Yandelora School Newsletter

Dear Parents and Carers,

The cold winter weather has arrived, however our classrooms are warm, well ventilated and children are working hard in every room. It brings me so much joy to move about the classes and see the learning that is happening across our wonderful school. Student achievement is obvious and as we work on writing semester one reports it is very exciting to see all the gains that students are making. 

We are now seeing an influx of therapists attending the school. We are able to allow therapists to attend classes to support students learning. We do not allow therapists to take children away from their class and thus impact the students engagement in learning activities. During school hours it is very important that students are engaged in their learning activities, and therapy should support this.  As a reminder, if your child is away on the day that a therapist is due to attend please contact them and let them know about your child's absence. The process of supporting therapists to deliver programs at school is quite complex. There is a significant process around preparing therapists to attend school. They must complete paperwork, sign an agreement and meet with me for a site induction. This commitment takes some hours and is managed by Gayle in the office, who has the process as streamlined as possible. Sometimes the process may be delayed as the therapists has not completed all of their mandatory training or paperwork. We ask for your patience through this process. 

An ongoing issue has been arising around the parking in the school car park.  It is essential that if you arrive and there are spots available you park in those spots, do not double park when there are spots available. It makes access through the car park very difficult and dangerous. Our school bus now ventures out more on activities with students and we need to be able to move it through the car park to park it safely. 

The students were lucky enough to be able to order lunch from the Narellan school canteen this week. It is a wonderful program and High School students enjoy placing and collecting the orders from Narellan. 

Our Parent Group started up this week. It was incredibly successful and I encourage all of you to come along. Aimee our school counsellor is facilitating the program and the participants this week were able to share what it is they want from the group and how they would like to see it run. The best part is our year 11 and 12 students are your food and beverage hosts! They are learning to make coffee, tea and hot chocolate, as well as bake a little treat for the parents and grandparents. Please do come along to the next one! Bring a friend, encourage another parent or carer to come with you. This is your group and we want to see it grow from strength to strength. 

Warm Regards,  Jacquie

We welcome back to school Azariah, Cruz, Terrell, Lucia and Evie. They have all settled back very smoothly into Term 2.

Last term we celebrated special events such as Harmony Day and Easter. Students participated in a hat parade and egg and spoon race which we all loved!

This term in the Hawks class, we have been learning both single sounds and consonant, vowel consonant words in our Phonics lessons in Literacy. In Mathematics we are learning about the strands of Whole Number, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. We have been learning about families for History, road and cyber safety for Personal Development and the Living World for our Science lessons. The Hawks students absolutely love their music lessons with Joanne.

Swimming lessons will continue this term plus fortnightly cooking lessons and sport. We are looking forward to an exciting term of learning.

During the last few weeks, Sugar Gliders have been very busy learning about plants in the environment and history of our First Nation People. We have participated in experiments where we grew seeds in the sun and saw what happened when the seeds were left in the shad and not watered. We talked about the importance of caring for our plants so that we can continue to survive. We made fruit salad or fruit plates and selected the fruit we liked best.

During history lessons, we watched and listened to short videos in Dharawal language and we even tried hard to sing Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. It was fun.

We have completed Swimming Scheme where we swam every day and we really enjoyed it. Now we will continue to swim and build on those skills every Friday (even when it’s cold).

Please remember to label all your child’s clothing so we can make sure all items find their way home to the correct family.

Cath & Jojo

Welcome to Term 2! This has been an exciting and busy new term for our Fairy Wren’s with lots of new and exciting changes. We said goodbye to teacher Patrick and hello to our new teacher Tabitha and student, Matthew.

Each morning, we begin our independent folders, focusing on our reading and writing skills before we enjoy our toast at breakfast club. In English, we have been exploring the beautiful words of Poetry in the world around us; and have created some wonderful Autumn Haiku’s and decorations for our classroom display.

We have been fortunate enough to get back into swimming with our friends each fortnight, and doing our part for Yandelora by participating in the Premier’s Sporting Challenge and making sure we are using our bodies as best we can each day and practicing our movement skills!

As a class, we are working hard on our communication skills and have had lots of fun using the class iPad and Proloquo2go, a favourite of Jordan and Isaiah’s, as well as lots of fun activities on our interactive touchscreen. This term, Kaley, Patrik, Moonlight, Stephen and Liam are helping with the Narellan Public School Lunch Program by collecting all the lunch orders and helping distribute them to all of Yandelora, as well as participating in the Parent Café.

We couldn’t be prouder of our Fairy Wren’s. They are working hard each and every day and are stepping up to the challenges and growing together. Keep up the beautiful work everyone!