Lindisfarne Primary School eNewsletter

From the Principal

Hello, and welcome back to what’s already shaping up to be an exciting and new school year! I would officially like to welcome our new families to the school - we have seven new families joining us this year, along with 53 new Kinder students! With this we welcome four new staff members. Mrs Lucy Morgan joins us in Kinder Possums. Miss Sophie Barwick joins us on Grade 2B, as well as in a senior staff capacity. Mr Russell Smith joins us in Grade 3B on Fridays and Mrs Beth Vince has begun as our new Assistant Principal.

It has been so lovely reconnecting with the students and families and I look forward to seeing you all at our official Welcome BBQ/Meet and Greet on Wednesday next week. Please see the timetable below for class times and details:

Teaching staff have spent the last week getting to know their students and classes, and have already begun making progress towards this year’s learning goals. It has been delightful walking through rooms seeing the exciting environments that are specifically designed to spark curiosity and promote questioning and problem solving skills. Our entire Early Childhood staff have been participating in Professional Learning linked to the new DoE Refocusing Teaching and Learning initiative that promotes play based learning. This initiative will support us to deliver quality, evidence based teaching and learning from birth to eight years of age. The initiative is informed by the National Quality Standard (NQS) including The Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) for Australia, the Australian Curriculum (AC) and relevant parts of the Tasmanian Education Act 2016.

As a school we value children as strong, capable, competent and resilient, rich with wonder and knowledge. We recognise that every child brings with them deep curiosity and potential, and this innate curiosity drives their interest to understand their world and their place within it. The RTL initiative involves our staff undertaking regular professional learning that is focussed on strengthening quality practice in the early years.

You may notice changes that include:

Re-organisation of classroom environments both inside and outside
New ways of sharing/recording your child’s learning
Play and inquiry approaches being embedded in practice to extend children’s learning experiences and achievements
Educators exploring new approaches to teaching and learning

We look forward to sharing with you our ongoing learnings and are excited about strengthening our knowledge of quality practice in the early years. Please do not hesitate to talk with your child’s teacher for further information.

Our Primary staff have also been very busy undertaking some Action Research into the following whole school approaches:

Behaviour Management Policy
Outside Learning spaces
Communication to parents
Student waste warriors/Green team
Kitchen Garden

This process involves finding research and best practice into these areas, and making recommendations to the senior staff team to help prioritise strategies and resources for whole school improvement. This may involve us seeking input, support and resources from our parents and the community so I will keep you posted about how these are progressing throughout the year.

Kind regards,

Kel Innis