Meadow Flat Public School Newsletter

November 2019

Principal's report

External validation

Our school was externally validated earlier in the month by an independent team from the Department of Education’s High Performance Unit. They required sets of evidence to show that what we are doing in the areas of learning, teaching and leading at Meadow Flat Public School, is measurably impacting on student learning in the most positive ways. They review the school’s judgements and progress against the School Excellence Framework in 14 different elements.

 

The team visited us for 2 hours where I explained our evidence and justified the judgements the teaching team collectively made about our school. The aim of the team’s visit was to critically analyse our evidence and if appropriate, concur and validate our findings. This is precisely what occurred.

 

We couldn’t possibly do what we do without each teacher committing to constant reflection and analysis of their practice. Nor could we do the marvellous things they do without every child having access to resources  available to them. Thank you to all parents who completed their surveys that informed this process.

 

Planning for 2020

Meadow Flat Public School is determining how the classes will be formed for next year. The base establishment of our school is three classes, and then from there, additional support as required. No decisions have been made about this for 2020 as the school is receiving support from State Office on different modelling approaches.

This planning will take into account the base staffing entitlement, equity loadings, equity staffing, and operational funding. If all of our current students up to Year 5 remain, we will have 66 students in 2020.

 

School works

Over the Christmas holiday period, the school will be having significant building works with the concrete assembly and lunch area being replaced. These works will see this area made safe as the trees are seeing a lot of movement in the slabs. It has become necessary to remove 2 large trees that provides shade for the students. The P and C has been given the challenge to fundraise for a new shade structure to protect the students into the future. In the meantime, the students will eat their lunches on the tennis court.

 

Dental clinic

The dental clinic will be here this Thursday and Friday. If you returned your forms, please ensure your child is at school for it.

Calendar

Term 4
Week 7

Wednesday 27th  November

Thursday 28th November
- Dental clinic
Friday 29th November
- Dental clinic
Week 8

Monday 4th December

Tuesday 5th December

Wednesday 6th December

Thursday 7th December

Friday 8th December 
- Presentation evening 6.00pm

Week 9

Monday 9th December
 - Canteen

Tuesday 10th December
 - Music presentation 1.45pm

Wednesday 11th December
 - 

Thursday 12th December
 - Swimming lessons 

Friday 13th December

 - Swimming lessons 

Week 10

Monday 16th December
 - Swimming lessons

Tuesday 17th December

 - Swimming lessons

Wednesday 18th December
 - Year 6 breakfast 8am
 - End of year fun day
 - Last day of term 4

Thursday 19th December
 - SDD day

Friday 20th December
- SDD day



Captains' report

This term we have had some external validators around our school. We showed them around and they were impressed by our school. 

A big thank to you Lithgow Tidy Town for supplying our Remembrance Day poppies. The crocheted poppies were worn by all students and teachers and made the day even more special.  

Mrs Martin came in and hosted the personal development talk with year 3-6. As always it was very informative and Mrs Martin answered all our questions. We still have more! 

We have been having Kids Helpline video conferences with Brooke. She is a counsellor with them and our last one was on Wednesday. Kids Helpline is a free service that kids can call or email if they have any worries. It is totally confidential and you can call them any time, any day. The number is 1800 55 1800. 

We have participated in Triangle sports and Gala day. Both days were lots of fun and we got to see our friends for the other small schools community. 

Stage 3 (and Ollie) received certificates today for the Newcastle Permanent Maths Competition. We had quite a few people get certificates of Merit and Aiden and Toby got Certificates of Distinction. Well done everyone! 

By Noah and Riley  

Library report

This term has been great! We have had lots of kids coming to our library and borrowing some of our wonderful books. 

Lately we have been getting some new books. One of the books is The Schoolgirl Who Went To Strike To Save The Planet By Valentina Camerini. It is about Greta Thunberg and shows how kids can make changes. 

Another new book was His Name Was Walter by Emily Rodda. We read it in class and it was amazing! It is a story within a story full of mystery, suspense and magic. 

Library is on every Friday so remember to bring your library books in so you can get a nutsy and borrow. 

 By Ava van den Berg, Molly Lambert and Katie Anthes. 

Interschools equestrian competition

On Friday, Katie, Lucy and Couper were at home preparing their horses to leave for Interschools with their parents. Interschools is an event where students (and their horse) compete in events for their school.  

We arrived on Friday afternoon and we got to see all the set-up events and trophies, rugs and ribbons. The next day we got ready and started competing in all challenges like jumping, sporting, dressage, ring events and stockman’s challenge.  

Unfortunately, it was extremely windy on the day, so we decided to withdraw from the event before someone got hurt.  

Nonetheless, we were successful in the events we competed in, bringing home several ribbons.  

By Katie Anthes

Aurora College program

In some schools, including ours, some students are doing a program with Aurora College (a virtual selective school). This year is the introductory year, so the program is only taking place on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but next year it will take place every day. It goes from 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM, and it’s kind of like a regular class, but online. The classes mainly use Adobe Connect and Microsoft OneNote, but they sometimes use other programs. Our current unit is called “Through the Lens”, where we get to make a short 5-minute film introducing ourselves.  Our main teacher’s name is Mrs. Pearson. The first masterclass of the program was on the Thursday the 24th of October, and it was mainly about storyboarding and moviemaking. It’s a fun little program, and I’m enjoying it so far.  

By Aiden Bird

Kinder transition

There are 11 new kinders coming next year and they have been doing lots of activities including craft, reading stories, painting library bags, and lots of other things. 

There is one student called James Hunter and he is funny. He makes all kinds of noises including cat noises, cow, dog noises and lots of other noises. 

I hope I can make lots of transition friends and help them with work and help them when they hurt themselves. 

By Kane Harrison


Classroom news

Playtpus class

Whilst the older students enjoyed themselves at Gala Day last week, the rest of the school enjoyed counting, sorting and tallying M&M's into colour groups to discover which colour was the most popular.


Bilby class

 As part of our literacy unit, Bilby class are writing procedures.  We have read the book Wombat Stew, and we have collected ingredients for our own bush stew. We'll write the step by step procedures into our recipe books. I wonder how our stew will taste?

Billabong class

The Billabong class have been leaning about geology and different types if rocks in science.  This information is then being used to write information reports in English. We have learnt how to plan our work out before we begin writing.

Wollemi class

School Camp - Night Activities

On the first night we did some stunts and played some games on the soccer field. The first game we played was where you had to high five students and grab their hand and stick your pointer finger out. Once you were ready to start you had to try to touch their knee with your pointer finger or make them step back. The second game we played was the  quickest game of tag. The third game we played was hide and seek with a partner after that we played rock-paper-scissors, but there are stages and the stages are egg, chicken, dinosaur, unicorn and then super hero. The last game we played was Pac Man, but with pool noodles to whack the people that where not in.  

The second night was tabloids games where you have to compete with a team and try to get the most points. There were games like trying to get basket balls throw a hoop to get points, you have to catch frisbies to get points, you had to drag people in a blanket like a taxi for points, you have to kick soccer balls to get points, you have to walk 5 metres with frisbies on your head and a lot of other cool stuff. At the end, the team with the most points won.  

Third night was a glowsticks activity in the hall. We made 2D and 3D pictures about the camp with glowsticks, and then the teachers turned the lights off and then judged them all. The first thing that we had to make was something from your cabin, the second thing that we had to make was something that reminded you of school and the forth  thing that we had to build was a famous landmark and the last thing we built was a 3D thing that reminded us of camp. We all had heaps of fun and we also got to take the glowsticks home.   

Forth night was trivia night. We got split up into groups, and had to answer questions  while trying to do a challenge. The first round was about the stuff that was on the news, the second round was about movies and the last round was about songs. The first challenge was how long can you make a strip of paper with half a piece of A4 paper, the second challenge was draw a portrait of someone that was participating in trivia and the last challenge was that you had to make the paper plane that would go the furthest.

After trivia we tried to watch the movie but I didn’t work so we had to watch it in the morning. The movie was about all the fun time we had on camp. What was in it was a heap of pictures of the people that participated in all the events, so they had pictures of the rock climbing, the archery, the kayaking, the sailing, the paddle boarding, the palm beach hike, the abseiling, the high ropes, the low ropes and all the other games into a movie.  

We all enjoyed the camp and had an amazing time doing all the activities and had heaps of fun.  

 By Toby Harisson and James Kinney

Don't forget

Come down to the Meadow Flat Public School end of year concert in the COLA on the 6th December at 6pm. Our performances this year are Where the Wild Things Are by K/1/2  and The Lion King by 3/4/5 and 6

by Eilish