Thank You + Term 3 Pupil Free Days

A big thank you to our Evatt Community for supporting the two pupil free days over the last few weeks. Teachers have used the time to catch up on planning to ensure high quality, engaging programs and lessons are delivered to students. Teaching teams collaborated to ensure teaching and learning is rigorous, fun and supportive of all the needs of each student in our school. We look forward to sharing all our learning with you as it emerges into next term.

You may have seen through the Education Directorates social media sites there will be 2 x Pupil Free Days in term 3. These will be:

• Friday 5 August

• Friday 9 September

We appreciate your support keeping children home on these days.

Semester One Reports and Future Focused Parent Discussions

As we come to the end of Semester One, a reminder that student reports will be emailed out today Friday 1 July. Thank you to all the parents and carers who have attended future focused discussions with classroom teachers over the past few weeks. It has been lovely to touch base with many families who have valued the opportunity to discuss the progress and next steps for their children. A timely reminder to also keep an eye out on Seesaw for regular snapshots of learning from your child.

In semester 2, the school is working on ensuring students are equipped with the necessary fundamental writing skills they need to be successful writers. This is based on the Australian Curriculum Literacy Progressions which outlines the key features of writing mapped to a continuum.

To support this, we have created and are trialling a skill framework called the “Writers’ Toolkit” where students will have individualised skills to focus on in addition to regular classroom learning goals. These are not organised by year level, rather adapted to meet the individual needs of each student.

The toolkit is organised into four elements:

For example, a class might be working on descriptive language as part of writing narratives. Students would continue to be exposed to the learning as part of this, but also be focusing on their individual “focus skills”.

These are written as “I can” statements and might be something like:

• I can write all letters with consistent size and spacing between words.

• I can write basic sentence boundary punctuation.

• I can capitalise key events, geographic names and titles.

• I can write most common and high-frequency words correctly.

• I can select simple, compound and complex sentences to express and connect ideas, occasionally manipulating the structure for emphasis, clarity or effect

These individual focuses aim to be highly adaptive and interchangeable to meet the needs of the students.

The toolkit focus skills will be displayed to students on personalised cards that include reference examples so students have a strong understanding of what is required of them.

An example of the front and back cover of a card:

ACT Education 2023 Enrollments are Open

A reminder for particularly our families with children who are preschool age for 2023 to complete the online enrolment process to secure a spot at Evatt Preschool next year.

https://www.education.act.gov.au/public-school-life/enrolling-in-a-public-school/enrolling-in-preschool

Our current pre-schoolers will be automatically enrolled into kindergarten for next year as long as they live in our local Priority Enrolment Area.

For more information on enrolments, you can contact Oliver in the front office on 61421640

Book Packs/Voluntary Contributions

Have a Safe Break

A big reminder to our students and families to have a safe school holidays. We look forward to seeing all our students return on Monday 18 July.

We're all human, we have feelings and triggers, and parenting is hard. While you are working actively and continuously towards the goal of remaining calm, confident and composed for your children, remember to be patient with yourself in the process. Show yourself as much empathy and compassion as you would your best friend.

Examples of Dr Siggie’s hints and strategies:

Instead of saying “go to your room!”

“Let’s take a break and think about a better way to handle this next time.”

Or “stop back chatting!”

“Let’s try that again… I know you’re frustrated but let’s speak to each other kindly … take a deep breath and tell me again. I want to hear you.”

Canteen Hours

The Evatt canteen is open on Thursdays and Fridays for lunch orders only. These will be served at B1. Counter sales are also available during B1. We encourage people to order online. Online orders close at 8am.

Click the buttons below for the menu and online ordering instructions.