Richmond Primary School Newsletter Wednesday 12th March 2025

Principal's Address

Dear families,

Playground Grant

Last year we submitted an application for a playground grant. The grant was in line with the 2024-25 State Budget which included $10 million over four years to undertake school playground and sports court upgrades, for the shared benefit of schools and their local communities.

In 2024, all schools and child and family learning centres were invited to lodge submissions for playground and sports court upgrades, noting that a key requirement was that submissions must be for upgrades to existing facilities, rather than new. Where multiple submissions were received from sites, these sites were requested to determine which one was their priority. This has been to ensure that as many sites as possible can benefit from the program. To this end, a maximum upper limit of $100,000 per project has also been set, with any additional required funding to deliver a specific project to be the responsibility of the relevant site.

The process for assessing submissions considered asset condition data held by the department, the Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) for each site, school improvement and learning outcomes, as well as community usage.

Following the assessment process, 104 schools and child and family learning centres have been approved for playground and sports court upgrades progressively over the next four years. Excitingly, Richmond Primary has been successful in their submission.

The anticipated timing of works will be communicated in May 2025 following further detailed assessment of the approved projects. The department will look to commence as a priority those projects considered ‘shovel ready’ where they are for sites assessed as having the highest needs.

I will keep our community informed as more information is made available.

Athletics Carnival

On Friday 28^th February we held our Athletics Carnival. This year we included students from Year 1 to Year 6 to build a greater atmosphere and give our students a bigger event and I would have to say it was a success as in Leo's words “It was the best day of my life. Can we do it again?”. Congratulations to all students who attended and who engaged in the event in such a positive ways and congratulations also to Thomson who narrowly won the event. The student’s spirit of competition was lively but what was most impressive was their encouraging support for their teammates. Thank you to our volunteers, as events such as this do not run without additional assistance on the day, and it is wonderful to see the willingness of our families to step up.

Thank you to our staff who also went the extra mile to make the event so successful.

Open Morning

Thank you to the many families who found time to join us for our open morning yesterday which was a great success across the school. The open morning welcomes our families into classrooms so they can see how their children have settled into their new class, how they are building social connections and to provide an opportunity for the students to share their work. Teachers shared information about the relevant curriculum, the importance of regular attendance and the ways that our school communicates with families through our fortnightly newsletter and class communication through Seesaw.

If you were unable to attend, please contact your child’s teacher for any information provided.

NAPLAN 2025

Today our Year 3 and Year 5 students have begun sitting their NAPLAN testing.

The National Assessment Program-Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) assesses literacy and numeracy skills that students are already learning at school. On its own, NAPLAN is not a test that can be studied for, and students are not expected to do so.

NAPLAN is just one aspect of a school’s assessment and reporting process – it does not replace ongoing assessments made by teachers about student performance; however, students and parents may use individual results to discuss progress with teachers.

This is the second year NAPLAN has been held in March, having previously taken place in May. This change was made so school systems would have access to results earlier in the school year. These can then be used to inform teaching and learning plans for the remainder of the year.

Recently we sent home an information sheet to all parents of students involved in the testing.

If you wish to access the information online it can be found at:

NAPLAN information brochure for parents and carers

The link will take you to the official National Assessment Program (NAP) website and covers a variety of topics such as the timing of the tests and how results from the assessments should be understood.

It also allows access to a Public Demonstration Site which shows the types of questions students will answer and the functionalities that are available in NAPLAN tests.

Please contact the school if you have any further queries.

Recognition for our school health nurses

School health nurses play an important role in our school community, delivering health education and promotion, and supporting student wellbeing.

The Department for Education, Children and Young People (DECYP) has recently introduced the internationally recognised DAISY Award program in schools through the School Health Nurse program.

Those with a health background may already be familiar with this program. Run by the DAISY Foundation, it is a way to acknowledge and celebrate the care and compassion that nurses deliver to the people they care for each and every day.

The program is run in 38 countries, but this is the first time anywhere in the world it will be delivered in a school setting.

Nominations are now open for the DECYP DAISY Award.  If you or a family member have had a positive experience with a school health nurse and would like to see their work recognised, why not consider nominating them! 

You can nominate them using this form, by sending an email to daisy@decyp.tas.gov.au, or getting in touch with school staff for help or more information.

Whether you’re a student, parent or carer, or a DECYP staff member, anyone can nominate a school health nurse you think is worthy of recognition.

Nominations will close on 13 June, with winners announced at an awards ceremony on 4 July. For more information, you can also visit DECYP’s website.

SCHOOL ASSOCIATION

Finally thank you to all the parents who attended our first School Association meeting on Wednesday 26th February. It was fabulous to see so many new faces and parents returning to the association.  If you wish to nominate for the committee, please contact the office.

Our next meeting Thursday 27^th March will be the AGM and general meeting, held at the Richmond Arms at 6 pm. Hope to see you all then.

Growing Up Program

The Growing Up Program (GUP) will be held in week 9 of this term.  The program is Tasmania's leading relationships, sexuality, and protective behaviours program for students from kindergarten through to year 6.

It is facilitated by an experienced team of Family Planning Tasmania educators and is age and developmentally appropriate, sequential, and evidence based.

The program is aligned with the:

• Australian Curriculum
• Early Years Learning Framework
• Respectful Relationships Teaching and Learning Package

GUP reflects the latest in sexual and reproductive health research, maximises learning outcomes, and increases positive communication between parents/carers and their child/children.

Growing Up, educators will encourage children to talk to their families and other trusted adults and consider their own/family's beliefs and values.

Importantly for families, there is a parent information session on Monday 31^st March, from 8.30 to 9 am. So, if you want to learn more about this very important program please come along. The session will be held in the old schoolhouse.

Regards

Clare

Lifting Literacy News

Lifting Literacy at Richmond 

At Richmond Primary, we are committed to ensuring every child develops strong reading and writing skills. As part of the Department for Education, Children and Young People’s (DECYP) Lifting Literacy: The Reading Priority, we are: 

✅ Providing children with a solid foundation for reading from the early years, with support for parents and carers. 

✅ Using structured, evidence-based teaching approaches to reading and offering additional help to students who need it. 

 Watch this short clip about DECYP’s commitment to literacy in 2025.

What's Happening in Literacy at Richmond?

📌 Kindergarten – We have been learning to recognise the letters in our names and exploring how sounds make up words. 

 📌 Prep – We have been revising the alphabet and exploring high frequency words. We have been blending and segmenting CVC words and exploring rhyme and letter patterns.

📌 Year 1/2 – We have been revising the alphabet using onset and rime activities. In Letters and Sounds, we are exploring vowel digraphs and how they help us read and spell words. We also love sharing our creative writing and looking for ways to improve our work. Our class novel The Wishing Chair by Enid Blyton has been an exciting journey into imaginative storytelling! 

📌 Year 3/4 – We have been busy learning and developing our narrative writing skills. The students have spent time planning, creating their own narrative, using their skills to write an engaging piece. We have also been learning about persuasive writing and the devices that are powerful for creating a convincing piece.

📌 Year 5/6 – We are developing our narrative writing skills in preparation for NAPLAN. Students have been focusing on sentence structure, vocabulary, and literary devices such as metaphors, similes, personification, and hyperboles. Using these techniques, we created a snapshot of our recent athletics carnival! 

✨ Thank You! 

A big thank you to everyone who attended our Open Morning! It was wonderful to see so many families engaged in our literacy activities and celebrating student learning. 

 📖 Keep reading and writing, Richmond! 

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Open Morning in 3/4 A

Thank you to those families who could attend our Open Morning. Visiting families were able to experience a snippet of what a morning routine in our class looks like, including some fluency reading and handwriting. Families were able to join in to showcase their fluent reading, when reading out loud and put their handwriting skills to the test!

Here are some responses from the students after our Open Morning. You’ve got to love their honesty!

“The parents’ handwriting was on the correct angle which is what we should be doing!”

“We were better than the parents with our fluency when reading out loud!”

“Some parents had better expression than us when reading out loud.”

“My dad’s handwriting is way neater than mine!”

“Some parents need to go back to school for handwriting lessons.”

“My dad did more than one line with the last sentence. He was only supposed to do one line!”

Thank you for coming along to our Open Morning!

News from 5/6B

Last Friday, February the 28^th we had the school athletics carnival at the Richmond Oval. This was the first year that grade one and two students got to participate, they had a great time.

We started with the 100m events, then 400m then the 800m, and lastly novelty events including vortex throws, hurdles, egg and spoon race, sack race and tug of war before lunch. After lunch we ran the 200m events and the super long 1600m races.

We had a great day, and everyone did a great job of competing for their house. This year Thomson won the carnival by 100 points over Archer. Luckily there was a bus back to school as we were all very tired.

By Harry J, Lewis M and Makayla S.

Athletics Carnival Report

Last Friday 28th February we held our Athletics Carnival at the Richmond Oval with our Grade 1 - 6 students. This is this first time in a number of years that we have included the grade 1 and 2 students in this carnival.  I think it was great to have the extra races and loud cheering!

We saw some great running on the day from all of our students with Thomson winning overall with 1286 points, with Archer a close second with 1180 points. I was very proud to see so many students participating in the 1600m race which was the last event of the day.

This is the first time Thomson has taken out the win in over 6 years since I have worked at Richmond Primary. Congratulations to our Yellow Team!

Thanks to the amazing parents, teachers and staff who helped out on the day.

The Interschool Carnival will be held on Monday 31^st of March.

Mr Nichols

Healthy Recipe from Nurse Meegan

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