Welcome to Term Three  

What a successful and productive start to the term we have had. There is always a buzz of excitement on the first day of term with children keen to reconnect with friends and teachers, not to mention looking smart in their uniforms. Our students have transitioned from home to school without skipping a beat. Many teachers shared that their classes were  engaged and straight back into learning routines.  This week, I had the pleasure of attending the National Australian Primary Principal Association conference in Hobart. Having an opportunity to listen to national leaders speak about education reform is always inspiring, more importantly though it affirmed for me the great work that we do here at Burnie Primary School.

This year all Tasmanian government schools are focusing on improving reading outcomes for our learners. At BPS, this looks like the teaching of phonics (letters and sounds)  in our Prep to Year two classes, and the teaching of vocabulary (word inquiry) in our Year three to Year six. Our teachers are working collaboratively to plan engaging and evidence based experiences for our learners. I invite you to ask your child about their learning in this area. I wonder what they can tell you?  If you would like to know more information about our reading goals, please don’t hesitate to ask your child’s teacher.  

                      

This week at our Values Meetings, we began learning what Aspiration means. At Burnie Primary School we are all aspirational learners, who build on our strengths and work on our weaknesses. 

Being aspirational significantly influences education achievement and future life outcomes. Our students are learning that aspiration can relate to any area of life.

Having the value of aspiration can include:

• Expecting the best from ourselves and from others
• Striving for success
• Setting goals and planning to achieve them
• Continuing to lift and improve performance
• Understanding that learning is a lifelong process
• Persisting in the face of adversity and demonstrating resilience
• Not being afraid to fail!
• Actively participating in all activities and contributing positively to school community

Here is the video that was shared with our students this week:

Staffing Update  

This term we welcome Miss A as our full-time teacher to 2A, Ms Daphne Kalweit and Mrs Glynis Martin as our specialist art teachers. Mr Andrew Woodard will teach our primary classes as a specialist in the Maker’s Space.

 Leah Argeropoulos                Daphne Kalweit                 Glynis Martin               Andrew Woodard

Every School Day Matters

It’s Term 3 already – welcome back for another term!

As we move through the school year, sometimes regular school attendance can be challenging.  It’s important your child keeps up good attendance habits. Going to school every day means your child has every chance to learn, and be around their friends and teachers. Every day adds up, to benefit your child now and in the future.  If you’re having trouble getting your child to school, please talk to us. We’ll listen to your situation, and help in any way we can.

If you’re looking for tips on how to create better attendance habits, visit the Anything can happen website.

Our attendance system sends us messages when children have missed 5, 10 and 15 days either unexplained or unauthorised.

Unexplained is when you have not contacted the school to let us know why your child is away, or you do not respond to the text message that is sent after we have completed attendance for the day.

Unauthorised is when your child is away from school for a non-educational based reason (this includes taking holidays during the term). If your child is going to be away from school due to a family holiday or for an alternative activity that relates to learning or an organised event, please contact us so that we are able to record this in the system.

If the system indicates that your child has been away for 5, 10 or 15 days from school unexplained or unauthorised you will receive either a call or a letter from the school.

Susan Barnard
Acting Principal

This week we kicked off the week with our very first Breakfast Club for 2023 and it was a huge success.  A big thank you to our volunteers who helped out on the day. We look forward to providing breakfast to all of our students every Monday  morning. To enable this to happen we are seeking donations of rice bubbles, cornflakes, weet-bix, long life milk and spreads. We thank you for your support!

This week, Burnie Primary School has participated in the St John Ambulance First Aid in Schools program. The program aims at providing basic first aid training to school students. The program has covered content such as:

• Checking for danger
• Who can help
• Calling an ambulance
• Managing an unconscious patient
• Managing open wounds
• CPR and Defibrillation demonstrations

Can you create a winning bookmark?

As part of the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s (CBCA) Book Week, Libraries Tasmania is again running the popular ‘Design a Bookmark’ competition. Last year Tasmania’s talented young people submitted 2,400 amazing entries.

The Design a Bookmark competition is open to all children and young people statewide in five age groups:

• 4-6 years
• 7-9 years
• 10-12 years
• 13-15 years
• 16-18 years

The competition will begin on 31 July during Library and Information Week.
Entries close at the end of Book Week on 25 August.

Design your bookmark to illustrate the 2023 Children’s Book Week theme of: ‘Read, Grow, Inspire’. The winning designs will be professionally printed and distributed to all Tasmanian libraries.

Download a CBCA Bookmark Competition entry form (PDF 151 KB) or you can collect one from the Burnie Primary Library.

View competition terms and conditions

Dear Parents and Friends,

The P&F would like to thank everyone who supported our fundraising efforts and initiatives at the end of Term 2, it sure was a busy last week.

We held an extremely successful sausage sizzle at Bunnings which wouldn’t be possible without the support from these businesses who donated products or vouchers which helped keep our outlay costs to a bare minimum: Woolworths Upper Burnie, Banjos Bakery, Coles Burnie, and Woolworths Wynyard. We thank you! To our volunteers who helped in the lead-up and on the day with set-up, cooking, service and pack-up; Thank You! We appreciate the time you give to make these events as successful as they are.

The support shown for the trial Sushi lunch was overwhelming. It is lovely to see how much our school community supports new offerings. Sushi lunch will be held again later this year not as a fundraiser, just as an alternative lunch option.

Milo Morning will continue this term. It is lovely seeing all the children enjoying their milo before school started, check out the photos attached.

Soon you will see pictures of resources, learning tools and items that help make learning fun from each class, which we have supported as part of our previous fundraising efforts. It will be lovely to see these items support learning in our school.

Please keep an eye out for our future fundraising efforts, meetings and need for volunteers by following our P&F Facebook page; you can scan the QR code to join.

We look forward to welcoming you soon,

Your P&F.

Thank you to our school community for the ongoing fundraising efforts! Earlier this year the Parents and Friends Association decided to allocate each class $200 for a special purchase. We are grateful to our wonderful teachers who engaged the students in the purchasing decisions, and then sent us these pictures to enjoy.