Welcome to our school newsletter - "your local school....our local community" 

Dear Parent and Carers,

Welcome back to Term 3!

NAIDOC Week-50 Years of Deadly

Last term, our school celebrated NAIDOC Week with an engaging incursion from Deadly Ed. 

Students proudly wore the colours of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags as they enjoyed hands-on activities that deepened their understanding of First Nations culture. Highlights included weaving fish traps, designing and throwing boomerangs, and spear throwing at targets. We extend our sincere thanks to Ms Millar for coordinating this wonderful event for our students.

External Validation

It was an absolute pleasure and privilege to participate in our External Validation Panel Meeting last term. 

Our submission was highly regarded by the Peer Panellist and the Panel lead, who commented on its clarity and alignment with both the School Excellence Framework and our School Excellence Plan. 

The quality artefacts and annotations we provided clearly demonstrated the positive impact of our school’s work. 

The professional and collegial conversations with the panel helped bring our evidence to life and allowed us to further unpack the achievements and ongoing practices at Putney. 

The panel validated our self-assessment and judgements, supporting them with the robust evidence and thoughtful discussion from our team. The reflective conversations highlighted the genuine passion we share for our school, and it was wonderful to see this recognised. 

The future directions and priority areas identified will guide our next steps as we work with our Director Educational Leadership, Network LSEPs and school community to develop our new School Excellence Plan, ensuring we continue to build on effective practice. 

The External Validation process is recognition of the dedication and hard work of everyone at Putney Public School. It was a delight to showcase our school, and I am proud to share the panel report at the next P and C meeting. 

Staff Development Day   

During our recent School Development Day, staff came together to strengthen our initiatives and align with the priorities outlined in our School Excellence Plan. The day’s focus was on explicit teaching in Mathematics. 

We revisited our collective understanding of explicit teaching practices and refreshed our shared expectations to ensure consistent, high-quality delivery of mathematics instruction. Following this, our Stage teams carefully examined the mathematics learning intentions for the term, planning differentiated approaches to support all students and discussing effective formative and summative assessment strategies. 

Update on Pathways and Disabled Parking

The construction of the concrete pathways and disabled parking at the front of the school has experienced additional delays due to unforeseen challenges. We are hopeful that work will resume soon and appreciate the understanding of our school community regarding the inconvenience these delays have caused. 

Welcome to New Staff

Congratulations to Ms Aaisha Khan on securing the Learning and Support Role at Putney through a merit-based selection process. Ms Khan will be working at Putney on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. She is enthusiastic about embracing her new position and the opportunities it brings.

I am delighted to welcome Ms Tamara Spence as the Relieving Stage 2 Assistant Principal and Coolabah’s teacher for Semester 2. Ms Spence is an outstanding educator who has experience in Stage 2 classrooms and has collaborated closely with Ms Hyde to ensure a seamless transition for Coolabahs. I look forward to having Ms Spence as a valued member of our leadership team. 

Welcome back to Mrs Natasha Mascera who is a permanent member of our staff returning from maternity leave this term. Mrs Mascera is teaching Mountain Devils every Thursday whilst Mrs Ignazzi teaches the HPGE Thursday sessions.

ICAS Assessments- Start next week

A reminder that ICAS Assessments begin next week.Students will be sitting the assessments in the Learning Hub adjacent to the library.

Students must arrive at 7:50 to allow log ins and administration tasks to be completed so Assessments can begin promptly at 8:00 am to ensure the assessments are completed before school begins.

If your child is completing the Spelling Bee Assessment, they will need to bring in corded headphones to use.

ICAS Timetable:

• Thursday 6th August- Writing

• Thursday 13th August-  English

• Thursday 20th August-Spelling

• Thursday 27th August - Mathematics

Thank you to Mrs Fowler for ensuring our technology is ready to go for the competition.

SRC Art Competition 

The mural promoting water drinking near the hydration station looks fantastic! There is now an available space by the new recycling bins, which the SRC has identified as a great spot for a new mural to remind students to recycle and help reduce landfill waste.

To bring this idea to life, the SRC is hosting an art competition inviting students to design a mural for this area. The winning student will have the exciting opportunity to work alongside our artist, Jani Paterson, to create the mural. Entries close on 19th August (Week 5), and I’m excited to see the creative designs and the final winning piece.

Education Week 2026 - Inspiring Excellence

I am excited about our upcoming Open Classrooms event on Wednesday, 5th August. As always, the Canteen is thrilled to support this initiative and has prepared a special package for our picnic recess.

During the break, you’ll enjoy performances from some of our extra-curricular groups, including the band, Senior dance group, recorder ensemble, and choir.

Additionally, there will be a special presentation of the Drama group’s play, An Elderly Person’s Guide to Facebook, in the assembly hall at 12:00 pm. This is open to interested parents and Stage 3 students. 

I look forward to seeing you there!

Michelle Brooks

Principal

High Potential Gifted Education

This term HPGE groups recommence with small focus groups for both Stage 2 and Stage3.

In Stage 2 Maths, we are continuing with analysing word problems in the Maths Explorer program and finding various ways to tackle complex problems. Our Stage 2 Writing group are looking at various forms of text and how propaganda and bias are used to influence and persuade consumers.

Stage 3 Maths HPGE are studying Mathematics of other systems and innovative patterns. Last week we tried changing our decimal number system to binary, octal and hexadecimal bases. We discovered uses for these systems in our world.

Stage 3 Reading HPGE are studying the complete works of Shakespeare, in an appropriate children's version. We will be determining why characters act as they do in his narratives, ulterior motives and the relevance for today's society.

Stage 3 Writing HPGE are analysing lesser-known forms of poetry such as the tanka, epigram, and villanelle. We will be writing our own and experimenting with these poetic forms.

Tea Trees take maths outside !  

The Tea Trees soaked up the beautiful sunshine by taking their maths lesson outside to use litres and millilitres when estimating, measuring and comparing capacities of objects. It was great to get outdoors with hands on materials to determine appropriate units of measurement depending on the size of the object and then using our knowledge of decimals to convert between quantities. 

Hi everyone,

Oh what a night it was on Saturday at PPS P&C's Parents Trivia Night Out! Thank you to everyone who came and supported the school and joined in the fun! It wouldn't have been the success it was without Gladesville Sporties, who hosted us, our business sponsors from near and far, Alison (PPS P&C Alum) our Trivia Master and all the volunteers who worked in the lead up and on the night! Thank you in particular to Lauren (& Izzy!), Sara, Beah, Anna, Ileana, Mel, Melissa, Serenay, Marty, Jason!

Special offer for PPS Families: Next Gen Ryde, is currently offering all PPS Families a 5-day pass to access the club (further details are further below).

On Saturday we also launched our Silent Auction which runs until 16 August 2026 - there are plenty of great items up for grabs so check it out for some guilt-free bidding knowing that all proceeds go straight back to the school!

Silent Auction: CLICK HERE

With Fathers Day coming up, we are looking for volunteers to help out with the Stall (on Tuesday 1 September) and Breakfast (Wednesday 2 September) - if you can help out, please sign-up via the link below. 

P&C Events Volunteer Sign-up: CLICK HERE 

And lastly, Sara Avon has recently stepped down from her role as a P&C Vice President so I want to take the opportunity to say a big thank you to her for all her hard work and service to the school and P&C Executive Committee this year! 

If you have any questions, please always feel free to email: info@putneypc.org.au 

Hope everyone has a great rest of the week! 

Jess Clough