gardens on Wednesday 27^th November. Students were captivated by the singing, acting and costumes. This opportunity to watch a live show further enhanced students understanding of storytelling. Check out Mia and Odyn who were chosen for participation in the show! 

5/6B

This term in maths, 5/6B have been working on graphs and data, we surveyed the whole class on different topics and wrote down the data. We then put all the data into Microsoft excel and excel made the graph without much help from us. Here are a few examples.

These graphs are about whether our class likes dogs or cats better.

People seem to like dogs better.

It is extremely easy to create a graph on Microsoft excel, this is how you do it:

1. Collect the data

2. Put the data into excel making sure the topic and the number are in different boxes

3. Highlight the data and go into insert

4. Insert whatever graph you want and colour the different sections. And that is it. 

Tell Someone

Keeping our kids safe is everyone’s job, but it does start at home.

Do you know what your child is doing on the internet and who they are talking to?

Do they know who they are talking to?

Please, have the conversation today and make sure you know who all their contacts are. Sadly, we do live in a world where everything is easy to access, and information shared is out there forever. Even more devastating is the fact that there are people out there who are looking to hurt our children. Even the children in our little town are not immune to predators. We have recently had reports of people accessing and engaging in ‘chats’ with some of our students through Roblox. The conversations that are occurring indicate grooming behaviour. Please review the eSafety site for more information about grooming. The eSafety Commissioner website contains an abundance of resources including information, posters, videos and even conversation starters.

• Keep the computer or device in an area of your home that can be supervised. And check in regularly with your child to see what they are viewing.

• Explore the online world with them. Play games with them. Do a creative project together.

• Think about social media readiness. Keep the conversation going and talk to them about what they are doing/who they are talking to.

• Encourage respect and empathy. Teach them to avoid sharing or posting things that may upset others.

• Encourage them to learn about online safety by exploring the eSafety Commissioner Kids website: Kids – eSafety Commissioner.

• Be clear about how much time they can spend online, the apps they can use, the websites they can visit and what they can share or post online.

• Ensure your own devices are protected by a password or pin, so your child cannot accidentally come across inappropriate content.

• Use parental control tools appropriate for the age and experience of your child. Be upfront and get your child on board. Let them know that these can be reviewed and changed as they get older, and they continue to demonstrate responsible behaviour. Consider installing a ‘child-friendly’ search engine that will allow them to explore a limited number of sites.

If you have any concerns about your child’s safety online, or they report something that makes them feel uncomfortable, PLEASE REPORT IT to the Advice and Referral Line 1800 000 123 and to Tasmania Police.

When it comes to child safety, we can never be too safe.

https://www.decyp.tas.gov.au/.../cyber-safety-resources/

https://www.alannahandmadeline.org.au/

If you need any support, or would like more information, please come and see me at the school.

Thanks

Al Scott

Support Teacher/Safeguarding Lead

Remaining Term 4 Dates

Dogs Home Christmas Appeal

CHRISTMAS FOOD DRIVE FOR THE DOG'S HOME HOBART.

Christmas is a difficult time for the Dog's Home, we are hoping to help lighten the load by collecting donations.

We're asking families if they are able to donate any items, such as canned food, dry food, training treats or robust chew toys.

The Dog's Home are unable to accept Baxter's branded food, due to some ingredient concerns.

Donations can be left at the Richmond Primary School office. 

Alternatively, donations can be dropped at the next 'cars and coffee' event in Richmond on Sunday 15th of Dec. Andrew Jenner will be parked next to the Richmond Arms Hotel from 10 - 12, to collect donations.

We would love to see as many faces as possible, come check out the car display and donate a can or bag.

All donations will be very much appreciated to assist the Dog's Home with the expected Christmas intake. 

Larger donations can be organised by calling Mandy on 0409006597.