Stockton Public School Newsletter

Term 4 Week 2: 21 October 2020

From the Principal

What a settled start to the term we have had! The weather is warming up and things are getting busy!

 

It was with great sadness yesterday, that we learnt of the passing of a well-known and respected member of the community and one of our mums, Lauren O’Sullivan. Our thoughts, hearts and support are with the O’Sullivan family during this difficult time.

 

VIP PBL PRINCIPAL’S MORNING TEA

At the end of last term, I was fortunate enough to have morning tea with eleven students. As a part of our PBL 2.0, each teacher at the end of every term nominates one student from his/her class as the Very Important PBL student (VIP). The VIP is a student who consistently displays our core values of Safe, United and Engaged. These students are invited to have morning tea with me. Eleven students were invited to our very first Principal’s morning tea. We dined on sausage rolls, party pies, chips, strawberries and Tim Tams. It was so nice to spend time with these students. Congratulations to all! Even though it would have been a difficult decision, I can see why your teachers chose you. I look forward to our Term 4 VIP PBL principal’s morning tea.

 

PBL REWARD DAY

We had a wonderful reward day at the end of last term to celebrate our team work in filling the pipeline. We had movies, popcorn, drinks, ice blocks and extra play time. It is fabulous to see all of the students working together to add PBL tokens to the pipeline and achieve a whole school reward. We announced the Term 4 reward this morning at a very short assembly. I have kept this surprise for weeks now but the cat is out of the bag. The announcement is displayed below in our newsletter!

 

KINDERGARTEN AND PRESCHOOL 2021

We are taking enrolments for preschool and kindergarten 2021. To enable us to correctly estimate enrolments and staff the school appropriately for 2021, any parents enrolling new children P-6 need to complete enrolment forms as soon as possible. Please let any neighbours and friends in the local area know that we are enrolling now. Please be reminded that if you live out of zone I am unable to confirm an enrolment even for siblings at this point in time. This is dependent on current and new enrolments across the school K-6. Please see school website for current enrolment procedures. Please contact the school office if you have any questions or concerns.

We have held parent meetings for 2021 Kindergarten and preschool parents. We are holding a repeat session for 2021 Kindergarten parents if you missed it. This session will be via Zoom on Monday 26 November at 5:30pm. Please RSVP the front office if you wish to join the Zoom meeting so that we can send you the link on Monday.

 

TRANSITION

As of Wednesday 4 November we will be starting our transition sessions. These sessions will run over four Wednesday mornings – 4 November, 11 November, 18  November and 25 November. All sessions will be from 9:30am-10:30am.

We will meet our new preschool students for 2021 during this time. Our current preschool students will be with Mr Whitfield and Ms Morrison in the kindergarten rooms.

All of our current Kindergarten to Year 6 students will also have these sessions in next year’s year groups. Therefore our Kindergarten students will be with our Year 1 teachers, our Year 1 students will be with a different Year 2 teacher, our Year 2 students will be with our current Year 3 teachers, our Year 3 students will be with a different Year 4 teacher, our Year 4 students will be with our current Year 5 teachers and our Year 5 students will be with a different Year 6 teacher. Our Year 6 students will be with Ms Jones and Mrs Orman for activities during this time.

The purpose of this time is so that students get a taste of the next year’s grade. This is especially helpful if they are not in the same building as this year. The idea is that the sessions are fun and engaging. Please note the students will not be with their teacher for next year. Class structures, teacher allocations and staffing arrangements have not been confirmed at this point in time. These sessions just give the students a chance to experience next year’s setting.

 

DONATION

Thank you to Stockton “Jellyblubbers” for their very generous donation to the school to support our students. Generosity and support like this really highlight the community spirit in Stockton. 


HAPPY GRANDPARENTS DAY

This Sunday 25 October is Grandparents Day. It is a great opportunity to thank all of the grandparents in our lives for their support, help, advice and love. Thank you to all of the grandparents that support our students. 


THANK YOUR CLEANER DAY

Today is Thank Your Cleaner Day. I would like to thank Ines, Sonya and Mark for their tireless work here at Stockton Public School to keep the place spick and span. We are very lucky to have you.


Kind regards

Ms Jodie Holt

Principal

VIP PBL Principal's morning tea

School Calendar

I am finalising the arrangements for some of our Term 4 activities. As mentioned previously due to COVID-19 guidelines and restrictions, our normal Term 4 activities will look a little different. This is taking some time in the detail and organisation of the arrangements. I will get a calendar out to all families early next week.

Add a title

New Online Enrolment System

We are excited to announce we will be are rolling out the new Online Enrolment System from Monday, 26 October 2020

 

The Online Enrolment System is designed to provide flexibility for our parents to submit an enrolment application online and at the time that best suits you. The application can be accessed on all browsers and mobile devices including iOS and Android.

 

The online application process is currently restricted to:

  • Enrolments into local schools only
  • Children who are Australian citizens, New Zealand citizens or permanent residents
  • Children who live in NSW.

 

We offer our support and encourage you to complete your application to enrol online. If, however, you do not feel comfortable completing an application online, a paper copy will be available for collection from the front office or can be downloaded from the Department’s going to a public school site.

Further information about online enrolment can be found on our website here.

BOOK WEEK!!!!

Book Week Competitions

Stage 3 Handball Competition

By Kade Paton and Archie Brown

Earlier last term, Archie and I discussed how kids really love playing handball. As the conversation got deeper and deeper, we came to a point where we asked ourselves; “what if we started a competition?”. After getting the thumbs up from the Stage 3 teachers and Ms Holt, myself and Archie started to tell everyone about it. In a matter of days it had spread all around the primary playground. They knew it was coming - it was inevitable. Then the day came to present the finer details of our competition to all of Stage 3. After the discussion, we set up a place where you could register teams of up to three players. The winning team will win a trophy (and bragging rights) that is going to be made by Mr Kelleher. More teams entered than we expected, creating a vast diversity of playing abilities. The next day we had a sign up table for kids who had a team ready. We ended up with 20 teams of 2 and 3 members. At the end of Term 3 we organised a meeting with all of Stage 3. In that meeting the rules, teams and systems were discussed and everyone was on board.

So it came to be that on the first Tuesday we had our first ever “Handball All Stars Tournament”. We were surprised at how many Stage 3 and Stage 2 kids spectated that game. As we are writing this we are going to prepare for the “Turtle Ferrets vs I.G.A”. This experience has been amazing so far and hope that the school will make this an annual competition. The “Sassy Watermelons” and “The Baloogas” will kick off week two’s games on the 19th of October. Stay tuned for further updates and photos from our exciting ‘celebrity exhibitions matches’ and the finals playoffs.

We hope that you all will continue to celebrate this new competition which we have greatly enjoyed organising. Many thanks to Mrs Smith, Mr Kelleher and Mr Van Wyck for supporting our idea and giving up their time at recess and lunch to referee, keep score, and provide expert (ok, mediocre at best!) commentary.


Kade Paton, SPS Prefect, Co Founder of Handball All Stars Tournament

Archie Brown, School Captain, Co Founder of Handball All Stars Tournament

Mr Kelleher, Handball enthusiast, Stage 3 teacher

Photos from the first celebrity exhibition match

Stockton Public School Enviro-Rangers

Welcome back to term four! 

Great to see our sustainability team on the front foot again from week one of the term. The enviro-rangers spent the first week planning what term four will look like and came up with some great ideas!

Waste Free Wednesday is returning in week 2. As a school community, we did an excellent job at educating about the need to eliminate single-use plastics. This resulted in a massive increase of waste free lunch boxes across the school. Let's keep it up!

This Thursday night, the Stockton Public School community has been invited to partake in Water Night, an event created by Smart Approved Watermark. Did you know, a recent study by this company showed that 55% of Australians admitted their addicted to using their taps, yet only 42% considered tap water as 'precious'. Many of us use water mindlessly and underestimate how often we reach for the taps. The Water Night event consists of not using your taps at home between 5pm and 5am (excluding hygiene and religious reasons of course). Water bottles should be filled prior, with a standard bucket prepared for washing up/cleaning. Together, we can become self aware, rather than just reaching for the tap.

If you contribute, please feel free to contact the school and let me know! We would love to hear how you went! 

Have a great term!

Mr Van Wyck and the Enviro-Rangers.

Introducing the 'Run to Tokyo' event for Stage 3

To generate excitement for the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 (let's hope they are still on!), and encourage students to get active, Stage 3 will be participating in a 'Run to Tokyo' event throughout the term. Students will enter any kilometres that they walk or run into a shared google sheet, with the aim being to celebrate how many kilometres they can walk/run together, and to hopefully get up to the 7734 km required to get from Newcastle to Tokyo. We will be tracking this on a scale line (1:1000 scale with a 7.73 metre line) on the inside wall of the school hall. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays we will also be using the perimeter of the school to clock up some extra k's.

Good luck to all of Stage 3! Do you think they can make it?

Mr Kelleher




Garden Club

The Garden Club will be hard at work this term preparing our school vegetable garden for growing summer produce. We have lots of weeding to do! Student's also have the opportunity to interact with the chickens and to taste test the abundance of strawberries and white mulberries that are currently growing in the garden. 

Garden Club runs each Wednesday and is open to all students K-6. All students need to bring with them is their hat and a willingness to get their hands dirty.

Miss Hadwell

Gardening Fun

Yummy strawberries
Feeding the chickens
Hunting for strawberries
Picking white mulberries
Weeding fun
Yummy strawberries
Feeding the chickens
Hunting for strawberries
Picking white mulberries
Weeding fun
Yummy strawberries

Term 4 PBL Reward!

Exciting news!

It has just been announced that if the students work together to fill The PBL Pipeline this term their reward will be....

AN INFLATABLE ACTIVITY COURSE!!!

Students need to earn tokens to fill The Pipeline by displaying United, Safe and Engaged behaviour. 

If you have any tokens at home, please send them in!

Let's work together! This is a prize worth earning!

PBL CLASS AWARD WINNERS FOR WEEK 1 AND 2

Each fortnight we will post a photo of the recipients of class awards. 

KINDERGARTEN 2021

PRESCHOOL 2021

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Stockton Public School