The past few weeks have flown by, and I can’t believe that we are already enjoying some gorgeous Spring weather. This Term has been a busy one! Just yesterday we celebrated some of our wonderful swimming achievements at the Grade 3-6 Swimming Carnival and today we were entertained by the wonderful display of talent by The Illawarra Primary School Skipping Rope Team.

Grade 4-6 students are currently completing a nationwide Student Wellbeing Survey that provides us with valuable data about their connectedness to their school, participation in extracurricular activities, as well as their general wellbeing and feelings of belonging and safety. We have also celebrated Book Week in spectacular fashion this term as well as shared some amazing learning through Seesaw and our Assemblies. Over the next couple of weeks, as part of our commitment to communicating with families, all classes from P-6 will be sending home evidence of learning. These samples will be sent via a Seesaw Message. We encourage you to discuss the samples with your child and to have conversations around the next step of learning. If you would like to discuss the sample with your child's teacher, please contact them to make a meeting time.

Relief is an ongoing and complex issue for schools. At the moment there is a national shortage of teachers and so this makes acquiring relief even harder. We always aim to have our regular relief teachers in the school to ensure the continuity of staff in front of students as well as from a learning perspective, however, there are times when this can’t occur, and we need to try new teachers and sometimes different teachers over multiple days. When families feel frustrated by the amount of relief in classrooms, it is often hard to remember that teachers are also humans and have their own children, lives outside of school, and can often become sick, need carers leave or have other leave that they are entitled to across the school year. I would like to recognise and acknowledge the amazing flexibility and resilience that has been shown by the learners at our school over the past few months and thank you all for your patience and understanding in this area. 

Further within this newsletter you will find a celebration of our amazing Teacher Assistants, keep an eye out for more focus highlights in future newsletters on our other incredible staff across the school.

This week you would have received a form asking you to support your children when they nominate 5 friends that they would like to be in a class with in 2024. All students are guaranteed at least one friend in their new class. Unfortunately, due to many contributing factors this may not be the first person on their list and could be number 5, so students are asked to think carefully about who they write down.  Throughout the process our staff also input social, academic, and behavioural information and classes are created to ensure that there is an equal balance of gender, academic and high and additional needs across each class. All the classroom teachers from across all three relevant grades (due to our composite classes) have several opportunities to have input once the lists become more formalised. Our Leadership team, including the support teacher, also then look at them and then I personally cross-check that everyone has at least one friend. This process takes us around 4-6 weeks. We would like these back no later than Friday 22^nd September. Any students who do not return a form by this date will be supported by their classroom teacher to complete it.

Every year the Department for Education, Children and Young People conducts a School Satisfaction Survey to find out what your child(ren)'s school does well and where it may improve. We would be grateful if you completed our online survey about Lindisfarne Primary School. Your feedback is very important to help us inform our school-planning and decision-making. The survey is open until Friday 22 September 2023 and should take about 5 minutes to complete. Take the online survey by clicking this link or pasting it in your browser: https://ncv.microsoft.com/Vkn3746ntv. The survey is carried out on a secure website and all responses are anonymous and confidential. All families in this school received the same survey link and no identifying information is collected. A summary of the survey results will be provided to schools. Responses from individuals or small groups will NOT be disclosed to any DECYP staff.