Swansea Public School Newsletter

*Positive Behaviour for Learning

Building a Restorative School:

We have been working on our ‘Building a Restorative School’ for a little over a year, focusing on staff professional learning and applying this learning to our practice. We have finalised project plans this week with our sponsors, Fair Education and SchoolsPlus, with a commitment to expand our project to community through parent workshops and online resources. We can’t wait to share the amazing work we are doing in becoming a restorative school.

Cross Country:

Our cross country is scheduled for Friday 1st April. We hope that the weather is kind and that we will have plenty of family and friends joining us as spectators! P&C Easter raffle tickets will also be available for purchase on the day. Come along and join our fun day! (Note: Our cross country back up day is Thursday 7th April if we need to reschedule due to adverse weather conditions).

Numeracy Sprints:

Over the last 5 weeks of this term we have had a school-wide focus on Numeracy. Staff have looked at student academic data, identified a targeted area for numeracy learning, engaged with research on contemporary teaching practices, and put these practices into action in their classroom. We are very keen to see how our evidence-based approach to building on our great numeracy results, underpinned by the latest research, will continue to grow the great results our students achieve.

Student Voice - Tell Them From Me:

Our students from Years 4-6 completed their annual Tell Them From Me survey this week. We can’t wait to get our report back from ‘The Learning Bar’ to unpack this valued feedback to set targets on making our great school even better! Next term parents and carers will have an opportunity to complete our survey so community voice can also inform future planning. Keep an eye out for the invitation to this survey next term!

Brett Carr

Principal

We celebrated Harmony Day this week, learning about different cultures and imagining we were exploring the world. Staff dressed up in outfits from different countries throughout the week, students learned about different countries to get their passport stamped, and we had a celebration assembly to share what we had learned across the week. We also raised awareness by wearing orange on Friday to show our commitment to the celebration of diversity. Our students had a great week of learning, guided by the theme ‘Everyone Belongs’. I’d like to thank Miss Bakic, Ms Body, Mrs Rippon, and the team for making this week fun and full of rich, meaningful learning.

Mr Brett Carr

Principal

Lake Macquarie Council have been working on extending the Fernleigh Track from Belmont through to Swansea as part of the Fernleigh Awabakal Shared Track (FAST) project. The shared pathway will take in culturally and historically significant parts of Belmont, including Belmont Lagoon, and a series of public artworks along the route will express connection to Country and the area’s cultural significance.

Talented Aboriginal artist, Saretta Fielding, has been commissioned create public artworks along this new stretch of track that ‘Connect to Country’. As part of her artmaking process, Saretta has worked with local schools chosen to participate in the project, teaching students about artworks that ‘Connect to Country’, guiding students through their own ‘Connect to Country’ artmaking journey, and then using these artworks to inspire her final designs for her public artworks.

Our Stage 2 and Stage 3 Aboriginal students had an amazing experience with Saretta, learning about culture, storytelling, and connecting to country through art. This was an authentic, rich, meaningful learning and growing experience for our students that they all thoroughly enjoyed. We can’t wait to see Saretta’s final designs on display, and learn even more about the cultural and historical significance of our local area.

On behalf of our school, we sincerely thank Saretta Fielding and Lake Macquarie City Council for this amazing opportunity! For more information about the FAST project and artist Saretta Fielding, visit the following websites: 

https://www.saretta.com.au/pages/profile

Swansea Public School now has a hashtag for social media posts. 

What is a hashtag?

Simply put, a hashtag is an easy way for people to categorize, find and join conversations on a particular topic.

A hashtag is a metadata tag that is prefaced by the hash symbol, #. Hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services such as Twitter, Instagram and WeChat as a form of user-generated tagging that enables cross-referencing of content; that is, sharing a topic or theme.